TOPIC:

The sad thing is, she's running like a top. Probably as good as she's run since I got hold of her. Just too much smoke out the right pipe. At 60mph, leaves the cages behind me in a kinda blueish grey fog!

If the head and base gaskets come off in one (3) good intact pieces, should/could I reuse them?

I have reuse my head gasket 3 different times and still dont have any problems (knock on wood) If it all comes off and there isnt any defects in or on it i dont see why you couldnt.My dad and uncle did it for years on the race car and had no problems.Changed them about every 10 times the heads were off

Rammy, Thanks for the insight on the gasket front.

Duck, at least it isn't Lexus Book Rate! And think of all the fun I wouldn't have had If I'd paid someone else to do it!

No problem BarneyH If I can save a few coins I will and If iI can help someone else do the same I will.Good luck just be carful takin it apart not to rip any gaskets.

I was going to post a topic asking just how many people actually check the warp on their heads/blocks when they have them apart for maintenance or upgrade.. I think the general concensus I get from my gut feeling is none.

I probably wouldn't have resurfaced mine either, but we have a granite block at work for checking just such a thing, and both my head and block rocked about .004" from end to end. I resurfaced the head when I got the valves seated, and the block is being done at APE when they bore it.

I guess with no coolant passages, oil passages having their own o-rings, and both the head and block being aluminum and probably warping evenly with each other, the only possibility of a leak is from combustion gases. A guy I work with said to me "Well, you don't want to take it apart again, do you?"

dont they make a head gasket for that?

Sounds like the oil ring expander is overlapped at it's ends. If that is the case, there is no tension in the two rails that wipe the oil down. Will cause a smoker for sure.

Jay

APE Jay. No, that's not the problem. The rings that came with the new pistons (BK), from Australia, had single piece oil rings. Not the more usual 3 piece set-up.

I still believe it's either #4 oil ring got snapped when I put the block back on OR, I forgot the IN valve seal on #4 OR, BOTH!

yes, but there is still a gap to get the ring on the piston.. he's talknig about the ends of that gape overlapping each other.

Now if that is not possible, that's one thing. With the 3 piece rings it is, but it has nothign to do with the top or bottom ring, just the center 'wavy' ring overlapping at its ends. It would be easy to do this by accident with wieco ends.

Lemo32: a head gasket for what? To take care of warp the cheap way?

They make head gaskets that are thicker to lower compressino.. at least for cars. I don't know about these bikes though.

Trav, Totally agree at the possibility of said overlap with a three piece oil ring but, as mentioned, the oil rings I have are one piece.

The ends of a one piece ring couldn't physically overlap if the ring were correctly positioned in it's groove.

As I see it, the only thing that could possible happen is that the end gap might be insufficient to allow compression of the ring for insertion of the piston into the bore, with the ring correctly applied, the ring ends would come together and the ring would have to snap to allow sufficient compression to insert the piston.

In my case, I know the end gap to have been sufficient because I "tried" the rings in the bores whilst they were off the pistons and the result was an end gap within spec. What I think I MAY have done is snapped the #4 oil ring whilst attempting to compress and insert #1 & #4. Maybe I was too focused on #1 whilst #4 oil ring was snapping?