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Hey Guys,

Long time lurker, decided to sign up. I've read alot in these forums here and learned alot and decided it's time for me to get to work. I purchased this thing out of someones backyard not running. Pulled the stock carb's , cleaned em, threw em back on, attached a new battery and relay, cleaned the switches, changed the oil and boom got it "running"...with the choke on.

Pilot's and Mains are wrecked on the carb so I'll be hooking up dual vm 30's in the future. Noticed it ran rich so popped the plugs and borescoped it, carbon everywhere. Noticed some blue smoke on startup, figured that was hard oil seals from years of chillin around doing nothing. Compression checked out 150PSI both cylinders, leakdown test showed my exhaust valves were leaking probably from the excessive buildup running rich.

Welp no sense in running on a bad motor and having a nice bike - Its like cruising town on a polished turd right?

WELL come to find two of the valves are slightly bent, as well as a piston looking to be covered in blowby? Ive got a new head and valves on the way. Ive gone over the entire wire harness and tidied everything up with solder and heatshrink, scuffed and painted the frame, cleaned the gas tank and stripped the paint, all torn down!

Now I need advice -
I noticed a bit of washing on the edges of the piston's and arent sure if theyre due to blow by or just naturally built up because of the dome shape? Should I reuse the pistons and buy new rings? or drop the dough and have a bore over and new pistons/rings? I feel the oil buildup was due to a number of reasons mainly oil dripping down the cylinder due to a bad valve set and seals and it sat on the piston tops where the rings wouldnt pull it out...as for all the other parts Everything was within service limits according to the service manual.

Standard engine rebuilding philosophies prevail: measure all the parts and take the appropriate action. In other words, measure bore size, out of round, and taper. Measure piston diameter. Then compare the values to those from the factory Kawasaki service manual. If within the service limit you can do a simple bottle brush hone on the cylinders and install new rings.

For the head I like to have the valves ground with a centerless grinder. Then you can lap them into the head and measure the contact pattern. If the margin is too wide the seats should be cut. Do the wobble test too to check the guides. Straight forward stuff.

Good advice. Everything seems to be square except for those valves. I’ll get my hands on some dye and see what I can do to clean them up.