[Nick DoleMember]

Hi Budge,
You probably have a decent scratch or vertical score in the tube. For what it’s worth to re chrome the tubes of get the 09 forks, they slip straight in. Internals are way better than the 04.

[Nick DoleMember]

Stock sleeve can take up to 3mm overbore. Ill bore this one as we are only going 0.5mm.
Big sleeve can take 106mm but only Wiseco/JE pistons so no good for high Km.

[Nick DoleMember]

Have to quote MT up next week but its all stripped and ready. Cam and rockers are away being repaired, piston is back order from Japan. I was going to look at a Wossner as their ring packs have been good on other engines but they are nil stock in Australia and US. Even the eBay vendors selling them don’t have them.
So ill just play it safe with an OEM piston.
I do want to try those rocker arms out that some guy is selling in the US, $65 a set of 4 but ill leave that experiment to my engine. The hard faced cams and rockers can tolerate some oil starvation and don’t have the chrome flaking problems the stock rockers have.

[Nick DoleMember]

Stock cam is usually pretty mild/conservative. The cam we used to use in Enduro XR600’s is not much bigger than stock and has a little more lift but gives a nice increase all over, hence it became known as the “all round” grind. No problems with using stock springs/valves/retainers too. That’s what I’ll use in this engine. The stock 600 cam is fine though, usually run it a couple of degrees retarded. Hedge used a stock cam/piston for every Safari in the 90’s so that should tell you something. They had a bunch of cams they could have used from Webb, Megacycle, HRC, White Brothers.
I can’t say for other bikes like the Tenere’s as not many people modify them.

[Nick DoleMember]

650R is the same. I had JE make us 11:1 pistons with OEM rings pin and clips. That’s what we used in 00-05. I ran out of them and never re-ordered because the HRC piston had become more common and not horrendously expensive and so many people with no idea (my opinion) told me the Wiseco rings were fine.
In the odd 650R engine I do now the customer has usually bought a pile of expensive billet junk from the US of A and wants me to assemble the mess. I smile, take their money and do the work. They don’t ask my what I think, some expert has already told them.

[Nick DoleMember]

I don’t like using the Wiseco type rings in an air cooled engine. In my experience the oil rings loose tension after not that long and the blue smoke on start up is not acceptable for most people. Usually under 10 000km and they start smoking. The OEM rings won’t do that till 60 000.

As for cast vs forged I have never seen a stock XR piston fail prematurely from excessive RPM. I also don’t like the extra clearance you need to give a forged piston as it makes the engine noisy and that’s not what an adventure bike needs. What kills XR pistons is lack of oil.

To achieve higher compression I can get a stock piston up to 10:1 and I don’t advocate any more is better as the air cooled engine detonates easily if it gets hot.
I will run a slightly bigger cam than stock but it needs to be on a Honda core to retain the auto decomp. The starter is worked too hard with a hotcam stage 1 no decomp.

[Nick DoleMember]

Ill have it quoted up for next week. Will look for a stock cam in my spares too, you don’t want any if the 3 monsters I just had ground.
Will go with a stock type piston too, the Wiseco’s are no good for adventure bikes, ring life is crap.
Might see you at PI.

[Nick DoleMember]

Going down to Mexico again this weekend for WSBK, got an entry in the ProStock class with my long time sponsored rider Murray Clark. Keep an eye out for him in the Superbike support race, #36.
As last time if you need anything brought back let me know ASAP.

[Nick DoleMember]

Got my cams back today, three to try, the one in the middle looks interesting…

[Nick DoleMember]

You are not wrong Mick. Engine seems to have survived it pretty well. Piston pin is welded in the rod though.
Gearbox looks ok at first glance too, no hard facing missing.

[Nick DoleMember]

Pretty normal looking piston that has been oil starved.

Bore has some piston stuck to it, that’s the alloy looking streaks.

[Nick DoleMember]

Burnt 2 rocker arms at top, bottom ones are normal wear.

Right cam lobes are burnt from lack of oil, left ones are normal wear.

[Nick DoleMember]

Nah, we really just need to get it going at a minimal cost, only thinks you should buy for it are stuff that are adaptable to your next bike, GPS mounts and the like.

[Nick DoleMember]

I showed Adam the photos. It’s a Zong Shen engine, has pushrods…woohoo
Adam’s suggestion was that if it does not have spark it’s a 95% chance the stator has died as they are 100% rubbish. He probably has one in stock. $80-120 depending on the type.

[Nick DoleMember]

That’s the ignition advance unit, it’s the same terminal sizes as an XR Honda. You need that bit.
If it was insured I’d suggest setting fire to the entire bike.
See how you go getting it running, TB and I are working for apple cider these days so if you have some in the fridge you may get invaded if it comes to that.
One of my friends works at Gasman Chinese quality bike shop (ha) in Penrith, he has been working on them for years and is pretty good, way better than I am on the Chinese bikes.

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