Thanks Mental, the ride was good. The vibes at the footpegs weren't as bad as I thought they would be, I only rode 20 miles though.
New necessary "farkle": I put anti-seize on the threads and foam tape between the skid plate and the frame to try to minimize sound transference, the skid plate with mounting hardware is approximately 1.5lbs more then the stock crash bars w/bolts and nut.
I am very impressed by your attention to the farkles (and not the tibia recovery...). Scares me just to look at the X-ray. I seem to recall somebody recently compiled a before/after weight gain & loss thread, after installing farkles/upgrades. This bash plate only add 1.5-lbs. (compared to stock pipes)? That's not bad at all.
A quick update on Justin: Two days after surgery, he is starting to feel a little bit better. He will probably have to have another surgery when he gets back to the states to repair his ACL and other knee ligaments. We've had lots of arguments with the nurses on how much pain medication he needs, but after a little gesturing and the use of the words "mucho dolor", they usually get the picture. Kurt and Corey, the two canadians that we had been riding with in Semuc Champey raced to the Hospital as soon as they heard what happened. Today, Mario and Stan, both ADV riders showed up and helped us truck Justin's bike to elsalvadorklr's mom's house. A little later, jdowns showed up, and the party was on! We figured that giving him some beer and injecting some of that special KTM oil into his IV might speed up his recovery..... But seriously, there has been a huge outpouring of support from the rider community in general. People are coming out of the woodwork to help Justin, and it is amazing! From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone! Here's Mario and Stan with Justin today: And here is Corey, John (jdowns), and Kurt with Justin: Some of Justin's family flew into San Salvador tonight and should be here at the hospital in the morning. Thanks again to everyone, the donations and support have been pouring in! It's good to know that riders will gladly take care of their own!
I also thought of that but the clamps use "Prevailing torque type lock nuts" and the instructions say to use oil, or better yet anti-seize, none the less I am carrying a T40 bit in my bag and will be consistently checking them. Oh, Crap! I read the instructions...
Question for the motor gurus, just got done claying the piston and I'm getting .100 on the intake and .080 on the exhaust using a head/base gasket and zero valve lash for a semi accurate condition. Question is is that adequate clearance? Tried looking up the spec or rule of thumb but the inter web doesn't seem to have the answer. The car guys(V8 crowd) like .80 intake and .100 exhaust as the closest tolerance In a Jixxer forum I found .050 intake and .080 cited as acceptable Funny thing is in my mind even with a overhead cam the valve train is more resembling the small block due to the large mass of the rocker asy, were the Jixxer will have a cam bucket or just a small cam follower instead of the massive rocker asy. Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Piston is a 10.5 JE slug and the cam is a megacycle 173-x12
I like .100 intake and .120 exhaust clearance for general use. If it was more of a race style build .080 and .100 would be my min amount.
Maybe you are saying you did it this way, I'm not sure. The way to be 100% sure you have sufficent clearance is to disconnect the cam chain, set the valves open at the maximum lift, then crank the piston around. Or with the piston at TDC, use a dial indicator to measure the valve opening till they hit the piston ( measurement minus lift is clearance ). You can have zero, or close to it, clrearance between the valve and piston, this would yield highest compression available because the valve clearance recess in the piston is smallest ( if needed ), but in that case NOTHING can go wrong with the valve timming and no carbon build up either. The safest thing is to have enough valve to piston clearance so that the valves can be open at the max lift and the piston can clear them. I am sure JE gave the piston sufficent clearance, whatever that measures to be. Email them, I have before, they were happy to help.
You guys....why'd you go and have to add common sense and logic to my ranting ....funsuckers You guys made very valid points........one being I imagine its true that most dual sports see more "dual use" than the 90% dirt mine see's. I used to consider my L heavy as a dual sport went, but since lightening it about 20lbs, and seeing where most of the other dual sports are weighing in at anymore, its starting to look like one of the lighter machines out there I still think a 320lb dirt bike is too heavy tho......... When are they going to bring 2 stroke dual sports back to the U.S.? They have'em in other parts of the world, the makers need to get them approved here, and get them to us Like Fritz said, if you want light weight with good power, a 2 strokes the ticket. I'd be fine with a 270lb wet weight, 60rwhp 500cc 2 stroke dual sport
Thanks very much for the input Mental, not disputing your specs but are they from your own personal experience or cited from a reputable source ? I was thinking of performing the test as you just described but I think its physically impossible due to needing the valve cover on the head (rocker asy and such) making it impossible to access the camshaft to rotate it to the stopping point of lift at TDC. The way I did it was with claying the piston and then rotating the engine for 1 complete cycle of the cam shaft removing the cylinder head and measuring the cross section of clay with some calipers. I might just put the head back on and remove the valve springs and try to jusy use finger pressure and the dial indicator to (piston at TDC) get a more accurate measurement. As far as "trusting" a piston manufacturer ask the folks who were buying there high comp Wesco pistons how there experience went. here are some pics of the cross sections intake Exhaust
Both. I learned it first and have built many different engines for about 25 years or so. I like to stay on the safe side to allow for wear and timing chain stretch. The XR is an interference engine. The valves will hit the piston if the camshaft is out of time. Most motorcycle engines and many new car engines are this way. The clearance your measuring is during overlap when the valves are just slighty open.
They changed the clamp on those. My clamp is a machined clamp that has a threaded part into it. So I use loctite so it wouldn't back out. They use to send all four T40 head bolts. After you remove them once or twice they strip out. I had to grind them off once. If I were you I would change them out to all hex head bolts.
Sorry, I doubt 2- stroke dual sports are in the near future... Just drink the kool-aid and get a 2013 KTM 500 EXC. About 60rwhp and weighs about 250#'s less fuel. The problem is the amount green the kool-aid costs....
