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Since the previous owner didn't really know anything that had been done to my bike, I "assumed" that the head was stock, so I sent it off to RB Designs for some work. Ron responded back to me saying, "We received your head for modification - however, upon inspection your head has already been modified by someone else and cannot do anything with it." Damn it! soooo... it's been modified already - is there any way to tell if it's been modified by Fredette, besides calling him? It's not a big deal, but I'm just curious who might have done it, and if the mod that's been done to mine might be somewhat as good as a RB Designs mod?

Here are a few pics of it. I'm not sure what the difference is between this one and a stock head.

That looks a lot like my RB head.

Slick_Nick wrote: ↑04:46 pm May 09 2019 That looks a lot like my RB head.

Hmmm... well, hopefully it was RB or Fredette. It would seem that Ron would know if he did the work on it or not, but he didn't say anything.

R/B did my head modification & it definitely did "Not" look like that.

GATOROC wrote: ↑05:46 pm May 09 2019

Slick_Nick wrote: ↑04:46 pm May 09 2019 That looks a lot like my RB head.

Hmmm... well, hopefully it was RB or Fredette. It would seem that Ron would know if he did the work on it or not, but he didn't say anything.

I thought the same thing.

There are a lot of companies (RB, Millenium, etc.) that modify the squish band on heads. Unless they stamped it there is no way to tell who did it. Measure the clearance and you'll know whether it's good or not.

If you go to RB's web site you can see a picture of his head mod. The squish band area is machined. That is what my head looks like. You can also do his test with the correct diameter of solder just to see what you have.

There wasn't any stamp on it that I noticed. Too late to measure the clearance since I assembled everything last night. I bought this bike back in March and haven't really had a chance to ride it, so I was itching to get this thing back together. I was amazed that it kicked over the second kick! I was able to do the break-in procedure last night and will probably ride it a little more today. It's running pretty good but still need to go through the "jetting guide".

I'm still thinking about finding a stock head if I can guarantee that it's actually "stock", and sending it to RB for the mod. For right now I'm just going to enjoy finally riding my bike.

Looks like you can get a brand new head for only $255.00. That one will definitely be stock.

www.partzilla.com

HEAD-CYLINDER
11001-1410
by Kawasaki

$254.73 27% OFF

$184.94

It is the same part number from 1997 - 2005.

It doesn't matter who did the work as long as they were competent and set the squish to what your bike needs. The solder test is the only way to know for sure.

Squish band clearance and chamber volume with piston @ TDC are, IMO, the 2 numbers you really need to know. With a bit of care, you should be able to get get this information without having to take the head off.

Well, here’s a question. Have you run the bike yet? If so, how does it do? May not need to fix it if it ain’t broke.

I’ve only had one small opportunity to ride it at the house, but from that short ride I can tell that it needs to be jetted properly. After I get back from my trip I can start working on it. It pulls pretty hard on the top end but is a bit sluggish from low to mid range. I have no idea whether the current head on there will make a difference or not from a “known” RB head mod, but oh well. I can tell that this bike is going to be a blast to ride - just a “tad” different from my crf450r.