Tore her down tonight...Here is what I found!

[Gotanubike]

So today I decided I would swap in my new niksail plated cylinder(purchased from user hadfield4wd). I took a few pics along the way to post here, so here is what I found!

Old cylinder. Looked pretty bad. That porous looking material appears to be aluminum and the plating is completely worn through I think







Piston looks a little scuffed up but no cracks



Scrubbed it a few times really good with scotch brite and some solvent



New cylinder! Plating is nikasil..



A wild LH powervalve rarely seen in the process of stripping it's gear teeth. Here you can see where it is starting to strip. That valve is less than a year old.



Beginning to swap over all my KIP's



Ran into a snag with my center valve. Powerseal USA left a blob of weld on the face of where the center valve contacts. I tried to dremel it down as best I could but it was still snagging slightly on the front face of the valve.



The only solution I could think of was to grind down the face of the valve a little bit and it worked! No more snag and all the valves turned freely.



Cleaned up the old studs on a wire wheel





All done!

[KDXGarage]

Thanks for another great post!

Cool job!

[Julien D]

Cylinder looks good. You're not really going to put that old piston in the new cylinder, are you?

[Gotanubike]

Yeeeeah I'm not terribly concerned about it. It cleaned up rather nicely, plus silicon carbide is 10x harder than steel, let alone forged aluminum so I think it should suffice.

[scheckaet]

Not to bash or pick on you but are you seriously re-using that piston? or just trolling us?

[Gotanubike]

You wanna buy me one schekaet? I'd happily lend you my address, I think oemcycle.com has the best price

JK, I took care of it. I have one on the way. I didn't know it was that bad..

[scheckaet]

you had me scared for a min would be a shame to spend all that $$$ on a nice plated cylinder and re-use a soon to be kaput old piston.
You may laugh now but i'm sure some backward redneck backyard mechanic would have re-used that without even a blink

Oh, and actually, ebay has some good deals.
I'm out of dollar anyway, take dineros?
Now that I think of it, I have a slightly less used piston you might wanna use instead, I'll sell it for at the friendly pricing of 1/2 of what you get on cylcepedia :P
Deal?

[Gotanubike]

Thanks for the heads-up

[Tedh98]

For a minute there I thought we found Slick Nick's long lost brother . . .

[Gotanubike]

you had me scared for a min would be a shame to spend all that $$$ on a nice plated cylinder and re-use a soon to be kaput old piston.
You may laugh now but i'm sure some backward redneck backyard mechanic would have re-used that without even a blink

Oh, and actually, ebay has some good deals.
I'm out of dollar anyway, take dineros?
Now that I think of it, I have a slightly less used piston you might wanna use instead, I'll sell it for at the friendly pricing of 1/2 of what you get on cylcepedia :P
Deal?

Under $100 shipped from OEMcycle(Wiseco kit)...best price I could find. Better than anything on ebay.

For all I know the dinero is probably stronger than the loonie right now ...

For a minute there I thought we found Slick Nick's long lost brother . . .

Lol! Insider? What's the story there?

[scheckaet]

For a minute there I thought we found Slick Nick's long lost brother . . .

I did not dare say it...

[Tedh98]

For a minute there I thought we found Slick Nick's long lost brother . . .

Lol! Insider? What's the story there?

I think this is the tread: http://www.kdxrider.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8467

He took some crap for re-using bearings that most people would have tossed in the garbage.

[Gotanubike]

Bhaha..Half of the things on my bike I am afraid to remove for that reason. bearing kits are $$$

Cool thread. That boy does work!

[KDXGarage]

I ordered a Wiseco GP piston kit for my KX125 a couple of months ago, and oemcycle was the cheapest. The shipping was not as quick as the "in stock and ready to ship"places like Rocky Mountain and Dennis Kirk, but I could wait to save as much as I did.

[Gotanubike]

They shipped mine yesterday. Ordered Monday.

Got a few more goodies for the bike today.

- Chain
- Front sprocket
- Frame guards
- Rear tire

"General street use"....uhh woops?





Kenda Trakmaster K760..Anybody use them??




UFO frame guards from FRP. Look kind of dumb on the black frame but meh

[6 Riders]

My bike had Trackmasters on it when I bought it...The front tire is a little lame, but the rear seemed to do just fine. Running Kenda Washougals (I am in WA after all) on her now....THESE are F'ING NICE TIRES! I'll most likely be buying them again!
That chain will work fine on a KDX, but next time get the X ring chain, very little $ difference.
With those frame guards (where did you find them BTW?) you could try to dye them.....
Get some RIT dye and a big pot from the 2nd hand store.....boile the dye, toss in your parts, let sit, remove and dry....or just leave them green

[Gotanubike]

Thanks, the front is also a trakmaster II just slightly used with probably 75% tread still on it. Got that from my brother a couple weeks ago.

The chain needed a press fit tool. I didn't have one so I had to get creative and used a C-clamp and and a small nut over the ends of the through pins and torqued the plate in a little bit on each side until it was seated to put the clip on.

The frame guards are from FRP(note the sticker on the radiator shroud ). He definitely had the best price going compared to anything else I could find. Pretty sure they are discontinued too, as they are not listed on the UFO site.

[6 Riders]

Thanks, the front is also a trakmaster II just slightly used with probably 75% tread still on it. Got that from my brother a couple weeks ago.

The chain needed a press fit tool. I didn't have one so I had to get creative and used a C-clamp and and a small nut over the ends of the through pins and torqued the plate in a little bit on each side until it was seated to put the clip on.

The frame guards are from FRP(note the sticker on the radiator shroud ). He definitely had the best price going compared to anything else I could find. Pretty sure they are discontinued too, as they are not listed on the UFO site.

All O/X ring chains need to be pressed a bit to get the master link on, perfectly normal.
Yes the frame guards are dico'd, just like everything else on the E series...which sucks because there are so many of these old(er) bikes still out there.

[Gotanubike]

Yup and if you have an E series struggling with stripping powervalves, I have a surprise for you guys in a couple weeks.

I have been in contact with Brock from BDK race engineering and he is going to put together and bushing adapter kit for for the KMX200 valves they machine and sell which are zinc anodized steel and never strip. If it works, he will put up a special listing for 89-94 kdx200 left powervalve kit.

Keep your eyes peeled in a couple weeks I will post a picture tutorial.

[diymirage]

I bought a project bike a while ago that came with a bare rear tire
I stopped by my local bike shop to pick up some parts and "borrowed" the best looking wore out rear tire from their junk pile

it happened to be a kenda trakmaster
even as wore out as it was it outperformed any other tire I had used here in the sandy Michigan trails

I even went out and bought a brand new one for my plated bike since they are DOT approved