Why I hate shopping

No matter what else might need work I am, at the very least, going to need to replace the piston rings, hone the cylinder, decoke the head and lap the valves. In addition and only if I am feeling particularly adventurous I will polish the ports. So just to have something to do on a Friday night I decided to scrape the carbon off the piston. As soon as I started I found some very strange dings around the crown of the piston. They are clearly not valve damage but they are enough for me to scrap the piston which is no big deal as at $70 it is probably a good investment anyway.

Little knicks around the crown

I don't know why I would be bothered to remove the old rings from this now scrap piston but I did and to my surprise the oil control ring fell apart. It's been a long time since I got this deep into a motorcycle engine but I am sure that this ring should be one piece not three. I wonder if this is the source of the strange noise.




We have in town three auto stores and so I was confident that I would find a small valve lifter, a lapping stick and some valve grinding paste. Well you would think wouldn't you? NAPA was like the land of the living dead with the two octogenarians behind the counter frozen in time. Advance were employing GED failures who hadn't a clue what I was talking about and I arrived at Fisher's at 12.04 and can you guess what time they close on a Saturday. As a result I had a despondent afternoon just dicking around. I made a half hearted attempt to clean the cylinder head but to be honest I wasn't feeling the magic.

Anyway, enough whining, first thing Monday morning I shall have another go at NAPA.