I'm leaning towards Ed's theory that the big-time compression might have been squeezing through and burning out the oil under the rings. Perhaps the new ring still had to seat itself in the bore. Maybe I should still have been giving the bike an easier time for longer to break in. Thanks, Darrell U...

Ah, but the needle does not block in any way passage through the needle jet at full throttle. The drilled body of the jet is quite large at the top of the jet. Even though the needle doesn't fully retract, it fully clears the metering part of the jet on full throttle. At full throttle you could run ...

Looking at the schematic, the 99 has either the same or similar kick start roller assembly as the others. If it has primary kick start I am not aware of it. I recall discussion about not running premix in the oil injection bikes without making modifications to the bearing boss on the left main beari...

Just looking at a needle jet yesterday for a 24 Mikuni ( just happened to be working on one is all), my impression was that the "jet" part of the needle jet was huge compared to your average main jet, which makes sense as the needle part is generally pretty big. In theory, a needle jet cou...

Hard to say about the ring breaking 180 away from the gap. Rings are fragile anyway. If the area of the break shows damage not associated with the break itself, then possibly yes, it was compromised by the seizure. It is easy, though, to break rings by removing them with too much gusto. Double check...

Right side up on my iPad mini.

Distinguish between 1) new shocks and springs are stiff enough to handle the rider weight without allowing bottoming and fender contact, and 2) shock length is correct for application and will not allow tire to make contact even when bottomed out. Bottoming the shocks is not all that good a situatio...

I assume you mean hard boiled eggs are good with zucchini beer.....

Generally, skirt clearance is verified at least three times, top, middle, and bottom. If you can't get relatively similar readings top and bottom, something is out of whack. If the bore is tapered so soon after a rebuild, I would question the term rebuild. Was it rebored? If not, was it checked for ...

You can always pull the silencer core to see if it makes any difference, other than noise, but it also affects jetting, so if pulling the core makes no real difference, it isn't the silencer.

You have a contact that makes decals like those in the photos??? If so, they apparently do one-off requests of quality. I didn't see any errors.

All of us are here only for a while...

Looking forward to seeing and hearing this bike. If you have performance stats on the original bike, could you share them? I would be interested in knowing what the original was able to do on the track, top speed, etc. And then, there are the engine specifics, such as piston port versus reed, portin...

In their installation instructions, Wiseco advises that additional piston clearance may be needed for modified engines. They don't say how much. Whether the engine in question would be considered modified is up to you, but I think the reed induction might qualify, as well as perhaps the swapped head...

I would agree that 0.0018" is tight for a Wiseco, but what does Wiseco say it should be? They usually print recommended clearance on the box. Aluminum grows when hot. It grows most where hottest, commonly at or around the crown to exhaust port area. This is where it seized. The scuff on the bac...

After looking at your slotted piston with the giant holes (all good) it occurred to me that this engine might benefit from a notch in the skirt. This allows for earlier and more intake through the piston. You might get slightly more intake along with more mix traveling through the piston to cool th...