Milled my original head last night, it was a breeze, came out so smooth I won't even have to sand it to get the milling lines out.

RAPTORAZ, I am a little concerned about milling the Yerf-dog head, since it has larger valves they are actually closer to the piston already than the original.

Not being an expert by any means, I looked at the cam as I disassembled it for the 3rd or 4th time (but who's counting) and the valves look like they are NOT closed completely when the piston is at tdc. The exhaust is probably fine, I guess it finishes right at tdc but the intake "seems" to be opening at tdc.

Am I worrying over nothing, I was only going to shave .030 off anyway. I don't want to worry about detonation. It's not going to kill me to leave the thing stock, it already runs better than a 150 has any right to.

kell

 

I believe they call that "overlap". In cars they say it helps to promote exhaust scavenging.

 

Got some great advice from the Honda mechanic, I said I was worried about valve clearance with the larger valves being closer to the piston.

He said normally you would mock it up with clay on the piston and run it through the cycle to see how much clearance you have. But he said an easy way is to put a light spring on the valves and when you get to the least amount of clearance in the stroke simply push down on the valve to measure how much youv'e got.

cool

 

I "clayed" my ported small valve head before I milled it. I put enough clay on the piston to make it even with the top of the cylinder, and turned the motor over by hand a few times. The valves left NO marks in the clay. At the time, the piston was approximately .090" from zero deck. So I figured that removing .050" was no problem. Since the piston had valve reliefs on top of the .040" of deck height left. I didn't clay it after the milling.

I went and looked at the Eastside pipe today(took my TJ pipe with me). The Eastside pipe was a MUCH better looking peice. And much larger in diameter as well. Looks like I'll be getting one of those as well soon.

 

Got the Blade done and built.

Great looking cart... The frame is POWDER COATED which makes a huge difference in scratch resistance. This is huge to me as the KPX Xterro paint was extremely easy to scratch. Rub anything remotely rough against it and it would scrape right to the metal. Not the blade.
Takes effort to damage the coating.

Tires seem good quality and they are big.

Here's the thing though... it's a 10HP cart just like many of the 2004s out there. It's just geared/tired to run a faster max speed.

I swear I read somewhere that it was 12.5 hp, and looked everywhere, but can't find that info now. Definately not. The manual clearly states it's 10hp.

I'll be getting that East Side pipe for it more than likely Kell!


-Steve

 

Checked last night and I got apprx. .1" but I am going to chicken out and only take about .030 or .040 off. Gotta be running by this weekend, we plan on going to Turkey Bay!

Like I said before, I got a more power from putting the pipe on than the head (so far), also I will try to find the number of the gasket I got from the honda dealer that fits really well.

It is a copper gasket that I put on a broomstick and lightly tap to get the od small enough to fit in the head. It does'nt choke the exhaust off like the factory gasket.

 

I went and looked at the Eastside pipe today(took my TJ pipe with me). The Eastside pipe was a MUCH better looking peice. And much larger in diameter as well. Looks like I'll be getting one of those as well soon.[/quote]

Where did you go to find one of these?

 

I am very dissapointed in KPX. At this point I wish I had gone with the Blade or just waited for one 250 units to come out. After spending 2 weeks trying to get ahold of KPX'x customer service, and sending them pictures, part numbers, drawing numbers everything somebody that had never seen a gearbox would need to get me a new part what happens? Their technical expert sends me the wrong part and then says I gave him the wrong information and I have to pay for shipping to get this part back to him before he will send me the correct part.

After a couple hours on the phone with David the owner and sending him all of the emails I had sent to AJ, he admits they screwed up and will get me a new shaft. That was a week ago. Still no shaft . UPS ground from Tucson to here is 1 day.

It has been a total of 3 weeks now that I have been trying to get this part.

The cart seems to be pretty decent ( I still think it is way more robust than our yerf dog) unfortunately KPX as a company seems to have some serious problems.

 

I believe once you get it sorted out you will be happy. We've heard of KPX support horror stories before as well. But some people seem to have a lot of luck with them. I think it's hit or miss, honestly.

At least one dealer in their network left them saying they were too hard to deal with.

The blade has LOWER low end torque due to higher gearing.

Somehow 12.5 hp got out, but that's not the case. It's rated horsepower is 10 according to it's own
manual and DVD assembly video that comes with it in shipment.

So, in the end, it has no more horsepower than a 2004 KPX but the lower end is slower, and
slower acceleration due to the higher gearing.

Since the 2005 KPX Xterro has had improvments to the engine that have said to increase horsepower
and torque, I think it's a good choice right now. This judging on the videos of the 2005 KPX from Heath and
descriptions others have made. I'd like to get my hands on one and see it for myself.


Blade has a good frame (though narrow for two seater... dazon raidermax is the same frame, etc), awesome powder coating instead of paint, and comes with lots of cool options but feels slower than a stock 2004 xterro did due to gearing. Does appear to have a
higher top end speed, but takes some time to get there.


-Steve

 

Where did you go to find one of these?[/quote]


Eastside Motorsports is in Mesa. www.eastsidems.com