Yep, just want it to be all it can be!

You kinda get the feeling I'm going to mill it no matter what! This is about having fun, forget reasonable thinking!

should I bother buying a tool to measure compression or just wait till a hole appears in the piston?
can I buy this at sears?

 

Yes, you can buy a compression tester at Sears.
Some good info that you might want to read about compression testers before making any wrong assumptions (which is easy to do, as I have done it myself in the past) is here: Compression tester info.

 

Hello 2fun. I never realized the subtleties of squish. Thanks for the information. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]
Have a good day
BryceGTX

 

My pleasure Bryce.
I TRY to bring good information to the table. Sometimes I am successful, and sometimes I am not.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

2fun, now you are making my head hurt!

I am sure the valves will be fine (no interference) I would like to raise the compression up
about 1 point. It is a low compression engine right now, my new head will have larger valves,
and I think the chamber is larger than mine which will again lower my compression.
The picture is of the head I ordered (you should see how tiny the valves are in mine).
I don't mind running higher octane as it barely uses gas.

I guess I just wanted a simple, yeah just shave off .020 or something, I should know it is never
that easy though.

thanks again to everyone!
kell

 

LOL! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]
Sorry about making your head hurt [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]
Often times a "simple" answer can cause a "complicated" problem [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-frown.gif[/img]
You will probably be ok, but I cannot say that for sure. Like I said, I have no experience shaving the head on a 4-stroke. The concept of squish band, and compression testers, are pretty good reads though, and should help you to avoid problems in the future should you choose to tinker with these issues in the future.

Do me a favor and let me know how it turns out, as I would like to know myself! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

Milled the "spare" original head to see how it would come out. It is smooth enough it doesn't even need sanding, actually pretty easy to do on our cnc router table.

However, I am torn on whether to do this on my new head, it has larger valves that are a little closer to the piston than the original.

Surely .030 off wouldn't hurt huh???????

 

You tell us! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img] [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

If it were me, i'd use some modeling clay to figure out your existing piston to valve clearance before removing anything... When pistons meet the valves, its a big expensive kaboom on a 4 stroke.

Once you know your clearance, then you could at least make an educated guess.

My $.02

 

Went by the honda dealer yesterday at noon, and got some good advice.

He said of course use the clay but that I could also put some weak springs in and run it through by hand and simply push down on the valve and measure to check clearance when it got close.

Did that and Iv'e got about .1" so thats plenty
I'll let you know if it improves performance,
kell