Touche' man good thinking!

What do you think about these head/base nuts, the factory nuts have a locking wing on the top but I can not find them at the hardware store. The new nuts from the hardware store have a locking system on the bottom instead against the surface you are torquing against. Will these be fine or should I use washers with them? I don't want to leave marks on the cylinder or damage it:

 

I would recommend washers, that could hurt the aluminum. Just make sure the rounded part of the washer faces the head of the cylinder and the flat side faces the nut.

 

What about these spring washers? The rounded edge side is facing up in the photo:

 

Never seen those before. The only thing to do is try it. The rounded edge should eliminate some of the damage that it might do, you might just get a washer mark and that's it.

 

I'll give them a shot, the motorcycle guru said I might get a washer snag and a false torque reading.


The mounting surface for the reed block looks like someone took a wire wheel to it at one point, will a new gasket be alright or should I use a small amount of Three-Bond on both sides of the gasket??



Believe it or not whoever put the piston in before me never put the piston cage bearing retaining washers on the wrist pin! The piston had side to side play and the guru notified me about them being a common thing people loose so I looked through the spare parts that came with the quad and sure enough there was a set in there.

 

Can you feel the scratches with your finger nail? It might have been resurfaced at one time if you can't?

 

They are very fine; smooth. I will double check tomorrow but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to feel them. I would like to have my head shaved while it's apart since my buddie works at a machine shop I can have it refaced during his lunch break for a 6-pack lol, but I'm not sure how many thousandths I should have taken off to SAFELY raise the compression.

 

Depends on how much compression you want. If I remember correctly, you had only 90 pounds at the start right? So new crosshatching and rings, new gaskets, might add 20-30 pounds, just a guess. So the more you can take off the better I would say. I would search on google the maximum you can take off and decide from there what you want to do.

 

I will have to look into it I'm not sure how much I want or how much is safely tolerable by the physics of the cylinder.


Got the bottom end complete and the piston installed WITH the needle-bearing retaining washers this time! It's a used Wiseco piston that was in it when I bought it, I'm going to try to get one more summer out of it. I replaced the rings and put a light cross hatch on the piston by hand with 220-grit since there was a small seize mark on the intake side (wasn't me lol):



I could not feel the scratches with my fingernail so I just used the gasket and no sealer. I replaced the steel reeds with these power reeds I wonder how much of a difference I will notice (ARE THE REEDS INSTALLED BACKWARDS/UPSIDE DOWN??) I also replaced those stupid phillips cross head machine screws with these black hex heads:



The new hex heads are slightly off on their taper or something because they sit slightly higher then the stock screws... shouldn't be a problem right?




How the hell do they expect me to torque down the base nuts on the intake side? I can't fit a socket onto the nut!? I would literally need a torque WRENCH not the ratchet style I have...?



I installed the cylinder, the only thing I forgot to do was have the piston on its bottom stroke; I installed it at almost TDC. Just a little side to side wiggling and it worked its way down pretty easily, I also contemplated on putting a little Three-Bond on both sides of the base gasket but I did not. Now what about my head gasket, half has circular holes and the other oblong shaped holes but the head has all circular holes and the cylinder has all slotted holes...what do I do??

 

The headgasket should be ok as long as it was made for that machine. I wouldn't worry about it. Those screws should be ok as long as nothing hits and it has clearance for whatever is next to it. The only thing I could think of to torque it correctly is borrow one from a friend, but thats obvious, duh. You could tighten it by hand, just don't overtighten it if you can't borrow one.