MOPED ARMY

i once lost a PHVA needle clip. sooooo tiny. even smaller than the insect leg i subtracted from inside a main jet.

The screw to hold the throttle cable into the grip, sure helps riding it when you have a throttle

Oof yeah grips don't like UV, I had my bikes in a carport in Texas and the grips all disintegrated. The galindo superbike grips turn into like chewing gum.

For cheap grips I like the basic oury ones, they aren't the best grip but they hold up well and have a good classic look that doesn't seem out of place on anything. I keep at least a pair on the shelf all the time

this. fuckin wrist pin clips. man, i know people gamble with it and win, and theres tricks to being more likely to win, but thats a fuckin gamble still

Brake cable...

That's a pretty large part measured in any other dimension. Also removing your head gasket will raise compression, not lower it. And "bumped up" port timing is not really a good thing unto itself either.... Sure you're putting the exhaust in a *slightly* better position but you're doing harm to the intake port's performance.

Gasket delete ≠ upgrade (edited)

Offset timing key.

i'll usually match the gasket to the ports, line up the exh at BDC

It aint much, but I love putting one of these on my license plate.

bonus points for being easily removed when your license plate uhh... needs to be used on something else..

No it does not.

When you shim the base 1mm you lift both the cylinder and head attached to it 1mm.

That increases the combustion chamber volume by 1 mm. Lowering compression.

If you delete the < 0.5 mm head gasket, you gain back some of what was lost (compression) by decreasing combustion chamber volume, but you are still net lower compression than what you started.

The only way to raise compression in this scenario would be to shave the head by more distance than the spacer width. Like: adding a 1 mm base shim and shaving 1.25 mm from the head.

Then you have decreased the volume of the combustion chamber.

People do that, but I prefer to raise port timing and LOWER compression by shimming the base and deleting the head gasket without shaving the head the same amount as the shim width.

Also, no head gasket = no blown head gasket. Which I find to be a good upgrade for reliability.

Does that make my point clearer? Sometimes I assume what I’m typing will be read a certain way and then get sucker punched by a weird take.

Ok yeah I think I smell what you're steppin in now, sorry to be so stubborn about it.

The replaceability of a head gasket is what keeps me coming back, as well as a little forgiveness for a possibly less-than-perfect head mating surface. That soft aluminum is hard to keep *perfect* during a top-end service. Getting a bad head gasket or poor installation are definite pitfalls tho, I hear you on that.

Generally speaking though, lower compression is kind of a different goal than most. But if you're deleting a decomp or looking for reliability on a kitted bike, I can see the reasoning.

And the port timing... I guess if you're messing around with them anyway it's not a big deal, but something about raising the intake makes me dislike the whole concept. Probably a dumb hangup