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Hi guys, I thought I would fill in the balance of work we have done to the old 88/11F.
I know one of the mods will not be favoured by most of you, but we have found it to make a huge difference on her: we dropped the gravity feed choosing instead to pump.
Here's what we did
1st thing was the bike was a complete bucket when I first rolled it in! The carbs made no sense; the coils were about 4V low, some of the valve train was way tight some of them were way loose.
I started with the valve train, then carbs. I felt the best thing was to start with a stock setup so I ordered in a kit. In the mean time I order a wrecked bike out of Que. That someone had spent way too much money on; what was broken, like some plastics and left handle bar, pegs, was examined and mixed with the others. Mainly the carbs were the big issue early on so I swapped parts as needed to build one good set.
When we (my son and I) finished up we had lots of bike. We found the power midrange and up breath taking, but the vibration would be intense and it seemed to be missing something off the top!
I knew the head needed work as the cams measured low, the compression wasn’t terrible at 170 but as we know the dynamite rests within the head.
My son started to complain about erratic behavior last year at 5K plus, time wasn’t in our favour so we parked it. This year we had the time and we stripped it down. Once again I went through the harness and found no problem except for the side stand circuit, we know that’s a winding road, we repaired it and replace the switch.
Compression slipped to 150 155, 160 165, checking the head torque the exhaust side was way loose, also found the chain not to my liking, now the cams read 1mm off limit, bummer! We thought we would try to torque it back in, but we just ended up chasing the compression loss from one end to the other.
Decision time, I know how much AJ loved the bike, his favorite out of the ones we have, and rebuilding it would take away a lot of riding time. I focused my attention on the 1100 we had moved to the corner, read the compression 180 but the scope showed heavy carbon build on the pistons. The good was the sleeves appeared new, the head, cams springs, adjustment, and chain, all new! I think I paid a grand including shipping for it a long time back, an amazing deal. AJ got to pulling the engine on his and I pulled the one from the parts bike, took maybe 3 hours we were done, but I chose to remove the carbon so I prepared a cocktail for it and soaked it over night!
While on the engine stand we torqued the head and tuned the valves, and yup the head was a mirror image for loose bolts.
Next day I worked out the fuel pump stuff while AJ installed the engine, the next day we ran it off the bottle, it fired up like it had never been parked. What a difference fresh cams make!
Safety for the pump was my main concern, choosing to pump was easy, as was switching gate size, to 1.5. In my opinion there are only 2 places to put a pump, the tank, which I didn’t have a setup that would fit, but I have a line on, or the air box, I chose the air box. My pump fit easily under the cones, mounting it was a breeze! I used grommets to thread the lines through, advantage is the bump is contained, cooled and produces a note, for those of us that believe in harmonics. Likely 3.5 lbs is all we need but we are at 5 lbs and the gates hold tight!
The next thing on our list was new coils, amazing how 1k on the primary can make so much difference. I am thinking about building a voltage multiplier for it and likely when we rebuild the original engine this winter it will have it.
The only problem we had to chased was tank venting; the stock size works but it needs to be perfect.
Things we’ve found since the conversion, no freaking leaking and washing of the cylinders, fast starts, almost no choke, ready to ride by the time your helmet is on, 1st gear reminds me of a DC motor, the Michelin we have won’t last, it will break loose with no fan fair attempted, pulls fast through to 6K and then she begins to strip the enamel from your teeth; she’s one mean Kitty above 6K.
I’ve played with the needles a bit but ended back where I started, the rest of the drivetrain is all stock. She has plenty enough combustion stoichi and quiet enough to think her harmless! Each pipe is within 15*ish from 2 minutes on.
I follow this bike often and one thing I’ve noticed is there is no smoke when he cracks it open, says a lot!
I don’t think for a minute your Kat (s) aren’t as quick or quicker or that this mod is for everyone, we like to play and tour with our bikes, reliability is important to us so keeping a consistent fuel pressure and air flow seemed to be for us our hurtle on this Kitty.
The hookup was easy, what lights the coils lights the relay, coils of, pump off, nice and simple.
Safe season guys
Patch’s
I know one of the mods will not be favoured by most of you, but we have found it to make a huge difference on her: we dropped the gravity feed choosing instead to pump.
Here's what we did
1st thing was the bike was a complete bucket when I first rolled it in! The carbs made no sense; the coils were about 4V low, some of the valve train was way tight some of them were way loose.
I started with the valve train, then carbs. I felt the best thing was to start with a stock setup so I ordered in a kit. In the mean time I order a wrecked bike out of Que. That someone had spent way too much money on; what was broken, like some plastics and left handle bar, pegs, was examined and mixed with the others. Mainly the carbs were the big issue early on so I swapped parts as needed to build one good set.
When we (my son and I) finished up we had lots of bike. We found the power midrange and up breath taking, but the vibration would be intense and it seemed to be missing something off the top!
I knew the head needed work as the cams measured low, the compression wasn’t terrible at 170 but as we know the dynamite rests within the head.
My son started to complain about erratic behavior last year at 5K plus, time wasn’t in our favour so we parked it. This year we had the time and we stripped it down. Once again I went through the harness and found no problem except for the side stand circuit, we know that’s a winding road, we repaired it and replace the switch.
Compression slipped to 150 155, 160 165, checking the head torque the exhaust side was way loose, also found the chain not to my liking, now the cams read 1mm off limit, bummer! We thought we would try to torque it back in, but we just ended up chasing the compression loss from one end to the other.
Decision time, I know how much AJ loved the bike, his favorite out of the ones we have, and rebuilding it would take away a lot of riding time. I focused my attention on the 1100 we had moved to the corner, read the compression 180 but the scope showed heavy carbon build on the pistons. The good was the sleeves appeared new, the head, cams springs, adjustment, and chain, all new! I think I paid a grand including shipping for it a long time back, an amazing deal. AJ got to pulling the engine on his and I pulled the one from the parts bike, took maybe 3 hours we were done, but I chose to remove the carbon so I prepared a cocktail for it and soaked it over night!
While on the engine stand we torqued the head and tuned the valves, and yup the head was a mirror image for loose bolts.
Next day I worked out the fuel pump stuff while AJ installed the engine, the next day we ran it off the bottle, it fired up like it had never been parked. What a difference fresh cams make!
Safety for the pump was my main concern, choosing to pump was easy, as was switching gate size, to 1.5. In my opinion there are only 2 places to put a pump, the tank, which I didn’t have a setup that would fit, but I have a line on, or the air box, I chose the air box. My pump fit easily under the cones, mounting it was a breeze! I used grommets to thread the lines through, advantage is the bump is contained, cooled and produces a note, for those of us that believe in harmonics. Likely 3.5 lbs is all we need but we are at 5 lbs and the gates hold tight!
The next thing on our list was new coils, amazing how 1k on the primary can make so much difference. I am thinking about building a voltage multiplier for it and likely when we rebuild the original engine this winter it will have it.
The only problem we had to chased was tank venting; the stock size works but it needs to be perfect.
Things we’ve found since the conversion, no freaking leaking and washing of the cylinders, fast starts, almost no choke, ready to ride by the time your helmet is on, 1st gear reminds me of a DC motor, the Michelin we have won’t last, it will break loose with no fan fair attempted, pulls fast through to 6K and then she begins to strip the enamel from your teeth; she’s one mean Kitty above 6K.
I’ve played with the needles a bit but ended back where I started, the rest of the drivetrain is all stock. She has plenty enough combustion stoichi and quiet enough to think her harmless! Each pipe is within 15*ish from 2 minutes on.
I follow this bike often and one thing I’ve noticed is there is no smoke when he cracks it open, says a lot!
I don’t think for a minute your Kat (s) aren’t as quick or quicker or that this mod is for everyone, we like to play and tour with our bikes, reliability is important to us so keeping a consistent fuel pressure and air flow seemed to be for us our hurtle on this Kitty.
The hookup was easy, what lights the coils lights the relay, coils of, pump off, nice and simple.
Safe season guys
Patch’s
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