Greetings and help please....

[fightersalley]

I am new to the forum and also to the world of the katana. I recently bought a street fighter project from someone for 300 dollars. its a 1994 gsx 600f I believe. the person I bought it from said it has bad compression in 1 cylinder due to bad rings. it does run though and ride ok. I am not really knowledgable enough at this time to know if it is a burned valve, or any other situation like that....cracked head, etc.

Any help and insite would be greatly appreciated. I know it isnt a whole lot of info for you guys to work with... thanks in advance.

ps. I found a used head with valves installed for 150 dollars. I am wondering if that swap would solve th problem.

[The CyberPoet]

Well, the first thing is to download the factory service manual so you have a clue what you're doing. Do that here:

http://katriders.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Service_Manual

The next thing to do is open up the valve covers and check the valve clearances for that cylinder. Odds are he wasn't lying to you, but you might get lucky and find out it's a bad valve instead of a bad ring... Wasn't it? Keep going downwards to get to the rings/cylinders/pistons, and take a look at what you actually bought yourself.

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet

[Zepp]

Welcome to KatRiders

[tone]

Hi, welcome to the forum

I'd say if you check the valve clearances first then do a compression test that should give you a good indication of wether its really got poor compression on one cylinder

If it proves to be true i suggest you start to strip it down & look for faults before buying any spares eg buying a good head wont cure worn rings or bores & is a waste of good money

tone

[JokerZwild]

welcome to KR!

[smartone1971]

welcome. good luck

PS. if its a burnt valve chances are you would not have any compression at all.

[fightersalley]

thanks guys. I forgot to mention that when compression tested, one of the cylinders has very low reading....but when he put some motor oil into that cylinder some of the compression came back. that is what made him diagnose it as a ring issue. I have decent mechanical skills, just no specific motorcycle knowledge. I just downloaded the shop manual...(thanks for the link)... do you think it is too much to bite off to try and do a ring job on this motor by myself? I called around and a guy told me 600.00 to do rings on the bike. I would love to do it myself...to save some cash, and also to get the experience... but doing it myself and then having to have a mechanic re-do it would be a buzz kill... again thanks for your input.

[diavolo]

You don't mention how many miles on the bike, which would also determine course of action regarding repairs. Naturally if the motor has high miles and was run hard, it may also require transmission bearings and synchros. Then it would be easier/quicker/cheaper to just swap out the tired unit with another. You could always then tear down the original unit and do a thorough rebuild at your lesiure. I agree with the prior answers you received: download the manual, adjust the valves, and then do a compression test. If you have access to a leakdown tester, that would be an even better indicator of the condition of each cylinder. Once you have that info, you'll be able to make an educated decision.

[Enjay386]

Welcome to the site.

[The CyberPoet]

You don't mention how many miles on the bike, which would also determine course of action regarding repairs. Naturally if the motor has high miles and was run hard, it may also require transmission bearings and synchros.

Uh, diavolo, motorcycle transmissions don't have synchros... They're sequential shift transmissions, and as such, don't use synchros (it's also why you can't shift 5th to 3rd without going through 4th).
By the same token, where transmissions with synchros reward slower shifting (to let the synchros spin the gear splines up to speed), sequential transmissions can be damaged by slow shift actions

I think what diavolo really meant to say (but might have been still a bit groggy from lack of sleep/coffee/etc.) is that there may be transmission damages (bent shift forks, chewed up 2nd gear splines) that could be masked by the non-running/poorly-running engine. If that's the case [that there are tranny damages], it's generally cheaper/easier to simply swap the entire engine/tranny as a whole component with an known-good used one instead of tearing it down further than the pistons to get to the tranny...

thanks guys. I forgot to mention that when compression tested, one of the cylinders has very low reading....but when he put some motor oil into that cylinder some of the compression came back. that is what made him diagnose it as a ring issue. I have decent mechanical skills, just no specific motorcycle knowledge. I just downloaded the shop manual...(thanks for the link)... do you think it is too much to bite off to try and do a ring job on this motor by myself? I called around and a guy told me 600.00 to do rings on the bike. I would love to do it myself...to save some cash, and also to get the experience... but doing it myself and then having to have a mechanic re-do it would be a buzz kill... again thanks for your input.

I think you should try to undertake it. As a pre-98, there's nothing special about the bores that will get you in trouble (they can be honed and new rings can be stuck in), and given the oil-fix you listed, it's probably the rings indeed. You want to seek out a guy named Arsenic here on KR as a potential source of used parts, or if you decide you don't want to do the labor, possibly to do the repair for you...

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet