Thanks for the insight Dave. She has about 7800miles and I've put about 150 of them on there. I figured I would hop up the motor while doing the cafe conversion as I surely won't want to do it after. I've road raced and dirt raced so competing isn't the purpose, but just to make it more of a street rod than it is being the goal.
I picked up a 97mm piston for $170 and figure doing the cam, bore, cam tensioner etc all at once and have a good baseline on the motor would be nice.
I purposely bought it for the air cooled torquey motor, just sold my husqvarna 511 supermoto. I'm addicted to singles and feel that the savage would be a good project. I picked the bike up fairly cheap and would like to do a value build, not needing the best of everything but not skimping on preventative parts either. So what I'm trying to get here is a laundry list of all parts/mods/labor required to see it through.
Dave wrote on 06/05/13 at 07:53:12:zx250r:
Before you hop up your bike with a piston, cam, carb, etc......How many miles have you ridden it? What kind of riding do you do in flatland Florida....backroads or 4 lane highway? Are you expecting to make this bike as fast as a sport bike?
Before you start spending $ 1,000 - $ 1,500 to increase your horsepower from 30 to........36?......37?.....38?......you need to understand that this engine will not be as fast as a stock multi-cylinder bike. The engine is old technology and it is built for torque. It is a lot of fun on country back roads hilly mountain roads, and loves to go between 50 and 60.....faster than that and it starts to show it's weaknesses in engine and chassis design. It can be ridden for long periods of time at speed when required to do so in stock form. There are far better bikes to choose if speed is your goal. As a Cafe' Racer it is a lot of fun.......but making he conversion is a very big commitment and does not require a big piston, cam, or other engine mods to be fun. I believe you need to ride the bike for a while before you start ordering parts and tearing it apart.
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