A flat piece of aluminum barstock that I powdercoated black and used the two threaded holes in the bottom of the triple to attach (the holes were from the stock clipons).
Camshafts removed. A little trick is to use a zip tie through the cam timing chain to prevent it from falling down into the motor as well as giving you something to grab it by when needed.
From there it is just a handful of bolts...
and voila! The head is off. It really is nice working on a brand new motor. Nothing is stuck, nothing is stripped, the gaskets pop right off.
The cylinders, pistons, valves, and combustion chambers look great (as expected).
my random box of engine parts. Cleanliness is next to godliness when working on engines...everything is inspected and cleaned before it gets put back together.
The stock head gasket is quite thick at 1.23mm. The picture of the replacement gasket was blurred beyond reading but it measures .45mm. That will be a very nice compression bump. This is one of the main reasons why these engines are easily made to produce significantly more power...safely, and within the rules of the SuperSport brackets.
The gasket surface was cleaned, the thinner race gasket installed, and the head was re-installed. My OCD nature works well with engine building as it rewards meticulousness and attention to detail. Each bolt is torqued to spec and then triple checked. This is precision work, and requires precision tools. A quality torque wrench is a must. I actually had to run out to pick up a 12 point 10mm socket for the head bolts so don't mind the purple crappy harbor freight socket
Blurry, but you can see the tappet covers and cam bearing surfaces coated with assembly lube. Starting up a dry motor is very bad, so this stuff is more viscous than oil and will stay put until the oil pump can send up motor oil to take its place.
And that is where she sits today. My to-do list:
Install camshafts and degree them, then button up the engine and install it back into the frame. I need to get the bike buttoned up and running by the end of the day to get it off to Dyno Solutions tomorrow for a pull to see how it will do with the little tweaks I have made over the winter.
No. Time and budget did not allow to get the head milled at this point. Typically only .010 is removed so it isn't the end of the world. While not ideal, this will get me some gains as the difference between the stock headgasket and the new one is substantial.
Anyway, back to the fun. Cams are done and I am happy with where I got things. After the head gasket I put the cams back in at factory settings and then set up my operation as I knew what numbers I should get so it was a way to check my setup.
To do this you need to find true top dead center and then be able to tell when/where the center of the cam lobes are. To do this you need a few tools: a piston stop, a degree wheel, and a dial indicator that you can mount in a solid position.
The piston stop is simply a piece of metal that is threaded into the spark plug hole. The degree wheel gets mounted to the end of the crankshaft, and the dial indicator gets mounted in such a way that it can measure the lift of the tappet.
Piston stop
Degree wheel mounted. Sometimes you need to add a fixed pointer (usually a piece of wire) so that you have a point of reference however this one fit this bike so well I simply made a mark just below the starter sprag.
and the dial indicator set up on the intake tappet
To find TDC is pretty easy: with the piston stop threaded into the #1 cylinder, rotate the crankshaft clockwise until it comes to a stop and record the reading on the degree wheel. Say it was 24. Then spin the crank counter-clockwise until it stops and record the number, lets say 20. (24-20)/2=2 which means you need to loosen the wheel (or move the pointer) two degrees to find true TDC. If you repeat the process, the number should read the same in both directions. You now have true TDC.
Once TDC is found, the dial indicator is set up so that it will read 0 when the camshaft isnt pushing the tappet down, and has enough travel so that it stays in contact with the tappet when it is at the furthest position. Once this is done, rotate the crankshaft clockwise until the tappet just begins to open to .040. Write down the number on the degree wheel.
Note that this says 60, but in small numbers it also reads 40. This is for when you are measuring something that is falling away from the 0 mark...or in this case, as the tappet is forced downward by the camshaft.
The reading on the degree wheel was 18.5. I continued spinning the crank clockwise until the intake valve started to close and once again stopped at .040 to take a reading, and got 43. The formula is ((X+Y+180)/2)-X where X is your smallest number. So in this case its 18.5+43+180=241.5 then divide by 2 = 120.75 then subtract 18.5 = 102.25 This is the number I expected to see so I knew I was set up properly.
According to the Kawasaki race manual, ideally I want 107.5 on the intake side so I had to make some adjustments. Thankfully the factory Kawasaki camshafts already come with adjustable cam gears on them. Now, some more math to make this easy otherwise you could keep hunting around making adjustments forever until you happened on the correct number.
That number 241.5 will always be the result of X+Y+180. Using that we can do some math: (241.5/2)-107.5 (my target number) which comes to 13.25. Loosen the bolts that hold the cam gear in place so that the gear moves but the camshaft does not. Rotate the crank slightly until the dial indicator reads 13.25 and tighten the camshaft bolts. Double check your readings by repeating the initial process: check at .040 opening and closing. My numbers were spot on: 13.25 opening, 48.25 closing so ((13.25+48.25+180)/2)-13.25=107.5.
opening
closing
According to the race manual, the exhaust stays at the factory default setting of 110 so I left it alone. I torqued the camshaft retainers one more time to make sure, reinstalled the spark plugs, and then started to put the motor back together. Now it is time for the dentists and then some more fun in the garage.
OEM cams are required by the rules of my bracket. Thankfully Kawasaki factory cams come with adjustable gears. Most other bikes cant take advantage of degreeing camshafts in the SuperSport bracket.
Our class spec fuel is 93 octane Sunoco pump gas. You do not need to run race fuel with this build which is one of the main reasons I did the mod. I still run this for track days/instructing and did not want to burn through 1000's of dollars in race fuel per season.
It is my understanding that if you run U4.4 you can pick up another 5hp in this build but I haven't personally tried it.
The gasket is right out of the factory Kawasaki race manual for the 09-12. As the 13+ motor has the same bore, you can use that gasket. The PN is 11004-0071 which is .20mm thinner than stock which makes a pretty nice bump in compression.
And because apparently I never posted it, here is the dyno sheet for the motorwork. The bike put down 111 completely stock on this dyno when I bought it.
Today I decided to finally put my Ninja on the battery charger and breathe some life back into it. While the battery was charging I pulled the tail section off and fixed a broken tab so that I could remount my tail light, installed the turn signals and peeled the tape off of the headlight so...
Hi Guys
My 05 636 has an issue, it’s only when I’m going through second gear mid range when “hammering it” seems to slip for a fraction of a second.
At first I thought it was a clutch slip but had my mechanic have a go and he seems to think could be poor front sprocket teeth. Does it no other...
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