Riverszzr request

Some of what I do, have done is likely quite impractical for many... But~

Current bike, is just barely shy of 80k

-Buy new !!!
-Seat the rings aggressively for 25 miles or so.......dump the oil/filter, and I even pour about a quart through to "rinse" the pan off
-Then ride it like a normal human for about 3-500 miles...no lugging, no top speed runs, no hiway droning it, no overheating it, no start it up so your buddies can hear it at 10k and shut it off ( I don't even start my bike unless I am ready hundreds of miles....so~~part of that impractical for everyone part)
- change the oil/filter again...I generally go full synthetic then, but I have run just about everything over the course of about 50 different bikes I have owned (and that 256,000 600 Ninja, it saw nothing but Castrol GTX 20w50 for its entire life, with the exception of one 25k stretch where I ran Amsoil- basically to see if the hype was anything more than hype)
- Never ever allow anyone else to ride your bike. you and only you!
-Keep on top of maintenance, from oil changes, tire alignment, chain slack/cleanliness and lube, brake flush yearly to fork oil changes and valve adjustments.......
- every tire change I do clean off the road grime and brake dust off my brake calipers and pay close attention to the slide pins and pistons
- "Close enough" is not a spec !!!

I always, around the 15-20k mark tear the entire bike apart completely so that every single moving part from steering head bearings, to swingarm linkage bushings and wheel bearings are all cleaned and lubed.........and then I never have to do all that again for about another 100k (they don't come with adequate lube on any of the parts- plus modern day ram air bikes have sand and bugs getting dropped on the lower steering head bearing......those I re-do every 15-20k (we are talking about my bikes here, so that is about once a year (basically my "major service tune" on my website)

That pretty much covers the maintenance end....
riding, well first and foremost---nobody else rides it ever
-no pissed off rides where you scream away while the bike is still cold
-no sitting there idling for more than 15-30 seconds either, start it once my gear is on and ride away slowly til it is up to temp
-no sitting in traffic overheating it--hell I rarely ever ride in traffic at all.......but every bike I have owned that has been water cooled I have installed a remote fan switch so I can turn the fan on early (like at 185* I have that fucker on.... my bike generally runs in the mid to upper 160's, and on a really hot day ride it may get into the mid 170's)

-I have ridden more than a fair share of trackdays on this bike and the 256k bike, so I am not real shy about running them hard, but in my daily twisites rides I am generally between 5k and 9k for 90% of the day (the middle third of the rpm range) I had a 40,000+ mile 1987 Ninja 250 that never saw the street, all race miles sans maybe the first 50 miles

Additives... At the end of my Sunday rides, typically 300-500 miles I always add about 2 ounces of Techron to the filled tank.....and at winter time (bike has been sitting idle since late October already) I will make that about 5 ounces and then run it long enough so it is in the carburetors too..........yep still have a carbed bike! I store them full.....but have had good results and bad doing the drain them and doing the keep them filled......and whenever possible I always use non ethanol fuel! which for me is 90% of the time, just because of where I ride........some may have problems with this?

Battery, well I still have the original battery in my ZZR (produced in 2006), I generally do get about 10 years out of a battery.... winter I pull it and stick it in the basement and once a month hook up a 2 amp charger for about 20-30 minutes...otherwise it just sits, no fucking tender, not in the bike, just sits. Obviously this works, not many can boast of getting 10+ years routinely out of their motorcycle batteries!

Now I will go back to the buy new part for a minute...........the impractical part for most everyone else~
I buy new, make sure I see it come out of the crate and don't let the dealer do dick, don't even put oil in it or the battery...
I get them home, and the last several bikes.... pull the engine and carbs and make some changes, this bike...2007 ZZR600
- I bought new rings, new guide seals and that was about it
- I did run this bike on the dyno right after my 25 mile "break in" run....98 hp
- Then I pulled the engine and tore it apart, meticulously cleaning every chip of aluminum and everything out of the bottom of the threaded holes and every nook and cranny there is for shit to hide... I also shimmed my transmission to fit a little bit tighter
-Rigid honed the cylinders until they were perfectly round---no bike comes with round cylinders, they are always ovalish, always... (I really don't give much of a shit on piston to wall clearance as long as it doesn't end up too huge- I want them round!)
-I pulled the head apart and did a valve job to my standards and cleaned up the casting slag in the ports and changed the floor slightly of both intake and exhaust
- I then made seat widths (.032") to more my liking, they were more than a mm wide, also pushing these right out to the edge of the valve face and turned the three angles into 5 then radiused the "seems" together
- cam timing......yep changed that
-yanked the base gasket all together... compression of over 14:1 now and can still run on 87 fine if I have too, but generally run 91 or 93 ethanol free
-jetting.............yep made a educated guess on what I needed and wanted and made those changes, also cleaning off the tips of the butterfly screws so as to not interfere quite so much with air flow at WOT
- After getting it all back together and doing the 25 mile seat the rings, shake down run....
-oil/filter change and off to the dyno
-108 hp and a nice 13hp bump from about 5000-9000
- made a fine tune adjustment to the jetting and rode it for a 300 mile ride in WI alphabet land where it was pretty much 3rd through 5th gear from 5k to 10k with plenty of acceleration and engine braking, then came back and dumped the oil/filter and went right to Mobil 1, been on Mobil 1 ever since

Everything else on the bike has been just routine maintenance stuff

Is this what you were looking for?

Thank you sir. Very very helpful. I knew you were meticulous but wow!... I don't have the skill to do most of that and I'm not entirely sure I trust or can afford for someone else to do it but I sure will take alot if these tips. I highly doubt I'll ever get to 256k because you need some skill and know how but I will definitely be incorporating some of these things. As many as I can.

One question, did I read that correctly. Yearly fork oil changes and yearly valve adjustment? Obviously you ride more than me but I'll probably do 7500 to 10k per year.

The heat part is interesting too. Your bike is staying substantially cooler than most people. How valuable do you think this is? Is this something you would recommend to a customer even if they couldn't maintain the other aspects nearly as meticulously as you?

Thanks again!

spiderman636 said:

Thank you sir. Very very helpful. I knew you were meticulous but wow!... I don't have the skill to do most of that and I'm not entirely sure I trust or can afford for someone else to do it but I sure will take alot if these tips. I highly doubt I'll ever get to 256k because you need some skill and know how but I will definitely be incorporating some of these things. As many as I can.

One question, did I read that correctly. Yearly fork oil changes and yearly valve adjustment? Obviously you ride more than me but I'll probably do 7500 to 10k per year.

The heat part is interesting too. Your bike is staying substantially cooler than most people. How valuable do you think this is? Is this something you would recommend to a customer even if they couldn't maintain the other aspects nearly as meticulously as you?

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

The bike heat deal....

I rarely if ever ride if I know it is going to be over 90* out, so that is a big reason the bike runs so cool, plenty of times even in summer I leave the house and it is sub 50* and it usually only gets into the 70's or low 80's..
So I think that is a big reason the bike is always running at a lower temp than most people see

The last time I rode it when it was in the 90's though, it still only sat in the 170's the entire time...remember- I do not do stop and go, or commute or do any nansy pansy bullshit.... I get on the road away from people and ride.

Now take that 1987 250 Ninja- It had so much performance work done to it (75% more power than stock), and only a sweep guage- it always read at the hot (didn't spit water but always read just touching the redline)--so I added a second radiator to that bike essentially doubling cooling capacity and even with that it stayed in upper 3/4 range.... but--racebike, and it won me more than my share of races and never gave me a lick of trouble-besides normal wear items.

My yearly fork oil/valve adjustments.... well I actually do 2 sometimes 3 valve adjustments (7500 intervals recommendation on this model) and the fork oil- I still have the original seals in the bike....
But yes I change it (fork oil)once a year, and it is always dirty and there is always shit in the bottom of the fork tube, and the crap in the cartridge always gets flushed clean
This definitely keeps the oil fresh and the suspension working top notch, but it also reduces wear......on the valve stacks and the bushings....I did, punch the back side of my upper (would be lower on inverted forks) bushing with about 50 dots from a centering punch so it fit a bit more snuggly.....even when it was brand new the fit was too loose for my liking (this is done on the non sliding side.... you want to leave that coating alone)

The ethanol free...... No good can come from running ethanol gas, none---only the government thinks it is good! That is why they had to make it a law and force it upon us!!!
If it was truly good, people would have run to buy it and there would have been no need for subsidies and kickbacks and a law to force it upon us....
Ahh- my government I hate you rant for the day is out of the way- I feel better now.
Ethanol will draw in moisture right out of the air, I suppose if you live in the dry state of AZ who cares, but in MN- it is humid as fuck all the damn time....must be all the trees, lakes, streams, rivers

Much of the reason I pulled this and most other bike engines apart when brand new......make them better, make them perform better, does it help with wear, sure...... but it is really about performance and an extra 10% of HP is always a plus!
Plus long ago in the early 80's I did it to an engine and was appalled at how much machining chips and crap was still in the engine, some of the oil passageways were more than 50% blocked from these chips just waiting for the oil to force it out into the cam caps or worse.....block the passageway further and sieze a cam cap. ( I can tell you they haven't gotten much better over the past 30+ years)

256k is doable for nearly any streetbike, with good maintenance and ridden in a manner to not break it... But for most they would never keep a bike long enough to reach those miles, although I do have a few retired peeps with Wings and a Victory that are all over/approaching 200k on bikes less than 5 years old

The engine break in;

I pretty well outlined it in the original post.... but not enough detail I suppose~

I have all my gear on and ready before even starting it for the first time, quick look over to make sure no leaks etc...
and within 30 seconds I am off and riding, middle third of the rpm band and very light loads and mostly 2nd-3rd gear until up to operating temp, then a few medium/hard acceleration/deceleration runs from about 4k to 9 k in both 2nd and 3rd gear and then a couple more in 4th gear through that same rpm range...these first ones are not WOT
then I will clink it up to 5th/6th and run steady for maybe 1/4 mile before rolling on hard from about 4k in top gear but only to about 8k and decelerate (all closed throttle all engine braking) right down to almost a stop, find 2nd- and repeat..... I have a 12 mile out and 12 mile back loop I like to use
The last about 2 miles coming back I will do a pull in top gear upto about (assuming 14.5k redline) 10k and then shut the throttle until I am back well under the speed limit... again always engine braking~ that is what really seats the rings

For petes sake though.........be wary of your surroundings and make damn sure you don't get rear ended!! And realize you need room, lots of room for this- you will be running triple digits for some of it, short bursts but still...

get back, dump the oil and filter immediately, I most the time have the drain plug out before I even take off the helmet or jacket~ but you probably don't have to be that extreme~ just get to it quickly. (bikes with cam chain on an end---I will have the bike leaning that way to help get the oil out of the head quicker while it is still hot and the particles suspended in it haven't settled into the head area... if the cam chain tunnel is in the middle- well I will lean it to one side for 30 seconds or so then the other for 30 seconds or so, then let it stand straight up

Most the time I like to let it drain a good long time, (more than an hour- sometimes overnight.... since I often do these runs late at night when it is a bit safer with no/little traffic) but when it first starts getting slow, I will pour some fresh oil through to help "rinse" the oil pan

Then the next 300ish miles (if it is a streetbike, my own or a customers)....I go for one long ass ride varying rpms and loads and going from light loads to medium loads to heavy to finally actually going a WOT pull right to redline in a few gears, immediately followed by full shut throttle shut down and engine braking to responsible speeds...( if it is a racebike, and 300 miles isn't practical...........and it never is, I repeat the original process and double the length of miles and time and make the pulls harder and harder near the end- or when I can........ I do the entire process on the dyno)

when finished with either of these...........dump the oil/filter once again and then let it go and ride it/have it ridden however it is going to be ridden

During that second session....on many brand new parts, as in a brand new fresh 0 miles ever engine..... I will ride it in the middle third with lighter loads for quite a bit longer than I do with a used, freshened engine that just has say...new rings and bearings etc...

But I absolutely would not call it "beating on it", I am very much aware of engine temps and try to keep it coolish (sub 200 , since that is just a single spot temp and not truly representative of the hot areas of the engine) it is more selective loading of the engine and keeping the rpms primarily in the middle third of the rpm range with lots of variation.

There are others who claim other styles of break in may/will/do work better..... I have tried several ways of break in and did some dyno tests with different methods as well.......nearly every time the bike broken in as I describe or real similarly makes more horsepower and has less combustion blow by and uses less oil and last longer than any other method I have tried- or seen done...
But~ others will still claim their method is best or needed....

To the post above me...........lol---the Riverszzr edition ZZR