just trying to figure out why my quad is still burning oil. i had low compression and put new rings in but didnt do any honing or anything to the cylinder. my compressin is good now but i still burn oil and it blows smoke. i recently took my head into suzuki and they put new oil seals on my valves and relapped them. so my question is was i supposed to do some sort of honing to my cylinder? iv read some ppl say yes and some say no but something is obviously wrong, are my rings not seeting because i didnt hone the cylinder?

some people say you should only take a scotchbright pad or a brillo pad to these nikasil cylinders?

some people say yes. some say no. I always do a light hone when a replace pistons or rings.
Most everybody says use a ball hone, which i dislike. If you are steady with a standard 3 rock hone and dont turn very fast you lightly cut and match the original crosshatch.
If you try that dont use the standard rocks that come with the hone, buy the fine stones for it and you'll be fine. the standards will cutt too much at once and it'd be real easy to screw up.

well i know absolutly nothing about honing or honing equiptment and my suzuki dealer woudnt do it for me either..... would it be just as effective to take a brillo pad or scotchbrite pad to it??

NOPE. use a ball hone. i do this and never had an issue.

I talked with one of the site sponsors on here about this very thing when I bought my new piston/rings. He said it was a waste of time to hone a nickasil cylinder. He said to simply take a scotch bright and some carb cleaner to the cylinder walls to get all the carbon build up off. I did this and have had zero troubles.

thats good to hear, how do you know if the piston needs replaced too? as of right now my compression is 138psi which i figure is fine since the book says 142psi.

is there any certain way you are supposed to take the scotch bright pad to it??

For the piston, looke at the machine marks on the side of the piston. if they are worn to where the piston is smooth anywhere replace it.

Stock valves?

Also, don't think anything about the fact that they (dealership) wouldn't hone your cylinder - first, they probably don't do the work themselves - very few dealerships even touch machine work anymore, and send it out as sub-let labor to a local machine shop. Second, Factory Suzuki tells dealerships not to hone any Nikasil cylinder - the Big Zuk tells them to replace it if it's out of tolerance. They were only doing what they are supposed to do.



Service data specs from the manual will tell you. Piston wear service limit (diameter), cylinder wear service limit (diameter), piston-to-cylinder clearance service limit, cylinder taper service limit, cylinder out-of-round service limit. They all will tell you exactly what's going on with the wear in the cylinder and piston, and which one(s) need replaced, if either do. Obvious visual-inspection problems with the piston will be apparent, too. Scratches, scrapes, smooth-worn areas, gouges, nicks, chips, etc.

yes stock valves, all my internal parts are stock besides a D.I.D. cam chain and the new piston rings. kind of seems like just another way to make money by telling them not to hone ony of those cylinders...

when i had it apart i didnt see any chips or gouges or anything of that sort with the cylinder or the piston. it was just dark on the top from burning oil or maybe running rich, but it cleaned up really easy. i did have them check my cylinder tho when it was out and they said there wasnt any warpage or anything but he said "it looks like it has some miles on it" which he may have been trying to just get me to buy a new cylinder or whatever.

my other question, when i put the new rings on i did not mess with any of the gap demensions. do they usually come in spec to where they are supposed to be?

Shouldn't lap stock (stellite coated) valves, at all. They'll just wear out super fast now. Seriously.

So, the dealership wouldn't/coudn't hone your cylinder, but they lapped your stock valves. They should really, really know better than that. Big Suzuki would kick their ass if they knew that, and Big Suzuki would deny any warranty claim that you tried to process with those valves, just because of that.

You need to gap those rings.

that pretty much sucks balls, they never asked me if they were stock vavles or anything....

okay so if i take everything apart, get a new gasket kit, scuff up my cylinder with a scotch bright pad, should i be able to still deal with those piston rings or should i get another new set? they have about 10 hours on them at most.

last time i put everything pack together i put quite a bit of oil coating my cylinder and piston to sleeve it back in smoothly, is this the correct way?

i didn't think you needed to hone a coated cylinder.

I "lapped" my valves in several times before they cupped.
But when they started cupping they went FAST!
I also lightly touched my new valves just to make sure they were a good fit to the seat. I didn't actually cut these ones in.