Ha -- yeah, a useful combination of overconfidence and ignorance!
Anyway. After pulling the head apart and discovering what the valve spring seats were called (
), I figured what the hey, time to pull the cylinders. Removed the roller and slider, took a bunch of pics to remind myself where all the gaskets, O-rings and knock pins go, and… well… not much else to do, so I decided to pull the pistons off as well.
Now, I know to all you dudes on these forums this is akin to, I don't know, deciding to use Angel Soft instead of Charmin Ultra, but to me it was a little scary. I don't know why, maybe because I'm getting closer to the deep dark insides of the machine, but I was a little hesitant to go messing with the pistons. No more.
(Note that those rust-looking spots aren't really rust, just a bad camera-phone flash...)
For those of you that have read Hondaman's manual, you know that part where he's talking about removing the pistons, and he says to make sure to "stuff rags into the holes under the pistons, so you don't drop the circlips down into the engine"? Yeah. LISTEN TO HONDAMAN.
That little ring in there, looks like a hoop earring? Yep, that's the circlip, way down in the hole. The crap thing about this situation is, a magnetic grabber won't help you much, since it wants to grab everything else on the way down. I'm lucky that the circlip was just sitting there, ripe for the picking.
Got all four of them pulled, and -- going by my limited sense of these sorts of things -- they all look pretty good to me. Clean, not kinked or cracked or whatever.
Plus, lots of clean(ish) oil under them in the cases, even though I drained the oil in 2002 and haven't ridden the bike since 1998 or so.
All the oiling holes were clear and clean, too.
Crowns weren't too bad -- nothing a few minutes with the soda blaster can't fix.
The good/bad news is that I got called to work next week, so I won't be able to touch anything for 10 days or so. Bummer for the bike, better for the bank account. So it goes.
