Engine rebuild...

[QUINTtastic_imp]

You hit the nail on the head- babied engines build carbon.

There is a head and pistons on Ebay from a 4k mile motor that is just as black as yours. Go look.

I think a lot of guys would be surprised if they opened their engine.

The bike has a lot of owners that only do 2-3k revs lightly. That will cause carbon buildup.

I'm a firm believer in giving an engine the beans fairly often- italian tune up, to literally blow out / burn off the gunk.

All that being said- I do not think the carbon had anything to do with your valve issue.

And on the bright side- you will be the first guy with the factory honda oversize pistons.

If I remember correctly that is like a whole 8cc.

Yeah the bikes manual has stupid low shift points. When I read it I thought “yeah okay honda.. that’s realistic..” (then again this might be the recommendation for all their bikes.

I generally shift between 4-5k but sometimes higher as my favorite thing about this bike is how fun it is to bang through the gears from a stop. It may not be a sport bike by today’s standards or anything too fancy, but I sure love the torque it has. I’m not sure if you’ve looked up the cb1100s torque graph but it’s basically a straight increasing line with no dips or plateauing.

I haven’t asked about what piston size they’re putting in. I’ll have to do that tomorrow. I may get it back then. Too bad they didn’t wanna hone it out more and make it a cb1200