10
I have ended my job in St. Louis, MO, as of next Friday, and will be riding my Monster back home to NH next weekend.
Pursuant to that, I got a few things done to the bike today.
a) YAY for round wheels! I've been riding around with a dented front rim for a few weeks. It's amazing how good a round front wheel feels (and with a new tire, no less).
b) We also realized that I've been blowing some exhaust out through the "head gasket" area on the front cylinder. So we pulled it off, having no idea what we would find. Warped head? Condition of internals? Well, we found:
(1) My particular incarnation of bike doesn't have or use head gaskets. This was a surprise to everyone. The head and cylinder surfaces are just lapped smooth and bolted together. So they re-lapped the surfaces and put it back together, and it worked out fine.
(2) The internals are still in good shape. The piston looked fine. The cylinder walls were still in good shape, with no gouges and the original crosshatching still good, after 259K miles so far. It does run better now, with that fixed.
This bike continues to amaze me.
PhilB