also what i didnt put in there is that once the kits are gone they will only make it custom

ready????



$750 A PISTON

 

Ooog. Sorry.
If you give me a few weeks, I'll bet I can find a running, serviceable complete BIKE for that much.
Your best bet at this point is to watch ebay for a new engine. These bikes are getting crashed all the time, so one will probably come up. OR if you have a sentimental attachment to your machine, you can probably get a new cylinder block, piston rings, bearings and gaskets for just over $1500.
Where are you located? I have a spare 500 engine in my garage that is in pretty excellent shape. (Just the engine though, the rest of the bike has been chewed up by the asphaltosaurus-wrecks.)
-CCinC

 

ah horsesh*t. No way, even if rings are included even for a set of 4!

edit: $750 a piston is bs. Thought I had better clarify!

 

Getting a quality bore-job is no laughing matter anymore. After my experience with the (POS) Honda Superhawk, I learned the only place that isn't a bunch of hillbillies boring two-stroke dirt bikes is Erion Racing in Torrance, CA. And they ain't cheap. You could easily spend that much for a quality replating/boring or overboring.
They want $600 per pair for the pistons alone.
-CCinC

 

[:-]$1500 man, that is a little high, I got the charge last night, 211 dollars for the kit, all done this is going to cost me under 350 to fix, but yes from what I understand according to arias pistons site is that the cost for a custom made set of pistons (eg like a top fuel dragster) is 750 a pop. Hell you can get the stock pistons for 80 a piece from kawasaki. but that is stock. so I am glad that I found that kit when I did, he has two left, so if anyone wants one they better get it now.

As for the boring job, I have a good buddy, andmachinist in town that has been doing borind/sleeving/vale work andwhat ever other engine work you can do for almost 50 years so yes he is good. He bored the 347 ford that my buddy and I built, and it has been fine. Heck I put it this way to people. If you wanna have a good lastingboring job done, then you better go with someone that knows what they are doing, not a national parts chain that has a shop. Most of these placeshave the kid that one, has intelligence to change oil, and twogets paid nine dollars an hour to do a fourty an hour job. Be wary of these places.Also, This is a tip for anyone having engine work done out side of their own shop. take a letter punch set and punch you initials into a hidden spot on the engine. that way you know that you have gotten you own engine back. There are many horror stories of people that give their engiens to be reworked, and get the phone call it is cracked, only to find that it is not their engine.
Lastly as for price, you can go all the way to 200 or more per cylinder especially if you have it carbide coated. or sleeved and the previous. My buddy is giving me a discount a 25 a bore to cut, and 10 a bore to hone.

 

look on arias pistons site, that is what it looks like to me. remember this is for a set custom made to your requirments not a premade set that they sell a bunch of. this is th cost to stop the line and have the machine make a specialty set for your engine and no other.

 

ouch, that would surely hit the pocket book.

 

What advantage does a custom-milled (or perhaps forged) piston have over a mass-produced one?
I know we all want to be unique and 'customize' our bikes so we stand out from the masses, but 'custom' doesn't necessarily equal 'better'.

I've found that by leaving my bike stock and unadorned, I have one of the rarest bikes in town.
-CCinC

 

I have not built any high hp bikes that required custom pistons and head work. Even alot of guys putting turbo's on their rides are using stock pistons. Keeping boost to a reasonable level of course. Otherwise, the crank and the rods will need done at the same time as the pistons.

So, a custom milled piston set with a matched cylinder head to get the swirl pattern for a certain fuel to me has not been needed for my cost/performance scenario.

Maybe if I had the time or money to build a full time drag bike or superbike??? Until then, the high dollar pistons can sit on the shelf

 

guys keep in mind that this is not the price for our bikes only, arias does pistons for all kinds of engines.To explain the need for these custom milled pistons, you need to look at the way some of these engines are built. many top fuel dragsters and circle track racers, along with racing all other forms of engines, require very precies engine parts, not the mass produced ones.

Look at it this way, many of these teams have custom made parts all the way around, including heads with custom combustion chambers valves and special sparkplug angles. Some even have two spark plugs per cylinder. Some of these engine have less than a hundreth of an inch clearance between parts when the piston is at top dead center.

so the short answer is, for people like us that use all stuff that is mass produced, then there is no real need to have a set of pistons made custom for your engine. just use the ones that are mass produced foryour engine. In the case of the ex500 all arias is saying is that these kits were made back in 2001 and that they didnt sell well so they discontinued them. When all the kits are gone, you will have to custom order one from them, and since they are no longer mass produced by them you will have to pay to have them do the same thing they do when someone orders a custom piston for another engine. Shutdown a line, get all the specs straigntened out with you, then they will have to progam the machine to make the piston, which requires a man to sit at the computer and design your piston. Make one and send it to you to make sure itfits. Then get the go ahead, unless something is wrong, then they need to do all of the design part over again.Then they have to charge you enough to make up what they would have made spitting out mass produced pistons.

So keep in mind for average joes like us no there is no real need, for the major racers that demand ever horse they can squeeze out of their engines, yes there is a fair demand for custom made pistons. Me no i would have not paid 1500 for my ex500, but 211 sounded mighty good when that is what it would have cost me to put it together stock.

SOOOOOO to get back to the issue at hand, is there anyone that knows what other flywheels will fit the ex500 and work with the ignition/charging system. as I said before, I found a 250 that looks the same except it has a one piece magnet.