I recently noticed a change in the performance of our SuperCub 90 that indicated we needed some new piston rings and valve seals.
🤷♂️ Worse Than Expected 👨🏭
Instead of taking the time to tear into the engine myself or go to a local shadetree mechanic that wouldn't have the gear to finish the job in a worst case scenario, I decided to ride 40km+ to our old town, Pramaoy, where there is a shop with a cylinder hone and plenty of C90 parts. Luckily or unluckily the bike needed much more than piston rings, it needed an oversized replacement piston and a cylinder reboring.
I didn't tell the wife right away, but once I was told we needed an oversized piston, I tried to slowly introduce the idea of spending an entire day at the motorbike shop. The likelihood of the machinist being available and speedy was going to be slim to nil, and sure enough it took about 4 hours before the cylinder was honed and ready for the new oversized piston.
A Long Day 🥱
This town doesn't even have a decent veggie fried rice, so being stranded here for a day means surviving on snacks like sugarcane juice, boiled corn, and potato chips. By the time 2pm rolled around we were potatoes roasting in the sun, unaccustomed to the hot weather of the non-mountain folk.
In addition to having a long day, our ride back was going to be a really slow one because we'd be breaking in the new piston during our ride back home. With the new piston installed, the machinist recommended to allow them to run a tank of gas through the bike at their shop while cooling it with a hose.
A Busy Day For This Shop 👨🔧
We were certainly the biggest job of the day. It was fun watching the other customers come and go, especially one guy from the countryside with a very rough looking moto. His bike needed lots and lots of replacement nuts and bolts for what I assume is a bike rattled to death by rough dirt roads.
With my bike running and the hose dripping on the cylinder, there was nothing to do but wait impatiently until the shop felt comfortable letting us go. I am comfortable to break in a new piston by myself, but if there were any mechanical mishaps on the ride home, chances are the shop would take zero responsibility if I'd left before their recommended break-in procedure.
Ready For Home ⛰️
With evening already upon us, I knew we'd be arriving home in total darkness, and hopefully without seizing the brand new piston and rings along the way. Climbing a mountain while riding two-up with lots of groceries on an underpowered moto is not a recipe for a troublefree new piston ride back home, so we brought several water bottles with holes poked in them for easy squirting.
It worked well enough to squirt the engine once in a while riding on mild terrain, but during our first climb I felt some resistance in the engine and immediately killed it to prevent any damage to the new piston and rings, but most of all the machining work done on the cylinder. I knew we'd have to pull over before every hill climb and douse the engine with water to get it to room temperature before ascending.
The system worked well enough, and we found plenty of water along the way, but a normally one-hour journey took nearly four hours, so there's that. Luckily we made it home without any major issues, but I still haven't found my riding gloves yet, might've lost them on the road. Well, that's all for now, still slowly breaking in the SuperCub, then I'll being teaching Srey-Yuu how to ride, and more importantly, avoid crashing.
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Return from 🔧 Moto Makeover For The SuperCub 90 👨🔧New Piston & Valves 🏍️ to Justin Parke's Web3 Blog
