[YaRiteCBR]

Hey guys, bought an 02 CBR954 back at the end of September with a rod knock. Always wanted one of these and have never done a full rebuild on a motorcycle. I have a good back ground in building drag cars so with good tools and a Haynes manual I dove into it.

This is the bike when I got it home, not perfect, but I was in love.

This was the next day of course, couldn’t resist even though I had to be at a dinner at 5pm.

Pulled the head off to inspect the bores, they didn’t look bad from the top of the pistons up. But…

The bottom of the cylinders were bad, could catch my finger nail on a lot of scoring so I had a choice to make there.

My work bench with the entire motor torn down next to my race car 87 T Type with twin 71/75 precision turbos, 427 LSX

My first was born a week after getting the bike, my wife is a badass and let me build the motor in the den. Ended up doing a .25mm overbore with the Honda oversize pistons and rings, the crank and a rod were torn up so I got a used set of rods and crank on eBay so I could pick and choose. Full set of gaskets, O-rings, new oil pump, new timing chain, chain tensioner, fuel pressure regulator. All new Honda parts there from partzilla. Basically a complete stock rebuild. Found a couple worn out dog teeth transmission gears so I replaced those as well. All in all I spent way more than expected with the need for pistons and a bore, those pistons are not cheap! Picked the bike up for $1500, spent $3k on everything. So $4500 in total. Yes, I could’ve bought someone’s clapped out junk for this price or less. Yes, I could have bought a complete, “good running” motor on eBay for $2200 shipped to my door. I didn’t do that after reading about 2nd gear issues and cylinder scoring issues, I wanted to know everything was done right.

Cylinder heads had a lot of carbon build up, cleaned up up and assembled them on the bench to check valve clearances which were all in spec.

Motor going together in the den. Piston rings were all in spec out of the box, not sure if there was something goofy there with the bore, but I put it together and seemed good. I’ll continue in the next post since I’m only allowed 10 attachments.

 

[YaRiteCBR]

Here’s a picture of half the trans in with the crank and rods assembled since they go in before the lower half of the case. Didn’t take one of the dowels out for the other half of the trans so I waited a week before fully assembling the case.

Back in the garage, motor in the bike with my dad. Overall took about 3 hours to bring the motor out to the garage and get the bike running and riding. Nice compared to what I’m used to with my cars.

My dad taking it out after I got to rip it around for a minute, guy did 2 wheelies on it before I even made an attempt.
I know it’s not the most in depth, but this was a fun job and I got to learn so much about this bike and bikes in general. Spent about 2 months between waiting for parts and the top half of the case being at the machine shop for 6 weeks. Now come on spring!!
This is my third CBR, I had a 94 CBR1000F which I loved and wish I still had.

Yes, I love my fake-sols. Don’t care about what others have to say in that department lol.
Well hopefully this is cool for someone to read, I was happy to have taken all those pictures during the process. I’m not a YouTuber so I’m not going to take a video of the whole process. Bike runs and rides awesome.

 

[954Kevin]

Thanks for sharing your work and welcome to the forum! Personally, I like working on bikes as much, or maybe even more, than riding them. Doing an engine rebuild like this is the kind of stuff I live for!

 

[oldbastard]

View attachment 110828
Here’s a picture of half the trans in with the crank and rods assembled since they go in before the lower half of the case. Didn’t take one of the dowels out for the other half of the trans so I waited a week before fully assembling the case.
View attachment 110829
Back in the garage, motor in the bike with my dad. Overall took about 3 hours to bring the motor out to the garage and get the bike running and riding. Nice compared to what I’m used to with my cars.
View attachment 110830
My dad taking it out after I got to rip it around for a minute, guy did 2 wheelies on it before I even made an attempt.
I know it’s not the most in depth, but this was a fun job and I got to learn so much about this bike and bikes in general. Spent about 2 months between waiting for parts and the top half of the case being at the machine shop for 6 weeks. Now come on spring!!
This is my third CBR, I had a 94 CBR1000F which I loved and wish I still had.
View attachment 110831


View attachment 110832
Yes, I love my fake-sols. Don’t care about what others have to say in that department lol.
Well hopefully this is cool for someone to read, I was happy to have taken all those pictures during the process. I’m not a YouTuber so I’m not going to take a video of the whole process. Bike runs and rides awesome.

Looks like a good, thorough job. How much trouble did you have finding someone who could do the honing right for Alusil? Here in Europe there is almost no-one who can do it. Plenty of people who can machine bores to a diameter, correct honing hardly any .

 

[YaRiteCBR]

I’m in Chicago and there are a lot of machine shops near me. With some luck, the first shop I called knew exactly what I was talking about and even explained the honing process and all the different grits he had to use to get it done. It did take him a while to figure out how to mount the top half of the case into the boring machine, though.

 

[oldbastard]

Excellent!