[herbie]

Work and bad weather has prevented me from riding and working on my bike but I finally had some time to finish a few things and take it out for a ride today. I ported and polished the exhaust port only, I didn't touch the intake port and I took off 30 thousands off of the head surface and installed the head on my bike. The head made quite a bit of difference with the power I had and is good enough where I think I found my happy place with it. I only got to ride about 100 miles today so my opinions could change as I have more time to ride but we will see.
I left for my ride today with a temperature of 53 and 13mph winds. The biggest gain I can report is as I was on my way home I was riding against the wind all the way and with wide open throttle I was running a steady 70mph on the Brozz speedo which is about 64mph GPS. Before I would probably been down to about 59mph GPS with the head wind, so that is a definite win I think. My goal when I started out was to try and hold a 65mph speed as much as possible and I think now I am pretty close to that. Now if I had a big hill and strong wind I don't think I would be able to hold 65 at all but where it is now I am happy with it.
I also changed out the exhaust for the crf230 ebay aftermarket exhaust at a whopping cost of $76. I didn't like the way that it was going together as it looked like it was rubbing on the airbox and clutch lever. So I ordered a piece of 1-1/4" pipe and cut about 6" off and flared one end of it out. I installed the piece of pipe between the head pipe and mid pipe and that fixed all of the issues. Nothing is hitting anymore and the muffler that came with the exhaust even bolted to the stock mounting holes on the bike.( One thing to note is that the mid pipe mounting hole had to be moved because the mounting plate was pushed back toward the rear tire. I cut a piece of scap metal and drilled 2 holes and mounted it as an extension.) I wrapped the full exhaust again and it looks nice I think. My first start up and ride only took about 3 minutes before I said THIS THING IS TOO LOUD!! So back in the house I went and I found a Db killer on ebay that I thought I would try. It was one that was intended to be installed at the inlet of the exhaust so I had to drill some holes in the blank off plate to make it work since I wanted to install it in the outlet of the muffler. The sound is just perfect now, it has a rumble but not annoying at highway speeds.
I also re-jetted the carb, I went with a 42p 120m as before it was a 38p 119m
I didn't take many pictures of the head as I didn't think about it at the time. The pic of the exhaust port was before I was totally finished as I did work out some of the cut marks.
I might also add that on the performance of the new head that it does pull stronger in the upper rpm range, in 4th gear I hit 8000 rpm and was running 70mph on the Brozz speedo (64mph) and my top speed was 82mph on the Brozz speedo (74mph) and running at 7500-7600 rpm