Standard Cylinder Base Gasket

[firsthere]

I'm having issues with the power valve binding. When cycling, every tooth of the Paw engaging with the pull rod (pipe side ) can be felt which leads me to believe there is some binding. Possibly the aftermarket base gasket is thicker than stock forcing the pull rod into the paw. I went thru cometic's web site and saw fiber base gaskets at mostly .015. Mine after installed (compressed) is .020". Does anyone have a stock gasket they could measure the thickness.

[KDXGarage]

Any chance you just had the cylinder replated? I have read of a couple of people that had cylinders with a little buildup from plating, causing binding.

[firsthere]

Yes, you mentioned that in another thread and it is definitively a possibility.

After examining the action, I then loosened up the nut on the paw, this eliminated bind so this is where my attention is right now. The same aftermarket gasket set used in the rebuild also resulted in a leaking head gasket so there is a bit of skepticism of the quality of the supplier and possibly the base gasket is too thick.It doesn't seem that a +- .010 difference in thickness would be enough to cause a bind in the actuator gears though.

If it comes down to pulling the cylinder I wanted to find out which base gasket thickness is correct, if nothing else for proper port timing and compression reasons. OEM would be my go to in that case to confirm, just curios at the moment.

[KDXGarage]

any chance the arm is bent??

[bufftester]

It could be a thicker base gasket would cause the pawl to bind on the gear since it rides on top of the actuator rod, any increase in base gasket would shorten the distance between the pawl and the rod, .01 may not sound like much, but some of those parts don't have a lot of tolerance.

[kdxdazz]

When you remove the pawl can you rotate the main shaft freely. I just completed a top end rebuild yesterday and spent a lot of time trying to solve a binding problem. If the shaft snaps open quickly there is no binding, open it slowly and it binds. Although I never 100 percent solved it a believe the bind was caused by wear in the cylinder wear the main exhaust valve sits

[firsthere]

Will look for a .01 shim washer, drill for the locating pin, and see how that works.

[firsthere]

I made up a .010 washer from a shock shim and it actually worked! The KIPS now snaps back when fully assembled and functioning. I'm still curious what the thickness is on the standard base gasket though as i want full compression and the correct port timing.

On another forum, Guys are using custom gasket set for the CRF230 supplied to order from Cometic. Their goal is proper squish dimension along with higher compression for better perfomance.. I may give them a call to see what options are available for the KDX base and head gasket.