KDXRIDER.NET

Whats a reasonable amount of time to leave the stock piston in a new 220?

Do the skirts break after the engine gets loose

I bought mine when it was 4 yrs old and changed the piston 2 years later. However I don't think it is worth leaving it in there. It cost way less to change a piston than it does to rebuild an entire engine.

After searching around the web and with myself being in the Automotive parts business for 20+ years , IMHO I feel all we're comparing here is
a cast piston vs. a forged piston.
In the racing world no one would even consider a cast piston but there's street vehicles with 300,000 still running with them.

If your going to ride hard , either a modern 4 stroke or 2 stroke , use a high quality forged piston.

Some for the entire life of their motor.

My 99 was changed in 2008....1st time the top end had been done.
While not broken or showing any signs of failure, it was, IMHO, a very low-quality casting.

It might be excess to say "change em all!"....but the cost of a failure was too expensive to ignore, so I changed it out shortly after buying the bike

The 220 piston is of particular low quality and it has always been advised to change it immediately. There are several pics on this side to show why this is important.

Reasonable amount of time? Change it out now, no sense in having that thing fall apart. There's been instances where a failure has occured with a new 220, unmodded. Yes, it chaps one's behind, I know, but it's just a disadvantage of owning a 220.

I was ignorant of any piston problems when I bought my brand new 97 KKDX220 back in 97. I kept it for about 5 years putting about 150-200 hours per year on the bike - in that span I swapped out the old piston for a new stock one about three times. Never had a problem. I put a wiseco in the 220 I have now based on the info shared on this site - why take a chance when the cost is insignificant?

I just ordered a Wiseco piston for both our KDX's , 200 + 220

Like I stated earlier , you can't compare a cast piston with a high quality
forged one. Cheap money for insurance purposes.

Sometimes knowledge is a bad thing

Re: 'Whats a reasonable amount of time to leave the stock piston in a new 220?'

No time at all is reasonable. That would be zero, nada, none.

Re: 'I feel all we're comparing here is a cast piston vs. a forged piston.'

That is incorrect.

Re: 'It might be excess to say "change em all!"....'

No, it's not.

I say ...do what you want... but don't say you weren't warned.

Since you just bought the 220 I say pull the stock piston out as soon as it hits your garage. Put the stock piston on the shelf and forget about it. When you go to sell the bike put the stock piston back in.

Then you can run your ad to say, newly rebuilt engine with "genuine" Kawasaki factory piston.


.

I guess you could say thats marketing at its best or worse ,, what ever works.


I'm not selling this bike ! With 2 strokes getting scarcer all the time if I don't feel like riding it a summer then it's not going to deteriorate sitting in the garage.

my thoughts exactly!!! i'm definantly not selling mine!!