The 351 lives! Only a very short tool around the pasture to be sure the suspension was seated well, but WOW! What an incredible difference. Back story refresher--bought the bike with 8900 miles, brought it home and almost immediately began pulling it apart. Previous owner had installed a 15t front sprocket and a 46t in back. The suspension was also set with very high preload. I was not overly impressed with the torque or power. Upon disassembly, discovered some very out of spec valves and some damage to a couple of the valve buckets. There MAY have been some damage to the cams. It appeared so, but after getting new cams, I'm not sure the profiles were worn as much as initially suspected.

So...the head was off to Bill Blue for machining to ensure the cooling passages matched up with the new 351 head gasket, as well as some porting and polishing work while we waited for the new 351 pistons and oversized valves to be produced. In the mean time, I also replaced the front with a 14t, and shipped the forks and shock over to John at Motopro for a revalve and springing to my weight. Just so I could REALLY try to screw it up, I also put on a TM36-68 pumper at the same time, copying IDRIDER's set-up for jetting. Compounding things even further, I threw in a new EBC Dirt Racer clutch and 3 Barnett springs. Incredibly, the bike fired right up. I may have the pump off just a little--a really fast stab on the throttle will shut it off when cold, but seems to be good through the rest of the range.

WOW, this thing is a whole new critter! Made the mistake of goosing it a bit to pop up a little hump of stones in the pasture and almost went off the back. Gotta develop new habits. While the bike has been apart, I have been eyeing a DR650 as a second "go further" bike, but I'm not entirely sure it will be needed.