Rebuilding vintage 2 strokes

[Oliver]

Hi! I'm new to two-stroke engines, so some of these questions might seem pretty basic to you guys. Is it possible to fit a vintage two-stroke with a replaceable cylinder liner if parts are not easy to come by for that engine? If so, would there be any real limit to the number of rebuilds that I could get out of a vintage cylinder? Thank you.

[RDnuTZ]

more details on your bike would help define things, but in many cases you can resleeve old vintage cylinders once you are out of bores. Check LA Sleeve and Wiseco for starters to see what they have. Some of the older bikes already had chrome bores and starting in the 1980s or so specialized coatings like Nikasil were introduced that could rebuild the thickness of your cylinder liner to stock and go from there. Just generalized thoughts here.

[Oliver]

more details on your bike would help define things, but in many cases you can resleeve old vintage cylinders once you are out of bores. Check LA Sleeve and Wiseco for starters to see what they have. Some of the older bikes already had chrome bores and starting in the 1980s or so specialized coatings like Nikasil were introduced that could rebuild the thickness of your cylinder liner to stock and go from there. Just generalized thoughts here.

Thanks. If you go the sleeve route is there any real limit to how many time you can rebuild the original engine? I mean, could someone get five or more rebuilds?

[RDnuTZ]

What bike(s) are you talking about here? When you say "rebuild"- are you just talking about the top end of engine? There's always a max limit on bore size at some point. I have lots of vintage 2 stroke single cylinder Yamahas, so an example of that is Yamaha typically only offered 4 bore oversized pistons from stock, but Wiseco typically offered up to 8 oversizes. The problem is going to be availability of pistons you can find. The biggest oversizes are usually rare. LA sleeve used to offer a new installed sleeve with a matching stock bore piston kit. Don't know if that is still true or not. Some plating companies would also plate back to stock factory specs and offer a piston kit with it.

Can't really be much more help unless you tell what bike you have here. Good Luck.