and this...

 

drain coolant and oil. there is a drain plug below the tube where i disconnected the hose. i found it afterwards, oops.

 

this is your clutch cable. remove this tab before you try to take the radiator off. it's a pain once you realize this after the fact. a pair of 45 degree needle nose pliers worked. yelling and cussing at it helps too!

 

here is a better look at that stupid tab!

 

you need a long extention to get the throttle bodies off, but it's not too bad as long as you have the right tools for the job. it's a 4mm allen by the way.

notice i grounded the #32 wire on the ecu so i can adjust the fuel mixture. might as well do it since you're this far along!

 

once you get the throttle bodies loose, just pull them up and they pop right off. use a zip ty or some wire to keep them from falling down. plus it makes it easy to get the heat shield off and to remove the temp senor cannon plug and remove the coolant line that runs below the t.b.

 

these two connectors are located under your throttlebodies. they need to be disconnected prior to attempting to remove your head. you can see the cannon plug and coolant line circled in red. another thing that if left unnoticed would cause you some trouble getting the head off...not that i would know anything about that!

notice the krank vent. works like a charm!

 

remove all that ais crap (not that i am against emission's, i still have my cat in. but that air pump is just ridiculous). keep the ais covers cause you can use them to make block off plates later. you'll see in another pic what i did to save myself 40 bucks!

 

from there, you remove the valve cover, loosen the timming chain, remove the cams, remove the stud nuts, then loosen up the head from the cylinders very carefully. DO NOT USE A SCREW DRIVER TO PRY THE HEAD LOOSE! just use a rubber mallet and gentley tap it loose. have a buddy hold the cylinders down so they don't get knocked loose as well. don't worry if you break the seal of the lower gasket on the cylinders. as long as you don't break the gasket itself, the residual oil will get burned off. just use some carb cleaner to clean it up. yes i know this is a bad way of doing it, but once you remove the cylinders you need to hone the cylinders, put in new rings, then reinstall a new base gasket (that is the correct way of doing it), and i just wasn't ready to do that. but over the winter she's getting a big bore kit, so i'll do it right then. as long as your careful, it won't leak any oil. i have over 1000 miles on my bike since i have done this and not one drop! i did this exact same thing to my buddies bike and he has over 1000 miles since.

ok back to the head. as you can see here i am removing the 3 studs in the right front corner. be very careful not to scratch the surface of the cylinders (just put the gasket on the top of the cylinders, that way you have added protection). if you have the patients to remove more or all, then it just makes the head remove that much easier. remember to remove the heat shield from the intake inlets. you'd be surprised that a heat shield could keep the head on the bike while your trying to take it off.

 

now that your head is off, this is what it should look like. notice the three missing studs. it takes 20 mins to get those sob's out, but makes removing the head 1000 times easier. it wouldn't even be possible if you didn't do this!

 

another pic of the poor r1 getting a make over. i painted some stuff while she was in pieces.

put some duct tape where you see the red circle. this is where your could scratch the head against the frame. again, no bid deal cause you'll never see it. but i am very picky about my bike and whether or not i can see it, i want it to be nice!

 

here are my homemade ais block off plates. just weld the hole shut, grind the ends down to a nice flat surface, paint them if you like, then cut some gaskets out of gasket paper. works like a charm and saves you some coin.

 

Are u done posting ur mods. Tons of ? im sure.

 

damn it people...i'm not done yet!

 

if you need to remove the valves, but don't have a special tool, i know a trick. take a towel and fold it several times. place the head on the towel as seen in the pic. use two t-handle allens to press down on the top of the keeper. sometimes you have to give it a sudden push to break the bond of the keeper and the spring. once you have "broken" the bond, have a buddy use a small magnet to remove the spring retainers. make sure to not lose these small little bastards...ace hardware or napa doesn't carry them!

 

just to show you that i wasn't kidding, here is the pic of me splitting a new stock head gasket into two. see how one of the pieces is coated with gasket sealer (black one on the left). use that one. overall, i would opt to purchase the gytr gasket. it is specifically designed for this. i took a chance on the stock head gasket working...and it did. but for reliability's sake, i would spend the extra 100 bucks to know that i did it right. the only reason i didn't buy the gytr was because yamaha said it was going to be a few months untill it will be available (i did this in july). but now i would recommend to anyone who is thinking of doing this to buy the gytr gasket.

 

this is a bad pic, but you can sort of tell where the machinist machined below the valve seats. this is the only pic i have that is somewhat viewable. the rest were worse than this one.

 

and here is the head assembly ready to be put back together. this should give you an idea of what is involved. this is my last pic, so post any questions you might have. i'll add more detail's of info i forgot to mention on my posts later.

 

i edited this pic so you could see the porting work i had done. the shaded red area should help to give you an idea of what was done. the circled red area you can kind of see the porting. notice how it nicely fades into the casting. it's so smooth!

 

i almost forgot...dyno results! the bike made 142 bone stock.

 

Two Comments:

1) Is the 5 valve head a work of art or what?!?! :thumbup

2) this is the most impressive how-to DIY I've ever seen, anywhere!!!: :bow :bow

 

now it makes 156! not bad for a few days work and at a fraction of the cost of a full exhaust! ignore the 164 graph, that was with a 10 shot of NOS. that was the first time it was tested with NOS, so i used the lowest setting. i'll probably go up to 40, but we'll see. i'm not in a hurry to blow up my motor!

on a final note, i would recommend for the greatest performance increase, use a PCIII and remap the fuel injection. after doing this, you also want to synchronize your throttle bodies. you just altered the path of the intake and exhaust, so your bike now runs "different". so synchronize the t.b. to get that crisp throttle response.

after shaving the deck of the head .010 in and putting in that thinner head gasket, my compression went from 155 psi stock to 195 psi. note that this is at high altitude (about 5500 ft), so at sea level expect even greater results. the service manual says a stock engine at sea level should make 210 psi. so i can only imagine what this bike is like at sea level!

 

NICE! look at that gain at around 8500....i smell wheelies:thumbup

 

wow...

very very well done...

 

Ive been wondering when you were going to make good on your promiise! Great work, can you jot some detail about the way youve chosen to port? Did you fill in the intake also or just open up the ex?