Vintage Dirt Bike Q & A

The piston skirt of the ol' MT shattered one me a while back, and I've heart tale of people running old air fooled Honda's with that skirt missing. Just wondering if anybody has eny experience with running a bike with a piston missing the skirt. Thanks

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1974 Honda MT250, 1978 Kawasaki KM100, 1993 Honda 300 4x4, Arctic-Cat Panther340/Jag275

I've heard tales of the Loch Ness Monster, but never found anyone who has actually seen it.
I wouldn't do it.

Not only have I seen the Loch Ness Monster I shared a beer with him.

Don't do it replace the top end.

Modern four strokes can run really short skirts partly because they don't have any ports to run over. Your old air cooled two stroke is going to expand and contract with heat a whole bunch, and it really needs the length of the piston skirt to keep the piston pointing up and down instead of rocking sideways. My guess would be that excessive wear on your piston skirt & bore allowed the piston to do way too much rocking even with it's long skirt on . Try running it without the skirt and you'll shortly find those short skirt edges being hammered hard, and digging out chunks of your ports. Bore it out to the next oversize, install a new piston, pressure test it, and enjoy a nice melt-down free ride.

i would just get the cylinder bored and go with a new piston.i would go either wiseco or a stock honda piston but i prefer the wiseco.

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(2) 1968 DT1 1970 RT1M,1970 DT1C 1971 RT1B Enduro 1974 MT250 1974 DT250A (2) 1975 DT400B 1974 DT100,1978 DT175
1975 CR250M1 1979 CR250R 1979 Kawasaki KZ400H1 Jesus is Lord!!