Head swap.
Short story... My wore out, high hour, hard shifting bottom end got swapped for a 'newer' case. The original owner of my 1996 400 built 3 of them; one for him (#1), one for his brother (#2), and one that my father in law got (#3). All 435cc, hot rods crank, oversize exhaust valves, HD valve springs, some other stuff that I can't remember, and the one the OE kept for himself he extrude honed the head and added a Mikuni Flat Slide Pumper. Over the years he did some testing for FMF and some penciled details for a custom regrind cam. Fast forward to a couple years ago and I ended up with bike #1 after it changed hands a few times, sat outside for a while, one owner botched a carb rebuild. 2 rides in to my ownership I had a valve stick open. While fixing that, the OE gives my FIL the regrind cam that he came across in storage (they live 5 min from each other in Page, Az). So I add the cam and yeah, it's sweet (gives my buddy's 500EXC a good run). During all this time, bike #2 never gets ridden by the brother, it changes hands a few times and my FIL's brother ends up with it for his son and it gets parked at my FIL's. The plan was to make #2 street legal, but the son never comes over to work on it, it sits, almost gets sold twice, and ends up in a storage unit at my FIL's other brothers. All that make sense?
Fast forward to April this year. Busy BSing with the OE (is in his upper 70's and runs a XR650R and Husky 450, he's telling stories about jet boat racing, setting records in a NA 327ci), and he says that I screwed up; I should have never bought bike #1, I should have bought bike #2 because of the use that #1 got. So I get to asking around and find out about it just sitting in storage. I offer to purchase from my FIL's brother saying that I want the engine out of it, and he says he doesn't have any plans for it and to take the bike home with me and swap out the parts that I want, and then bring what is left back to go back in storage.
So I got a free new bottom end that I'm swapping heads on
But I gotta return a wore out running bike. It is fun bragging about having 5 Hondas at the house.
Head Shot. Notice difference in intake.