Sweet bike 

Maybe jets in the carb or valves.  Never did set the valve clearance on my XR but did everything else at one point.  Hondas are rock solid bikes.  The 450 was on my wish list.

Glad to see your still alive & kicking buddy

Badass bike. Sorry no help on the valve issue but I used to ride my cousins and man those are fun!

Power whenever and wherever you want it and a suspension that saves you from all the stupid shit you do with that power. Good times

-Eliot

Good point. Ill clean it well. Guess Ill just give it a shot. Maybe ill learn something. Hopefully not break something!

It's super easy to do on that bike, I have had several 450R's and do my own. Hard to start definitely sounds like valves, however, the rough idle does not. They would have to be pretty far out to cause that (in my experience). At any rate there is plenty of info on google, and videos showing how to do it, but if you have any mechanical ability at all you should be fine. If you need shims I have two complete sets of hot cams shims, I'm happy to share a couple.

Here's the kicker! In the R model, I can't remember the X, the intake valves are titanium. You'll need to see if the X models are or not, but the problem is once they stretch once, the second stretch isn't far behind, and soon they'll be un-usable. I replaced the head on my current bike with a Fast Heads cylinder head (nice port job and all stainless steel valves), it was costly, but I'll never touch it again. Something to look into if you plan on keeping that bike another 11 years. You can just replace the intake valves if you don't feel like doing the whole head.

Let me know if I can help at all!

Thanks for all the great info.

I was talking to mechanic at work, he suggested doing the stainless valves too..

If I eventually got the stainless vlaves is that considered a "head replacement" ?

Yeah. Gonna keep the bike as long as I can. Trails right out my garage now 😀 want it running good.

I always try and get factory shop manual--which is just one step up from the average manual--usually made by honda as they released that bike and for that bike and the shop technician---one little ---stop before proceeding always---and it pays for itself---does not take much to make a mistake and end up spending 2wice what it was going to save etc..fwiw

I recently did a rim conversion on a kz1000 project -did not want to plop down 250 and shipping for the right rim from ebay canada--in the end --new bearings from another city trip--machine shop to widen one etc...300$ now