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For the wear bands, lots of guys wrap them super tight in electrical tape, then leave them in the freezer. The stretched tape applies force pretty evenly to shrink the bands. The way they do wear bands in production is to force them through a special sizing tool. That tool is just a polished bushing that ensures the wear band is round and ends up within the correct diameter range. New bands drag a little in the bore when lubricated. That's part of the suspension "break-in" you feel as you ride a new bike and it gets less harsh.

Great info; thanks!

Thanks. No dimples, I just had to heat it up more. On a different note, I had a hard time getting new rebound piston seals into the bore. They have to stretch a little to install them, and didn’t contract enough to go into the cartridge very easily. Even tried the freezer!

If you cut into the staked portion of the cylinder, I believe that would be above the o-ring on most KYB seal heads and it would leak when re-assembled. The seal head design changed over the several generations of cartridge and I don't remember how high up the o-rings were on the oldies... I've never had to deal with a staked cartridge seal head, but I think I'd heat it up to 300°F, let it cool and introduce some WD-40, then heat it up to 200°F and risk threading it out. If the threads get wiped out, I'd replace the...

About 250°F is more than enough to soften the thread-locker. I wouldn't let it get any hotter than 300°F. Check to see if there are dimples staked into the tube around the threads. Yours doesn't look old enough to have the staking, but it's worth a check. If the tube is not staked, you should be able to twist it free once it's warmed up.

OEM bushings with SKF HD seals are the combo I've had the best luck with on the KYB and Showa stuff. On WP stuff I run the OEM kit from KTM parts since they use a variant of the SKF seal.

I had a simular problem with YZ125. The jetblock gasket was bad. Then I added another gasket to the other side of Vforce reed block because it wasent sealing. Same gasket works both sides.

Yes correct, the slide is designed to wear out before the carb itself. The slide is made of Zinc Alloy, which wears out before the alum carb body. It usually takes alot of hours to wear a slide out, but it also depends on the maintence on the bike. If someone is bad at replacing air filters, etc. Or rides in a area with alot of sand or fine dirt. Its can wear a slide/needle out quickly. Anytime I buy a used 2 stroke, I do a top end, and replace the slide/needle and cable. Might be over kill but...