Well I finally got my motor gone through and rebuilt. My SV650 motor was a completely stock 2003 motor with 12k street miles and two race seasons. So I turned to the local SV650 guru, Zlock Racing, to give my motor the special care it needs. I wasn't doing the rebuild to gain a bunch of power as I still don't use all of the power the stock SV650 has. I was doing it to make sure my bike stays reliable. It sounds funny but the SV650 is a stressed motor compared to the I-4's.
It turns out it was a good thing I had it rebuilt. My transmission had a unique failure that Dan Zlock has never seen before. My first driven gear's bearing spun and then welded itself to the gear. This thing caused enough heat to be generated to blue and heat treat the shaft a good half inch to either side of the gear location. I asked Dan if this would sap alot of the motor's power to the rear wheel and he said yes and he believes quite a bit.
The other thing is he wasn't sure if I even knew this failure happened. Well it turns out I am pretty sure when it happen. During the first endurance round of this year I was on the bike during my first stint at Portland International Raceway. I went to get on the gas coming out of turn 4 which is a 2nd gear turn and the bike just wouldn't accelerate. It felts like someone just hooked up a rope to me and was trying to pull me backwards. After you come out of turn 4 on an SV650 you simply keep the throttle pinned and hold it until the braking zone for turn 7. Normally I get into 6th gear for a moment before turn 7. This time I barely got to redline of 4th gear. Well I kept going for the next couple of laps before pulling in for my scheduled stop. After that one incident my bike never showed any issue.
At the end of the race I checked out my sprocket and chain and the sprocket was toast. I thought maybe I had simply spun the chain around the sprocket. Turns out it was much worse.
Since my motor has been rebuilt I've spun my rear wheel around with the chain attached and in neutral and the wheel spins ALOT easier. This is a great relief that I had a mechincal issue that didn't help me out in reducing my lap times. In fact immediatly after this failure all my lap times increased by 2.5 seconds. This puts me out of the back and at that point, why bother, so the entire year this failure plagued me. I'm glad there was a technical issue with my bike that held me back. This doesn't mean I still don't need to ride my butt off. :)
I can't wait to give this motor its trail down in Auto Speedway in Fontana in January. Its going to be like riding a new bike!