It depends on how bad it is to begin with, but there is usually not much to gain by cutting things up, many times it can be worse. The power comes from other things and that's not something you see on a picture. Unfortunately, people tends to buy in to the visual more than anything...

Indeed.
Rounding edges and adding some teardrops will only make a smoother running engine that probably will accelerate a little bit faster. If you leave all those fancy visible tuning and only make the cranktiming larger the engine will do so much more!

But Ielasi does not do more than others, only adding some teardrops to the sleeve and rounding he turbo scoop, basically the standard CNC machinework Novarossi does on all high end engines. No special cuts, milling etc. I am pretty sure most if not all of it is no handwork, He lives in the Novarossi factory so he can do it all from standard production.

Who does good modifications?

Rody and Mauro Collari do. There are others here in the US such as Rick at RB mods, Uriah Murnan to name a few.

There is a huge list somewhere, if you want modding done, send it to a reputable Engine Builder.

What is wrong with CNC milling to the right specs? Just because it is no handwork? People are focussing too much on the visual things.....

What ever happened to that Motorman modder that was on this forum back in the day? He had a great thread in this forum before he deleted all his posts.

Far fewer than who offer the service, though if you ask a question about it here every single one will be recommended by someone...
It's not like the mfg don't know what they are doing (though they mess up occasionally), so most of the time it's more about perhaps tailoring the power band.
One thing that the mfg need to consider is that the engines might end up in different locations, different altitud over the sea, different fuels, different tuning skills etc etc, so things like head shims can be a little bit on the safe side (sometimes).
If you look at the offroad side, probably 90% is running a small carb insert, and they still send in engines to get modified, talk about placebo effect from visual appearance...

Totally agree.

Can someone tells me the difference between the 9cl and the 9cl WC?

I got my new ITD 25 7CL in and theres no pinch from bottom-mid in the sleeve! I didnt try forcing it past that of course. Is this normal for ITD engines?

That's normal for all engines.

It shouldn't start to pinch until after the piston clears the exhaust port towards the top 1/4 of the sleeve when new.

Yea that's what I thought too but some of my race .21 had pinch earlier than the top of the exhaust. Triton rc for example
the itd engine feels a lot smoother at the bottom too compared to other engines I've had thats why I was confused a bit.

I also hear these are all pre run so that would explain things too. Thanks for the reply

With new engines the pinch is always on a different spot. 1 micron difference can make 1mm difference in height of the pinch moment. When you get engines with selected parts then one of the things selected is a matching piston/sleeve with a starting pinch what it known as giving the best break in result. But because the production machines can not work precise on the micron so there are some spreaded tolerances giving different pinch moments.
Basically that is where the break-in is for to make the piston and sleeve match perfectly.

And why the taper if you may want to know.
When the engine is running the lower part of the sleeve stays cool due the fresh mixture but the upper part is hot due the combustion heat, so because the expansion by heat the sleeve will lose its taper getting straight.

They are not all pre-run depends if it was ordered as such. The engines that are pre-run come with a test card in the box and also has a pre-run label on the outside of the box.

I think most of the Nova based engines that he has left are "run in" versions as all the "new" engines have been sold. For some reason there is a stigma attached to a "run in" engine being worn out already. Seem that most people have their own break in process and don't want to deviate from it. A lot of guys are a bit squeamish of a full throttle break in. I'm not one of them...

I just bought a lelasi tuned engine that should be here today. Going to put it in a truggy and see how it does when I get some time.