Rebuild? Upgrade? or walk away?

Hi gents, experience-based advice needed.
I’ve cranked 94,000 kms onto my ’08 naked in less than the past 4 years, and intend to keep riding at least that much on average. I commute, day-trip, and tour, plus do a couple track days per year. The bike still runs strongly and I’ve not noticed a drop in power, but oil consumption has increased to about 300ml per 1000 kms. Therefore, I recently had a compression and leak-down test done to see how the internals are doing. Compression was good (200 front, 180 rear), but leak-down was bad (nearly 20% front, >25% rear), and air could be detected out of the exhaust on the rear test.
So, I’ve had the mechanic pull the rear head, and yes, there was a piece of carbon fouling one exhaust valve seat. Aside from that, the combustion chamber and piston look good, and the bores are a bit glazed but not abnormally worn, ridged, or scored. The rings are almost certainly somewhat ‘tired’ and worn.
The ‘basic’ fix is to clean up the seats, replace the exhaust valves, reset the clearances on the front valves, bolt her all back together again, switch to 20-50 wt oil, and get running again. This will cost roughly $1200-$1500. I don’t mind this expense, as one of the alternatives is to spend ten times that on a new motorcycle!
However, since everything is apart, I’m quite tempted to do more. I run the aTRE, the PAIR system is blocked, I have a Yosh can, and I’ve reflashed the stock ECU, but the intake side is all stock. The obvious easy ‘next steps’ would be:
a. pull the cylinders, rehone, and install new stock pistons and rings; cost about $800
b. cam swap (stock intake to exhaust, install 03-07 intakes); cost about $400
c. bore throttle bodies to 42mm; cost about $400
d. SV1000 snorkel; cost about $40
The ‘big time’ upgrades would be:
e. big bore kit; cost maybe only $500 more than re-doing the stock cylinders
f. replace crank; cost $1000 stock (?) to $3000 aftermarket
I’m having a hard time resisting the urge to spend a lot of money on tweaking up the bike, but my rational side tells me it’s not a good investment, that the bike is getting tired anyway, and that any ‘big’ money that I spend will not last long, that the bike will be ‘done’ in another 10,000 or 20,000 kms (under a year for me).
Does anyone have experience with rebuilds who can share experience? How long are the existing cylinders likely to last before oil consumption gets unreasonable? Or is that just a blind guess? If one re-hones the cyclinders and installs new stock pistons and rings, how many more miles can one expect? (They are no longer factory-surfaced, so I wouldn’t expect another 100,000 kms!) If one does a bigger upgrade (and gains maybe 8 hp) on an original (maybe tired?) bottom end, how much risk is there of ventilating the cases?
Thanks - I'm having a very hard time deciding, as there's way too much 'emotion' and 'attachment' involved, and too many uncertainties...

Cheers,

1 Canadian Dollar = 63 pence folks. If you think of the prices above as being in kilometres, then do a conversion to miles in your head, ie: 1000 kms = 625 miles you'll be about bang on. $1000 = £630.

There are a few SV's on this site that have covered 100,000 miles or more (160,000 kms). I wouldn't say money spend on rebuild would be wasted as your bike is probably worth more running than scrapped or sold (ie: you couldn't replace it with an equivalent for what it will cost you to rebuild), but I have to admit that I'd probably not bother spending more on it that I needed to and wouldn't bother with mods, etc. If you want a bike with more power, buy yourself a more powerful bike as a toy, and keep the SV for doing the mileage.

[Biker Biggles]

Here in the UK the cheapest option would probably be to replace the bike with a not quite new one.Not sure how prices translate over there.

[fizzwheel]

Would another option be to see if you could source a cheap 2nd hand low milleage engine.

It might work out cheaper to swap the whole lot out, rather than rebuild what you have ?

I agree with -Ralph- I get my SV running as cheaply as possible and then put the money away for a change of bike, rather than trying to squeeze more power out of what you have.

[DJ123]

if the engine is going to be the main source of sinking money, why not buy a new motor and install it? surely that would be less hassle and more reliable?

You might find someone that will take the old engine in part-exchange and then re-con it, or you could advertise it spares or repair, or break it for spares and maybe get some of the money back.

Not sure there will be a market for engine spares though. Secondhand SV engines are so cheap, I think most people with engine problems replace rather than rebuild.

Hi, There is an unspoken reason for not selling. That is you must be quite attached to your bike having owned her for a number of years and covered that mega-mileage!
I would either re-build or replace only whatever is worn, like new rings, rebore, valve/head clean etc. Or I would keep the bike until the running gets really bad and then buy another bike and take my time rebuilding her!
cheers,
chris

[Sid Squid]

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

Would another option be to see if you could source a cheap 2nd hand low mileage engine.

This.

SV common enough bike - younger engine with your name on it out there surely.

[Red Herring]

I'm surprised the "repair" is that expensive. Grinding and gapping the valves is fairly straightforward, and even the cost of a couple of new valves (didn't quite understand why the exhaust valves needed replacing) shouldn't be that bad. Add to that the cost of honing the bores, new rings and a gasket set and there is no way it should come to more than £500/£600 including labour. Alternatively as others have said source a low mileage engine from a crashed bike. I definitely wouldn't bother with any tuning, it's just not worth the cost.