DONINGTON DONE - AN ENGINE TO DO.

It wasn’t until the last race of the Easter weekend at Donington Park that we actually finished a race.

After a crash at Coppice, it was to be a tough and luckless weekend of repairs getting the ZX7R back out on the circuit for Golden Era Superbikes Round 2.

You can read Ritchie’s account of an ‘interesting’ Easter weekend here.

http://www.ritchie71.com/index.php?controller=post&action=view&id_post=12

Back home after the long weekend it was time to turn our attention once again to finishing off the engine rebuild.

So far Ritchie has done very well to stay with the front runners with a standard engine. Thanks to a good suspension set-up from Kais Suspension/Ohlins, he’s worked hard, keeping his lap times low and competitive by concentrating on his late braking skills and maintaining shear corner-speed.

Now with the next round at Snetterton coming soon - with its two long straights - he’s going to need all the power he can get.

The thing that really held us up was the delivery of the pistons - they had to be imported from the USA. They didn’t arrive until just before our first testing at Donington in February, with the first round at Brands Hatch just a week later. Finally, with big help from Ritchie’s brother, James; who brought them back for us, along with the cylinder block, all the way from Kegworth, we’ve managed to start reassembling the engine.

Nice new pistons all fitted, at last.

Pilot and mechanic; Ritchie starts on the reassembly. Putting the pistons in was a long and careful process.

Cylinder head on and the top end is almost ready for the camshafts to be installed.

Last thing for us to do was measure the valve shims and replace those that were either too tight, or too slack – they were all over the place really, but we guess having lapped in all the valves, they needed to done.

Now we feel like we’re getting very close and with a bit of luck we should have it running very soon.

We promised ourselves a few beers when we're done – I think we deserve it!