THE DEATH OF AN ENGINE.

Well and truly gutted. The bike spewed bits of metal oil and water everywhere.

Very sad news this; having finished rebuilding the over-bored engine after the big end failure at Snetterton, we finally had it installed ready for a test run. It started first time and everything seemed fine. We tested it through the gears and all was good until Ritchie started to blip the revs. Three times: first up to about 5.000 RPM, then just over 6.000 and on the third, around 8,000 it went BANG! The con rod broke away from the piston and smashed through the crankcase, completely destroying the engine.

Just before the Big Bang - little did we know, there was something horribly wrong inside the engine.

It was very bad moment for us. We’d worked so hard to try and produce a more powerful unit to help Ritchie through the second half of the season. We just couldn’t work out what had happened, we think it may have been a piston circlip that hadn’t seated properly and come loose, but we’ll never really know the answer. It was a complete disaster and has been very hard to get over it.

Second fastest all weekend. Ritchie lines up behind the Thundersport Twins for Race 1 on the Kawasaki ZX7R.

We had to run the standard engine again for the race at Oulton Park in Cheshire, which actually put him on the front row – second fastest – with a fine chance of putting in a reasonable challenge. He got off to a great start, leading the race until his efforts unfortunately came up short after three laps. He crashed out after a short spell of rain while running on slicks – he wasn’t on his own, a few other lads went down too.

You can read his full story here:

http://www.ritchie71.com/index.php?controller=post&action=view&id_post=15

We could do with a pot of gold to help us with costs right now – a vivid rainbow, ironically, over the crash site at Lodge Corner.

Well, were not giving up on this engine. We’ve had a good think about it, talked about costs and made the decision to build another one. Ritchie has already bought another engine, so the journey continues; it’s just going to be a lot longer than we thought. We’ll never give up, as long as there’s a chance.

Watch out for more news and videos of the season so far.