DAMAGED LIMITATIONS
A broken valve halted the Kawasaki’s challenge at Donington Park, but we were thankful for a back up in the shape of a Suzuki SRAD from Drew Plaskitt. Ritchie made good use of it too; winning 3 races and finishing second picking up valuable points.
A good haul of points and trophies from Donington on the Drew’s Super Suzuki SRAD.
More work to do for us though, when we returned home.
After we took the engine out – again – we found a bit of a mess in number one cylinder. The valve head had broken off and also snapped at the collet, jamming itself good and proper into the cylinder head puncturing the piston; and it got worse. When we removed the cylinders we found a crack in the liner.
Messed up head, damage from the broken valve ruined everything in number one pot.
The end of the top end of our lovely engine, but it we wouldn’t let it be the end of our hopes.
We had another set of re-bored cylinders with spare Wiseco pistons and rings, so after stripping the engine right down to check the bearings and big ends, we put it all back together with all the new parts.
We used the new cylinder bores that were meant for our spare engine, we had no choice.
It meant running in the engine again, but we knew we could get it done in time for Round 3 at Snetterton – just.
Then we took a trip to see our local engineer, Paul Browning at Cranford Engineering with two old damaged cylinder blocks and he’s going to make us one good one out of two, by taking out and re-using the liners. Well it’s got to be worth a go.
The damaged liner was successfully removed and replaced with a liner from our very first cylinder block...a lot cheaper than a new cylinder block and a costly rebore.
Lapping in the new race-kit valves, taking no chances again here.
A cylinder head Ritchie picked up last year was sitting on a shelf, so we cleaned it up and treated it to a set of new race-kit valves to go with the stiffer springs. Once we lapped them in and installed them, we were beginning to feel a bit better.
Everything apart, the garage looked like an assembly line.
This will be the third engine we’ve had to build in less than a year and we’ve learned such a lot from all of this. It’s been a lot of work and we thank Wiseco and everyone at Race Winning Brands in the Netherlands once again for their help and support. Big thanks also to Cradley Kawasaki for the speedy turn-around on much needed parts. We couldn’t keep going without any of them.
Well, we took our rebuilt, yellow Kwacka – affectionately known as the WASP – to Snetterton for Round 3 and it did more than pass the test.
It won three races on the trot!
Unfortunately Ritchie crashed out in Race 4, unhurt, but the bike is strong and looks set to take the challenge of winning more races in the future.
Race winner Ritchie on the freshly run in engine
You can read his story here:
http://ritchie71.com/index.php?controller=post&action=view&id_post=22
We can’t wait for Cadwell Park and Round 4 now... we feel we have unfinished business there after our gearbox failed in October last year.
We’ll see you there for more fun!
