THE ROAD TO OULTON

It’s always been a long one for us in more ways than just the distance.

Back in the early days we had an engine failure – a broken con-rod straight through the casings – two days before a pre-booked track day. We ended up working nearly all night swapping the suspension on Ritchie’s road bike and running that instead.

The Kawasaki of many colours - it was a combination of road and race bike, back in 2016, that kept a lot of track-day junkies guessing with its headlights, taillight and number plate.

Last year, we had to rebuild the engine again after the failure at Anglesey – the less said about that the better. Still, the bike ran well at Oulton and we won the first race and finished second in the second one, with Ritchie carrying a bad knee injury after a crash in qualifying.

Running on low oil pressure, but the ZX7-R took Ritchie to victory in race 1. It was a good run – up front – with Richard Blunt on his GP1 Classic Suzuki GSXR1000.

This year it seems that once again, we’re following a similar pattern.

We presumed, after much debate and head-scratching, that the oil pressure issues must be down to a worn crankcase. There must have been some kind of deformation after we discovered that the previous crank running in it, was bent. When we measured the two together, the gaps are too wide between the new shells and crank. We’re on the limit with the shells too; we can’t buy the tighter racing spec type – Kawasaki don’t make them anymore. Low pressure was affecting the big end bearing shells – oil was escaping too quickly – causing the rapid wear; we think!

Cleaned up nice - new cases to travel up to Oulton with.

So, we’ve bought another set of crankcase halves and set to work, once again building another motor for Oulton.

We measured our existing crank with these new crankcases and the old shells – also a new set to be sure – and the measurement is just about right. In truth, it’s a fraction under, but a lot better than it was before. This tells us that it is, most likely, down to the old engine crankcase halves.

Back to black for a cracking finish.

Ritchie sprayed the new casings black – not that you see much of it when the fairing’s on, but we know it’s there, and it looks good to us.

Transferring all the internal parts doesn’t take long now; we’ve done it so many times it almost feels like second nature. We can’t be too complacent though, remembering the silly mistakes we’ve made in the past always keeps us on full alert.

We turned the utility room into a technical service area, after running out of space in the garage. Sue could just about get to the washing machine!

We’ve also fitted oil pressure gauges to both bikes, they’re much more accurate than a warning light, which in our experience only comes on when it’s too late.

Measuring the crank and shells in the new crank cases.

Next up, we had to measure the stroke length again to make sure we’re not hitting any valves and check the shims while they’re easy to get at. All were good.

Everything torqued and bolted up, almost there.

The engine started up fine and settled into nice idle, no nasty rattles or noises and seemed­­­­ to run with a decent oil pressure reading on start up. For the second run Ritchie got the oil up to temperature and pushed the revs up to 4k to get the standard reading between 45 and 55 PSI and thankfully it was up to spec; smack in the middle at 50. We have our engine back – thank goodness.

Now we’ve got to sort the other bike out if we’re going to take the two of them up the long road with us. More long hours before we hit the long road – last minute...same old Oulton.

Number two bike waits patiently alongside us as we work on number one.

What we expect when we get there is another thing altogether; being a double pointer an’ all. We're sure the other lads will be wanting to give us a run for our money – God knows, we’ve spent quite a bit already. We’ll see you all in a couple of days.

TEAM 71