This put a stop to getting it run in. The crank was sent back to Tino to be repaired as it had only done about 200 miles, while it was away I was off the road but as it was around November 2007 I didn’t mind as I wouldn’t be doing any miles through the winter. Then the crank got lost in Milan airport, Tino didn’t have it and the courier service had only tracked it to the airport. about 3 months later I did finally get it back. When it did come back I rebuilt the engine and got it back on the road hopping to get it run in. A few months later I noticed a rubbing noise coming from the flywheel, on inspection it was obvious that the crank had twisted as the flywheel was oscillating, so I had to strip it down yet again. I also found that one of the gudgeon pin clips had come out resulting in a badly scored bore and a pebble dashed head. The crank this time went to a place in Birmingham to be trued and welded. The next day I was fitting the crank back in and rebuilding the top end using the same piston with new clips, I also took the high spots off the squish area of the head corsed by the free clip.
This is where its gets silly…..
When I kicked it over to start it, it fired once and then stopped, it then sounded horrible when I kicked it over again. So I started taking it apart yet again, when I took the mag housing off half of the crank came out with it.
To say I was getting sick of this crank would be an understatement!
I then decided to buy another crank, at the time there were no other 62mm stroke cranks available so I had to buy a 60mm stroke crank and opted for an Alpha crank from MB. The problem I had now was that I had ported the barrel for a 62mm stroke so the port timings would be different with a 60mm crank. The main problem was going to be the inlet timing because the shorter stroke would mean longer inlet timing, the solution to this was to buy another Wiseco piston and cut nothing off the inlet skirt. I still had to do the mod to the other skirt as previously mentioned.
With the 60mm stroke and 115 rod the port timings ended up at:
160 degrees Inlet, 180 degrees Exhaust and 125 degrees Transfers.
The 60mm stroke was installed in July 2008, It ran ok but it didn’t have as much pull as when it had the 62mm stroke.
The next month was Isle of Wight weekend, On the way there we had a rear wheel blow out which was probably due to under inflated tyres for the weight I was carrying at the speeds we were doing, two up with loads of luggage.
It just happened that I was wearing a cheap helmet cam at the time and managed to catch all the action.
Not having much luck am I so far? read on, it does get better……………. eventually.