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pop goes the motor 11/10/20

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This is a work in progress but as the blog is being written at the same time as I am working (for a change), I thought I might as well publish it to make it a live update of sorts. So do pop back in the future to see when I finally give up and set the lot on fire. We never thought that 2020's race reason would even happen so when we found ourselves at Cadwell park, all be it as privateers and the sun was out, we were all pinching ourselves.  All of the bikes were going well and so something had to give and it was the RD250. 2 laps into race 1  on Chris curve the RD suddenly lost power, regained it then died all together. My EGT and TTO temperatures all looked fine so I wiggled carbs and throttle cables but the engine came back with a noticeable rattle so the clutch was pulled and my race was over. I had a back to back race on the VFR750 so by the time I was back in the pits, Roy Dale had kindly put my bike on its stand outside the van. We had a look to see what the prognos
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Another winter rebuild

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I wont be giving you another blow for blow break down and rebuild this time. There just isn't the need, you know it already. I will however let you know about any changes of points of interest along the way so here we go and no doubt waffle a fair bit as usual. The bikes strip down was carried out quickly to get the engine out and have a good look in there. The bike had been loosing power towards the end of its last few races (well I had noticed this happening now anyway) so I was curious as to why. A low oil level hinted that the engine might have been running hot due to low gear oil. Everything looked fine inside and the pistons didn't look like they had seen much use at all and certainly not a whole season. With the barrels off I gave the crank an in situ inspection for big end lateral and axial play which was as new. As such I was happy with the condition of the engine and ready to slap it all back together. A new set of pistons, rings and little end bearings wer
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Winter work

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It's that wonderful time in winter when you take a perfectly good bike to bits to see what isn't so perfectly good anymore. This wont be blow by blow break down and rebuild, that would be boring. This will be a few key points of interest and the odd finds along the way. You can tell I was excited to write this one as I managed to forget I had started it at the beginning of the season and just found it this December. At least I got it done before the year was up! Frame The bike doesn't need a complete strip down every year. An engine strip down and general poke about would suffice normally but the frame needed painting so everything was coming apart. I had thought about powder coating the chassis but didn't fancy the expense or weight so I went with paint instead. Halfords tool box red is cheap and the colour is about perfect for what I wanted. After a little bit of tidying up including lower engine mount bracket removal and he odd weld I was ready to get
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Getting really Forking fancy

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 When the front wheel is on the ground, I really didn't have too much trouble with the front end on the RD/TZ thing I was riding. The huge gun sight tubes sticking out of the headstock however were a little unsightly though so off I went to Classic Racing Green to see what he could do for me. Andy had talked about chopping my forks before but when I saw him this time he made short work of convincing me to upgrade the internals whilst I was there with top notch K-tech parts. The forks I have fitted to my RD are from a Yamaha FZR400 1WG. K-tech don't do an off the shelf set of cartridges for them but after a fair bit of measuring, Andy was able to specify and demand all the parts he needed to make them. Whilst we were there some fixed rate springs were ordered rather than cutting down my progressive springs and Andy's signature classic look top nuts were also made specially for these 38mm forks.  The parts took a couple of weeks to come together so whilst we wait
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Highbrid Yamaha - The TZ bit

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 I posted the image above in closing weeks of 2017 on twitter to thank some sponsors and more importantly; to introduce my next stage of this project... ...Enter the Yamaha TZ chassis. Mounting the engine I have already spoken in depth about the engine in another blog entry so I wont dwell on the hows and whys here. I didn't have a TZ engine for my TZ chassis so the RD lump, in whatever guise it found itself, was going in this chassis. To make this work, some fabricating and welding of brackets would be required and seeing as Andy Green  had the exact same plan with one of his TZ chassis, we decided to do the job together at his garage. The RD***LC engine cases we were using would fit the front engine mounts with simple spacers, the back is the area we are interested in. The TZ rear mount is far too small and in the wrong place so we lopped them off (we are working two cassis remember) and cleaned the area up for welding. Some wide box section was then cut to a short
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