04 June 2010

Project Kawasaki Update: BANG (Part 2)

Last night we started to take apart the engine to see how bad the damage was. We drained the fuel tank first, and suprisingly there was a lot of fuel left although I had been riding it all afternoon.
Annoyingly, when the bike was on the two truck fuel spilt onto the paint and reacted with it. So now more paintwork is needed. Here are the pics showing what we found when we took the engine to bits. We only found that two of the four head bolts were tight as well,
So there you go. The barrel needs reboring as the piston grabbed the bore when it melted. Another problem is that metal shards from the piston have gone into the crank casing, so at BDC it completely jams. So the jobs to do now are: new piston, re bore, new gaskets, engine to bits to clean out the crank.

We diagnosed why it blew as well. The bike came with a stupid expansion pipe. These tend to make 2 strokes lean which resulted in extra heat that melted the piston. I'm guessing the jets were never altered to cater for the loud exhaust. Its a pain, but it should be fun rebuilding it. I just WISH this hadn't happened in the summer. Stay tuned for more progress.

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