It lives!

After a seriously long delay, I'm finally getting close to resolving the whole karting issue that occurred early last year.

Sadly I got Pneumonia earlier this year (2007) and was hospitalised for 3 days (temp of 40.8
°C). It knocked me for six. I barely got out of the house for 6 weeks. It's only now, mid-March that I've finally got the energy to conquer the kart. My dad has helped me enormous amounts in getting the engine back into one piece.

The engine crankcase as seen in previous blogs had completely split leaving one side of the casing in three separate bits. I managed to buy a nearly complete engine plus another lower crankcase last year off a fellow racer and pit neighbour Nigel Steed. He had just acquired a completely new engine for his kart and sold the Rotax engines that he had over to me.

The picture above is the newest engine that I now have which involved a huge number of tasks to get in the condition as you can see. The first engine needed dismounting from the kart chassis, stripping down to see if the casing could be welded (which we found wasn't possible) and then investigating as to the way forward. So my dad and a good friend of his managed to strip it down which took around a week or more. A big thanks to them both for that!

The next phase was to rebuild. The newer engine was actually missing the ignition system, so that had to be stripped away from the original and then connected to the above engine. This was a fairly easy process, but required a lot of precise work to do correctly. Garry, my dad and I managed to get part way through this until we hit another snag which involved a nut that stripped inside the casing. New nut, new thread, and we were back in action. The winter came and went, spring came and went (with my illness and work commitments) and upon the first day of summer (March 25th 2007) my dad and I were finally able to put everything back together.



A small list of outstanding tasks remain:

• Exhaust bracket at the front required from old engine
• Attach Exhaust (inc. exhaust bandaging, spring clips, gasket and sealant)
• Small rubber clip for fuel pipe to carb
• Attaching the Ignition box to the engine (Pic 2 - 246) you can see the ignition box hanging down
• Attach the new axle sprocket to the axle
• Put new chain on
• Ensure the chain is aligned completely straight! (Axle sprocket to Engine sprocket)
• Tighten all the bolts!
• Re-attach the clutch cable
• Put the seat back in
• Add Gearbox oil, engine oil
• Change fuel as it's been sat in the tank for a year!
• Get to the track and test ;)

This newer engine should have several advantages over the last one.

It's in one piece.

It has a booster at the front (which I never even knew existed) which allows a steeper power curve at low revs (small red dial a little like a plumbing stop tap in the pictures - side view only).

Chances are the gearbox will be a lot better than the last one without the close ratio on the 2nd gear.

Can't wait :)