At long last, its up and running again – two engines later, sort of…
This project has been one the most ridiculous series of events ever. Nothing actually terrible, but a non stop series of discovering new problems everywhere I turned. This quad was supposed to have a fresh clean bottom end and it was anything besides that. It was however the learning opportunity I was looking for. It’s just that the learning was supposed to be on my stuff. This machine was bought to be a good solid runner.
It needed absolutely everything, new cases, new bearings, seals, crank, cylinder, clutch, shifter – everything.
Last summer, when it was bought, we didn’t realize it was that bad and I just kept trying to keep plugging it here and there but it never would run well. Turns out that it was because the bottom end was complete trash and had air leaks all over the place.
The final straw came when the clutch failed. That’s when I decided to just split the cases, rebuild the thing and be done with it.
Well… that isn’t at all how it went.
I got the new engine about 90% done and realized I was missing a few parts to finish it. When I went to order the parts, it was going to be a while and it had already been way too long getting this far, so I happened across another rebuilt bottom end by Tyler Reeves, a well reputed builder and snatched it up.
This decision definitely changed the direction of the build.
I popped the Wiseco piston I had for it and the ported and polished china cylinder I did for it and put it all back in the quad.
The swingarm bushings and needle bearings are shot, but we put it together like that anyway. I didn’t have any spare kits around. We’ll have to get that done later. I have some kits on order now. We need to do our Blaster, Luke’s and I want a spare for the next Blaster we get to flip.
When I put the chain on, I put it below the chain guide like a proper noob when it is supposed to be above. It only took one lap around the field to smoke it like that. Luckily, I do have a few extra new chain rollers laying around.
So, this machine is finally back to running. Now its time to turn my focus on getting the rest of the machines going and get to flipping. I’ve been doing a lot of work and investing in tools and parts to be ready for the next machines. I want to have everything I need so we can find a good candidate and get it all done without having to wait for parts.