Hi everyone

Those of you that know me, know that I'm one of the few surviving souls who are not on facebook. As such it came as great surprise to hear there is a Black Dub Racing facebook page. Well thank you to whoever set it up, and also to those that post on it. Let me know if anything exciting happens on there though please?

The last few evenings, and today have been spent out in the garage playing with engines.

I've now dry built my spare engine and all seems good so have now started stripping it down to rebuild it for real.

One thing I had to check was whether I needed a base gasket or not. By removing the base gasket the compression is upped slightly, but I've been told that depending on the particular engine it may or may not work. Hence the dry run. Anyway all checks out ok so fingers crossed the build will go ok.

As I've been going along I've sorted and cleaned the best bits to rebuild the engine with, as I had 3 poorly engines but have managed to salvage enough to make this one and probably one other when I get time.

I know it may seem a bit daft making lots of spare engines but with the time scale between race meetings this year it will be easier just to drop one engine out and slot in another rather than trying to repair one in a week.

Talking of which, I am now confident enough to have started dropping my race engine out of the bike to fit my rebuilt one in when its ready.

As always whenever draining engine or oil the like I get a visit from Coco The Clown. I'm sure all of you who have attempted anything involving engine oil or the like have met Coco?

You know him, he's the one that kicks the oil drip tray, drops the sump bolt into the old engine oil and other such wonderful side splitting gags.

Well I sat him quietly in the corner today and thought he was asleep, but no, undid the oil cooler and he came to life. On this occasion he'd moved the drain tray just a couple of inches short of the cooler lines once they dropped. 

Now thats cleaned up I can get on checking the valve shims.

Speak soon

Stuart