Hello loyal followers,
Welcome to what is to be my last entry as Captain Tightwad. It has been a great pleasure to meet some of the TightWad Alternative Tuners (T.W.A.T.s) over the last few months. These are people who have read my blog and are enjoying what i have to say. It's nice to know that i am not wasting my time and i hope you have all been applying my tuning methods.
So, what have we all learned from my experiences? Well i have proved that you do not need all the baubles and trinkets to get out onto the race track and you do not need to spend a fortune to keep up and most of all have fun.
There are however certain areas that you should not cut corners on. I have been lucky in that the engine of extreme hope held together for three meetings without issue and i finished all but one race.
So as the season had finished i stripped the engine after giving it one last run on the dyno. The bike was taken to Replay scooters to be looked at and after pushing the damned thing for about a mile it eventually started. The maximum horsepower output was 21hp at the back wheel which was what i expected. The engine was then stripped and inspected. Everything was in good condition except for the piston which was only a few revolutions away from detonating. The bottom ring had fractured in three places and had chewed itself where it runs against the exhaust port and the top ring peg had come loose and worn a big hole in the side of the piston and chipped the ends of the ring away. The reason that the bike would not start very well is that it had very little compression as a result of the damage. So my dear skinflints, if you are to build a budget bike then use a new piston and not a second hand one of unknown history. That said, the indian crank that i thought would let me down was as good as new on inspection so it's not all bad.
I have enjoyed building and racing this bike so I will end this project here and wish everybody a safe and sound season for 2009.
Let's do one last TightWads Alternative Tuning (T.W.A.T)
Cover yourself and your bike with grease. This will help you slip through the air. (ha ha)
Thanks to Clockhill scooters of Nuneaton for their help and support with this project and i hope it has given one or two peope the incentive to start a racing project of their own.
Even though the Tightwad project is finished, it is not the end of my race blog. I will be reinventing the blog as an account of racing scooters for the 2009 season so watch this space as i will be telling it how it is.
So tune in for next time when you will see me spend as much a five quid on new bits. (i feel sick again)
