After stripping the engine completely we realised that it wouldn’t have lasted much longer before destroying itself. The scoring on cylinder 1 was so bad it had begun to weld with the piston and drag material up and down the wall. Oil and gases were getting past, likely pressurising the sump and contributing to excessive oil in the head by not letting it drain back down. We took the whole lot down to North Geelong Engine Reconditioners and John immediately confirmed how serious the issue was. It appears that this problem originated with the previous owner where a rebuild of the engine was botched. They simply re-honed the engine and probably just added new rings. So we got stitched up, but hey – we’ve had a shitload of fun with it to date and haven’t blown it up…

Obviously if we’re going to rectify the situation we don’t want to be opening this thing up again later on for further upgrades. We need to fix this properly and permanently.

We just need to choose between researching and gathering all the parts ourselves and then getting everything blueprinted, assembled, balanced and tested OR just getting a race-prepped bullet-proof & proven engine built by someone who knows what they are doing. Either way it’ll cost a bucket load so needless to say it’ll be a while before we’re cutting laps again, but when we do…. “Boy, let me tell ya, it’ll be something else.”