Howdy all, nope I am not Texan, neither do I smoke ’em …… Our final race for 2015 have arrived …. and ……

Our previous post told you all about a valve dropping into the cylinder …. Well this time around the valve broke off at the last ridge for the collets. The cylinder head has one mark on the inlet port which can be smoothed out in five minutes. All that is needed to make that operational is a valve, but I will look at replacing all and one of the other collets broke in half.

The pistons was a different story. Without x-raying there is no certain way to determine the real condition of the number one piston, I tried some Rocol crack detection and that shows up a nice red line ….. Not willing to chance a failure the hunt for pistons started. I can place a long list of dealers phoned to source them. In the end a Facebook friend found some. These were in fact found at one of SA’s big engine part suppliers on a national network of which I phoned the local branch to be told they do not have any? – The other branch had three sets in stock and with the AX block build in mind I purchased two sets!

Having a spare flywheel I thought, time for an experiment. Took one in for some slimming and in one week it permanently lost two kilogrammes! No time or funds for balancing, we mounted it on our drill with a my S4 and a vibration application took it for a spin. It proved quite stable throughout all speeds up to the drills maximum of 2900rpm. Just for interest sake I put our previously balanced flywheel on our “highly specialized” apparatus. Now image a loose flywheel spinning at a centre speed of 2900rpm and a bunch of vicious ring gear teeth at circumference speed spinning in front of you. You take your “balanced” flywheel to approximately 2000rpmand having that LOOSE fly wheel shaking and hopping around? If that is the case, I suspect we will be better off “unbalanced”?

Last weekend we stripped the Kent engine done to the bone and rebuilt doing the final assembly on Tuesday fitting the cylinder head birthday present received from Gary Stacey in May. Then the starting. I made sure everything was lined up to the degree and she would not start ….. recharge battery, try, recharge battery and try …. On Friday afternoon went back to basics, checked the positioning of the distributor in relation to the timing marks, cam position

AND FOUND IT 100% LINED UP, 180° OUT!!!!!

Needless to say the Kent engine kicked into life five minutes later. It is not very often that I wanted to kick myself, this was one of those moments!

With our strict policy of spares before groceries, Fossa is sounding better than ever! HELLO KYALAMI !!!!!!! There is one more change I want to do before our first race in 2015, more about that later. Fossa is ready to shake and bake!

* 8 November is not going to be without it’s challenges. Run in Fossa during qualifying. The year has fifty two weeks, we race club races on seven to eight of those. And we have the wedding of ex-team members on one of those weekends. Take Fossa to the track, documentation, scrutineering, do qualifying, race one, go to the wedding scheduled for eleven o’clock midway through, back to the track for race two ……. and we are minus Chris, “The Roach” staying behind to manage background music at the wedding.

Our estimated PROVISIONAL program for 8 November ….

Qualifying: 08H40

Wedding starts: 11H00

Race one: 11H50

End of race one: 12H15, head to wedding venue when everything on Fossa is ready for race two, get dressed, ETA 12H45

Race two: 15H35, to accommodate, leave wedding at 14H45, track ETA 15H10 get dressed, Fossa final touches and RACE!!!!!!!

See you at Kyalami !!!!!!!