Red16

Removed the covers and idler gear from the starter motor assembly



Crank position sensor cover and clutch plates removed



Clutch basket taken off



Clutch basket assembly



Remove this circlip from the gear selector shaft, then it can be slid out of the transmission casing



With the selector shaft removed, things look like this inside





Starter motor removed which gives access to the generator cover



Generator assembly removed



Big hole where the generator lives



Sprocket adaptor and water pump removed





Oil pump drive gear removed



Lower gear selector fork shaft being withdrawn





Lower selector and shaft

Red16

Upper selector fork shaft being withdrawn



Gear selector drum being withdrawn



Gear selector drum assembly



Selector fork shafts and drum removed but upper selector forks still in position



Upper selector forks



Oil pump



Oil pump housing



Engine casing split and the transmission removed



Transmission





Transmission output shaft removed



Transmission shafts



Having got to this stage of the stripdown and not found anything obvious wrong I was getting a bit concerned, due the large pieces of debris in the sump it had to be something fairly sizeable and obvious which had gone wrong, the issue turned out to be a damaged big end shell.



As you can see here, the big end shell isn't in great shape and the rod cap appears to be scored



Hopefully the rod will be able to be salvaged, but that can't be ascertained until it it cleaned up and measured.

I'm very suprised that with the big end fault I have found that there was no excess noise/vibration while the engine was idling

On a positive note, the problem has been found and can therefore now be rectified

liammcl

iTrader: (4)

fuck working on that!! fairplay to ya

smitsturbo

Just read all this, stunning project, I noticed you work offshore? Where , what as? I'm a wireline supervisor in holland just now

Red16

LOL

Thanks

Cheers smit

Yeah I'm another member of the offshore club. I'm a service engineer for National Oilwell Varco, consequently I don't have a set rotation on a regular rig, I work predominantly in Europe and Africa, but can be worldwide. I worked in Holland last year on a rig in dry dock, it's a lovely place.

Red16

This afternoon I gave the garage a tidy up to make some decent workspace to progress the engine overhaul



Removed the cam chain tensioner



Cam chain tensioner



Cam cover removed, exposing the cams





Camshaft retainer caps, camshafts and followers.



Cylinder head without camshafts and followers.



With the camshafts removed the crank was then pulled out the bottom of the engine.

Crankshaft and cam chain.

cozzy jeff

iTrader: (4)

are ben im gutted for you mate,things where going so well,looks like you 've got your work cut out there,good luck with it mate hope you manage to get it back together soon.

-beefy-

iTrader: (6)

wounded ,


im sure youll have it bk together in no time ,


i know a local bike mech whos a1 mate, any issues drop me a line


works at the local kwak dealership

Paynee

While since i have taken a look at progress. Car looks awesome, and sounds it too!!!
Shame about the engine, sure you will have it sorted in no time, you havent hung around stripping it down!!

Red16

It feels like it's been one step forwards, two steps back lately Jeff, but to be fair this could've happened at any time, pointless dwelling on the failure, still plenty time to get it back on the road in time for summer

Cheers Beef, the Kwak mechanic may come in handy, i'll bare it in mind.

Cheers David

It'll be built back up soon enough, providing I get adequate time off work to crack on with it once the parts are here.

Red16

Pulled the head of it this afternoon. Here it is sitting on the bench



Bottom end and the shiney JE pistons



Numbered up so they go back in the correct positions



Arrow con rods and JE pistons laid out on the bench





The crankshaft main bearings showing slight signs of wear

lanfire

Gutted, fair play for cracking on like !

NEEDFORSPEED

just seen this what a nightmare :-( looks like your cracking on tho! cause??

Red16

The crank is now at Chris Applebee Engineering being checked over, reground and then sent back to me with oversize bearing shells.

I've also ordered a gasket set, set of Carrillo con rods, some bolts/washers, chain tensioner and oil pump.

Thanks

CrOwSoN15

How can you tell the bearings have worn? Be useful to know

Red16

Not sure, nothing particularly obvious as to one specific reason, possibly lubrication, but oil level was not low, this happened in a straight line, so all the oil was at the rear of the sump where the pickup sits, never had an oil pressure light come on, no blocked oil galleries etc.

I've not heard of anyone else running a ZX10R engine in a car having issues with oil starvation, so no reason to think my car is any different, but with it being substantially more powerful due to it being turbocharged, the big ends would experience more load and they may have prematurely worn.

So when the engine is reassembled it will have a new oil pump to replace the old internally scored one, a reground crank with suitably matched bearing shells, new steel con rods and a modified sump with internal baffles and new pickup, so any potential issues will have been taken care of. Hopefully a summer of trouble free motoring

Gary_Hurn

Great attitude in sorting ASAP...love the car ...mental thing.... And there's me thinking my zx6 is fast

NEEDFORSPEED

good stuff mate without going to previous pics what breather setup are you using? youve always got to think 'it could of been worse'!

Red16

It was easy in this case as you could feel a large amount of movement on the big end of conrod number 3, then when the cap was removed from the rod pieces of bearing fell out!

But usually you'd tell by looking for surface imperfections, scores or abnormal colouring etc, if everything looks fine then you'd need to measure the clearance between the bearing and the crankshaft journal and compare the reading to manufacturers specification, an easy method of doing that is using something called Plastigauge, a small strip of plastigauge is rested across the crankshaft journal or bearing shell, then the conrod/main bearing cap is fitted and tourqued to spec, this crushes the plastigauge material, the assembly is stripped down and the width of the plastigauge strip is matched on the plastigauge supplied chart, this chart will tell you the corresponding bearing clearance, this can then be compared to manufacturers recommendations to see if it is too large or too small.

Hope that helps.

Dlatch!

love this build and was gutted about the engine failure
good to see its coming back together nicely and fingers crossed it stays in one piece this time

Red16

Cheers Gary, it'll be back again soon

ZX6R is a quick bike... my mate's just bought one so will be able to find out how the two compare

Oh aye it could've been worse, thankfully it wasn't as this is bad enough!

I'm using a filtered atmospheric crankcase breather.

Thanks a lot, you're not the only one gutted about the engine failure!

It'll be back soon

escort1989uk

I'm guess it was the bearing in thevrod of number three piston looks like it got very hot

Red16

Correct, that's the one that went.

Red16

I butchered the standard sump this afternoon, with the aim of giving it more capacity and also some baffles to stop the oil from moving around during braking/acceleration/cornering.

Here it is, in the early stages of modification







With aluminium plates welded to the sump to make it square shaped it should hold substantially more oil.

escort1989uk

Should help somewhat if it don't I suppose a dry sump set up would be next

wide ka

great as normal!

you looked at the accusump? i was going with that but found dry sump for cheap for mine

Red16

Should do the trick, baffled sumps are common place in the bike engined kit car world, just not overly used on the ZX10R.

A dry sump would be brilliant but i've only found one company that sells them online (or used to sell them) and they're far from reasonably priced!

Cheers

I've only recently encountered the accusump, from what I can gather it's a bit like an electrically controlled hydaulic accumulator, to assist in keeping constant oil pressure even during times of the oil pickup being starved of oil. It could be an option as an extra measure on top of the baffled sump.

Red16

After having a decent cup of coffee to wake me up this morning, I began making cardboard templates to transfer onto the 3mm aluminium plate I bought yesterday.



The templates for the sump sides look like this



When rested in position the sump looks like it holds a lot more oil than the standard one



Once all my Mothers Day duties are out of the way, I'll hopefully get time to fire up the TIG set in the garage and get the sump welded up.

Gary_Hurn

230v tig set mate???........ Where you get it from looking to get one I hate paying for things to be welded

Red16

Yeah, I'm the same, hate paying for it but most of all hate having to wait for things to be done, which are never done when you want/need them to be!

I've got an R-Tech TIG 201, it's a 240V, 200A AC/DC output

http://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/weldi..._R-Tech_Tig201

Gary_Hurn

It's not on a domestic plug top I assume it uses a blue commando style plug???

Will have to get me one of these

Red16

When I phoned R-Tech to buy my welder I asked about running it on it's own designated supply or using a standard domestic 3 pin plug, they said it's fine to use on a 13 amp plug but you will only be able to use it up to around 160 Amps like that, to use the full 200A it needs a 16A supply, but for the small price difference between the 160A and 200A welders I thought it best to get this one and at least have the extra welding capacity if actually needed at some point, aswell as not having the smaller welder and running it near max output regularly.

Gary_Hurn

Cool I ll get a welder ordered ASAP

Red16

You get a free foot pedal too I need a seat before I use my pedal though, it's too hard standing up and trying to use it

escort1989uk

Don't think that sump will last long with the sump being cupboard lol

Red16

It nearly didn't last the day, the templates were outside and out of the blue it started raining this evening!!!

Red16

I've not done a lot more to the sump today, most of the day was taken up with Mothers Day stuff, but managed an hour to myself and made one aluminium plate and tacked it in place.

Red16

You've done the one thing I really can't wait to do, play with the bikes, be good to suprise them now and again, in a straight line and on the twisties!

I've made a bit of progress this afternoon on the sump, it's now looking like this







It's all water tight, as i found when i filled it to see what volume of water it held, it now holds 2.8 litres, which is definitely more than the standard sump, unfortunately i didnt fill the standard sump before cutting it up, would've been nice to know the difference! Doh!

Here's the internal view, it's not baffled yet, as I'm still waiting on an oil pickup being delivered, once I have that in my possession I can make the baffles accordingly.

Gary_Hurn

Nice bi of welding dude.. Is ally hard to weld??

Red16

Cheers Gary, it's not the best welding you'll ever see, but it's done what I wanted it to and it's not too bad for my second attempt at aluminium welding.

Aluminium feels nice to weld, it flows lovely when you get started on a run, but it goes pear shaped so much more quickly than stainless/mild steel.

I need more welding jobs to get some practice in, it's one of those things I find really enjoyable, it'd be even better if the welds looked perfect every time!