Customer has RB22 kit, he's actually owned the kit for nearly 2 yrs (kit no 113) but between waiting for it to be built, running problems and one thing and another, its only covered just over a thousand miles.
With the scooter being a bit smokey, and the customer having various carb set-up problems, he brought it into us for a dyno session. Straight away on the dyno we could see the amount of smoke belowing from the exhaust.....but the A/F meter was excessivly lean. Also, there was a knock/rattle from within the engine, and the power curve was not nice at all. Zero low down power, until finally when the engine got spinning at high revs it had the power delivery of an ON/OFF switch.......nothing, nothing, nothing...FULL POWER....nothing.
So we peeled it off the dyno and advised the customer that further investigation was needed, and that a dyno session could not be completed. We offerd the choice of pickup and let his local shop look into it, or we would fit it into our work load if he wanted....so he took up our offer, we stripped it, and here's what we found:
Uneven ring wear:
5mm ring gap!!
Nikasil lining destroyed from TDC to BDC:
Original Nikasil lining below BDC still intact as you would expect:
Worn, worn, worn....
So we contacted the scooter owner with the bad news and he's coming in next week to have a look for himself.
Now obviously AF are not obliged to do anything about this, if for no other reason than the kit is 2yrs old....but the scoot owner placed a tentative call to AF and i have been told that they were very good about the whole thing. They've asked if we will complete the strip-down to crank, and send crank, piston, cylinder & head over to them for inspection.....at which point they will see what they can do to make amends. The scoot owner is not sure what the offer will be, but at this stage is confident that due to AF's initial understanding response on the phone, that they will try to sort something out for him, whatever that may be, in order to be as helpful as they can. So we will wait and see how this one ends, but i thought that in the meantime, you guys might like to see the cylinder.
On a distantly related thread.....we have another RB22 kit in from a forum member that seized his kit, and we are lined up to get some welded and enlarged transfer 200 casings in from another pal......so using up some of our own other spare bits, all we need is a BIG crank and a nice re-bore on the cylinder, and we maybe looking at building our very own RB260 engine to play with....just for fun. So whilst there may have been some issues on the earely RB kits (that do seem to be getting addressed as they go along) .....they are still powerfull kits and certainly fun to play with! And who knows, if im having a good day........i might even post a graph up when its done!
