SDC Performance UK News

We arrived at Snetterton late on friday night and all settled down for the night in the truck , only to be awoken by heavy rain at 5am ... This was not good , as at 9am scrappy is due to qualify for grid position and we don't have any wet wheels or tyres !!

Qualifying .. we manage to complete the slowest 3 laps ever of a soaking wet cicuit on dry , cold race tyres . We keep scrappy upright and do our 3 laps which is the minimum required amount for us to be able to race. No suprise but we were slowest in our group.

Saturday Race 1 .. All very excited and now with the sun out scrappy is ready to roll. With the last call for our race the tyre warmers are removed  and ... we have a 5 min mini hurricane !! the heavens opened !! We were actually looking for gods plague of raing frogs or brimstone !!  If you are still following this you will be aware we have no wets .. so Race 1 ... no show( sulking )

Saturday Race 2 .. At bemsee club the finish position for race 1 is your start position for race 2 .. So we start in 39th place ( luckily had my ticket on me to get back into the circuit when the lights went out for the start ). A good start and progress was made into the top 10 , but on lap the the brake mastercylinder resevoir cap fell off .. brake fluid everywhere and game over agian ... more sulking !!

Sunday Race 1 .. We are very optimistic .. scrappy has had a good nights sleep and a good BBQ was had by the team. Starting at the back again , this time with a flying start .. a very hard race and pushing all the way to flag gave us 7th overall and 1st in class + fastest lap.

Sunday Race 2 .. Starting 7th on the grid ,  just as we start the warm up lap it starts to rain , but having been declared a wet race already everybody starts on dry tyres in the slippery conditions. Another good start and we are away with the front running tuned 400's. Another hard race and scrappy does us proud with a 4th place overall , 1st in class again and another fastest lap.

The old girl never missed a beat !!!

And now a pic of a fat old bloke looking smug with his new love scrappy x x

And finally .. scrappy had a team of helpers .. but we would like to say a special thank you to our 2 brolly dollys who not only kept scrappy dry in the wind and rain but also warm .. Thank you Eleanor and Mia

And they all lived happily ever after ... The End

Well ... Grandad took the bodywork away and sprayed it all up for us to save time. Scrappy has been on our rolling road and we have set the carbs up to go with the ram air system , velocity stacks and modified Micron exhaust system. Its now the day before we go to Snetterton to race the old girl in Bemsee clubs 400 class. We have entered in the Sub 65 or stock engined class.

So with Nick Knowles gathering the crowd of helpers together and a crying  owner .. as is traditional we show you the before and after ...

Scrappy in all her original glory ...

And now our lythe young swan brought back to life ... Ta Daaaa !!!

Oops ... bit of a give away ( cock up ) in how the weekend went ... Doh

Well scrappy our beautiful little race bike is finally back together. Pigs ear , silk purse ... ugly duckling , swan ... piece of throbbing shi ... well you get the idea.

Today "Grandad" is over to help us fit the bodywork. We are using our own SV650 M1 kit . It needs a bit of trimming here and there but Grandad gets a good fit ( and its got him out of working at B&Q for the day !! )

We have modified the Micron exhaust system that came with the bike , the baffled link pipe has been removed and a more normal 50mm link pipe has been made up to take a Hindle race can ( as usual found lying around the workshop ).

Getting scrappy pretty well all together now. We have had to rip the brakes apart and use a blow tourch to remove the seized in pistons !!! rear caliper is rebuilt .. but the magic shelves of scrap parts comes to our rescue again with a piar of CBR929 Nissin calipers. Once stripped and rebuilt these were fitted. A slight bit of milling on the calipers for clearance and a couple of top hat spacers turned up and we have some nice shiny calipers !!

These bled up nicely and were fitted with a set of HEL lines that we had laying around off a ZX6R , we modified one end of the lines and they fitted perfectly.

On the rear brake , we kept the standard caliper ( rebuilt and now cooled down from the blow tourch experience ) and fitted the rear master cylinder up to a set of GSXR1000K8 rear sets that we modified to fit . At the same time we modified the rear mastercylinder to take a return spring so there is no chance of the rear brake accidently dragging. 

The front forks that have already been rebuilt now need fitting.

The radiator and oil cooler were total scrap , there is so much corrosion in the aluminium that the only option is the bin !!

Radiator wise we have a ZX6R one knocking around in the workshop with a hole in it .. Hole fixed .. and we now have a radiator , fabricate a few brackets and away we go. Oil cooler wise was a bit harder , seeing as the club races we want to try this in are only 5-6 laps long , we have bypassed the oil cooler all together and done without !! simples ...

We have now added one of our own ram air boxes and velocity stack kits. This should get the old girl breathing a bit better !!

We alos had a good rummage around and manged to make a good quick action throttle out of 3 or 4 broken ones so that is another problem solved.

To make running the ram air box easier we also found a set of coil sticks in our electrics draw . So together with the race loom that we made earlier we have a very neat and tidy electrical system now.

Day 9 and time we started the assembly, the suspension linkages are in a real mess , the whole lot has been stripped , new bearings fitted where needed and all greased and set up.

Frame and swingarm have been stripped and given a fresh coat of 2K satin black

New swingarm bearings are pressed into place ready for assembly

Finally the frame and engine are put back together again

and finally for today the WP shock that we picked up second hand is fitted.

Engine has now been cleaned and serviced ready to start the bike final build . At the same time as the srvice , we have cleaned the engine ( a massive job on its own ) re painted the side casing to SDC red and also removed the fly wheel and turned it down in the lathe to reduce crank weight , the bike will be running total loss ignition.

Although the engine is being kept standard we are trying to get as much out of it as possible for the race day.

BEFORE

AFTER

Now finished and ready to build the bike

Well its Sunday , but certainly not a day of rest on ZXR400 race project ( scrapheap challenge ).

Today we are starting on the engine , the oil was dumped already when the engine was started and hot. So now to remove the sump and check for debris and make sure the oil pick up strainer is clean , and check all of the valve clearances and cam timing.

Boy are we glad we checked ... the cam carriers bolts were all loose , as in finger tight , with a couple even having an air gap !!

The bolts were all torqued down and then the clearances were checked , a few were out and have been changed , but to be fair not too bad.

Down at the sump end , all was pretty clean , we then carried out a compression check to get an idea of the engines condition.

Good readings of 165-170 on all cylinders give us some hope ( fingers crossed its not false hope )

Well the forks have been totally stripped over the last 2 days , I must say they were in a hell of a mess. Once stripped we could assess thm properly. Both fork oil and dust seals were rusty and leaking , fork stantions were covered in paint overspray and dirt build up , the damper unit that controls the rebound damping in these forks was so gunged up that it kept seizing solid.

It took a good 30-40 mins of working the damper unit and flushing with brake cleaner , but eventually we managed to remove all of the gunge and built up crud. The fork caps had to be soaked in paint thinners to break down the beautiful green paint work !! These had to be totally stripped to component level and every individual part cleaned , corrosion removed and polished , then all re greased and assembled to get the caps working properly.

As this is for race use we have have upped the fork oil weight to 10w and used Rock Oil competition fluid. The air gap was set to 90mm and new fork oil and dust seals. While apart we also gave the outer stantions a new gold finish , the lower stantions were polished and the bottoms given a new finish in black. Both forks feel like they now have a much stronger damping for the track and look like new , all adjusters now work exactly as they should ... Forks ... Job done

Have decided to tackle the forks today , what we are starting with is to be fair a pretty disgusting set of ZXR400 forks , covered in paint over spray , oil , dirt and the fork caps having been totally sprayed in a rather fetching shade of metalic green ... nice !!

Well today the wiring loom has been stripped down and converted to a race spec , lots of bad connections , broken wires and corroded terminals all removed. New wires put in place and all of the relays and road parts have now been junked. A bit of tidying up left , and the wires need to be bound together. But the bike now started for the first time.

Later today we gutted the whole bike to start the rebuild proper. Frame and swing arm are now being stripped. All bearings have been removed and we are assesing what parts need binning , keeping and replacing.

This at the moment is all that is left of our race ZXR400 project !!

We like a challenge here at SDC Performance.Here is our latest project ( scrapheap challenge !! ) this beautiful little Kawasaki ZXR400 .. This bike / heap / wreck !!  we are trying to get built and on track racing in just over 14 days !! So here goes ...

DAY 1- In all her glory !!

Graham English and TIVA Engineering have been good friends of SDC Performance for a long time , we would all like to congratulate Graham on an excellent result today in the Superbike race. Graham's laptimes have been steadily improving and today he recorded his best lap yet of 117.2 mph. This is only Graham's second visit to the TT races. Well done mate , excellent reult.