With help from Wattie and Shinny, we dropped the engine and Glen took it down to the guys at Aitkens to have a look at it.
It wasn't pretty, with 2nd gear being stuffed and a few others and one of the shift forks being quite worn. It was decided to source another gearbox and replace the lot.
Unfortunately no one is Aus had a gearbox and no one would pull one out of a complete motor. New, the parts would have been about $2500 and a 3 to 4 week wait for some of the bits. The engine itself looked to be in good condition, with very little noticable wear on the bottom end or the cams, so keeping it was a priority.
Luckily I sourced a gearbox thru the zx10r.net site from a guy who had a few engines he used for parts as he was bulding open wheeler race cars using zx10r engines. The cost was $250 US shipped to my door, not bad but would have been much better a few months ago when the Aus $ was higher.
Anyway, the box arrived in about 5 days from payment and it looked OK. I took it down to Aitkens and Jamie dropped it in the engine, while doing so he noticed the oil pump was a bit worn and decided it would be a good idea to replace that too. They didn't have one so it was ordered to be there Monday, so I took the engine home and we dropped it onto the bike with the clutch and oil pump off. Again, big thanks to Wattie , Shinny, Frank, Russ and others who helped and drank my beer.
The installation went seemingly OK, so I trailered the bike back to Aitkens so Jamie could get the oil pump and clutch back in. During him installing the oil pump the rod snapped and without another one in stock at Kawasaki, Jamie took the one out of his spare race bike and put that it to get mine going, hows that for great service.
I picked the bike up Friday Arvo and started the final tidy up on Saturday arvo. Took ages to get the pipe to fit up, but once that was on, the oil was in and everthing hooked up, it was time to see if it would start. Turned the key, all the things that light up and move did, but the thing wouldn't start.
Me and Frank mucked around with it for a bit tracking wires as it appeared to be a power problem as the PC3 wasn't working either.
We didn't spend much time on it as we were going out for a few beers, but it appeared there was a problem...
That was untill we'd had a few beers and some smart ass asked the stupid question "was it in gear"?..
Ha.!..
Ummmmm.???
Let me think..???
Shit.. yes I think it bloody was..
As we were out, I rang Jus and she went into the garage and flicked it into neutral and pushed the button.. I could hear it kick over on the phone..
So Sunday morning I was back into the garage, but the thing still wouldn't run right and the PC3 was still not working. It turned out to be an easy fix as someone (not me) had plugged the PC3 into,,,,,,,,, itself.!, not the bike.. So I pulled the plugs from the Fuel rail and plugged the PC3 in, pushed the button and the sweet sound of zx10r filled the garage...!
Took her for a run up the road, and all felt good.
Big thanks to everyone who helped and a huge thanks to Jamie Aitken for his time and effort..
I should be at the track on Saturday....
