The H1F’s crank was a sorry rusted mess. Now it is a thing of great beauty and strength.
The heart of any engine is surely its crankshaft. And a two-stroke crank works twice as hard as a four-banger item, in much tougher conditions: a power stroke every 360-degrees of rotation, with all the heat that entails, plus it must live with mere splash lubrication from a miniscule quantity of oil. It’s a hard-knock life.
And it’s a source of constant wonder they actually last as long as they do. Especially when subjected to former owner abuse like being left to stand (so the all-important seals fail), or worse still left to rot in damp conditions, so the pins, rods and bearings die and the webs are compromised by heavy corrosion.
This story is from the January 2018 edition of Practical Sportsbikes.
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This story is from the January 2018 edition of Practical Sportsbikes.
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