Long story short... I am in need of a new head (I believe) as I currently have a catastrophic oil leak from a corner of the valve cover. I've been searching and scouring the internet and local salvage shops and it seems this is a pretty rare motor, so pickins are slim. The head from Kawasaki would end up costing about $1500. I say "head" but I am second-guessing that terminology because it isn't the cylinder head, but the portion above that where the valvetrain lies which I need.
Now for the long story, for those who are curious...
I am a member of Villanova University's Formula SAE team. We participate in a design competition where each year, schools design and build a roughly half-scale formula 1 car using an engine no larger than 600cc. The competition is in May at Michigan International Speedway. Ours is a sort of Cinderella story, a few years ago the frame was designed and built by a group of seniors as their senior design project. They were hoping that interest would build and the club would become something. Well, that wasn't exactly the case. At some point they were given a 2003 K1 motor out of a ZX-6RR. That and the frame sat for a couple years until a couple kids decided they wanted to take it further. Last year I transferred to the school as a mechanical engineering sophomore, and was immediately drawn to the club. A formula-1 style racecar with a ninja motor? What part of that sounds bad lol.
The damage:
Last year was the first year that anything really progressed. There was about 10 of us doing work on the car. Unfortunately, one smartass who isn't even with the team anymore decided "we better open up the motor to see if it's ok in there"??? Yea, ok buddy you do that. True it had been sitting for years and was probably dry the whole time. I didn't witness it, but after everyone had their peek to see that it was A-OK, smartass decides to ignore torque specs and simply go wicked tight on one of the valve cover bolts (it would be the front leftmost bolt if oriented in the bike), and the threaded portion inside the valvetrain shears off!
The part that the valve cover bolts onto is some sort of aluminum deck with intricate milling and tight clearance of cam lobes. Our (temporary) solution was to fabricate a small steel plate, weld a nut onto one end, and bolt the other end down using an adjacent bolt (which I believe fastens this deck to the head). I'll have to get a picture of this for you guys. Well it kinda worked. Any time we ran the engine for a few minutes, oil would start
dripping out of that corner, onto our (custom) exhaust manifold and start smoking. Smoking motor = DQ.
We actually did make it to competition, and we JB-welded the gasket before we left school with our fingers crossed
We only finished the car (ie passed tech inspection) in time for the final, most important event, the endurance race. We finished (a feat in itself) and were in I believe the top 30 (of 130) schools.
Well, now as we are getting deeper into tuning (PCIII USB) the motor, the oil leak is back and worse than ever. Can't proceed until this is addressed. We took off the valve cover and peeled away all the JB weld and rubber gasket. The plate-nut assembly was still there but it looked like it had bent slightly. I definitely don't think we were getting enough torque to properly seal the valvetrain (I hope that's the only issue), but we ordered a few more gaskets and are going to try it again to be sure in the mean time. Still we definitely are in need of that aluminum deck piece. It can't be purchased from kawasaki separate from the head. We have the budget (though our budget is pitiful) but changing the head would be a long process and we have alot to do. If any of you gurus have any advice or tips, we are greatly appreciative. We are also taking donations, they are tax deductible, and if there's anyone interested in sponsoring we'd love to hear from you. Money is tight!
A pic of the car from last year's competition:
(excuse the poor body work, we had many other fish to fry lol)
the only decent angle I have on the engine at the moment:
(we converted to direct injection, that intake manifold was fabricated in-house from aluminum)
We were 1 of 2 teams to use a Kawasaki motor, the vast majority run Honda F4i. So help us rep kawasaki!
