The day the music died

Few engines produce as sweet a song as Doc Marquardt's Honda CBX 6-cylinder roadracer, but that came to a painful end during AHRMA's season finale at Barber Motorsports Park.

The severed #6 rod sawed a massive hole in the cases, and Dave Roper thinks he may have found the source of the oil on the track.

This is a rare Vertemati 600, being run as a roadrace/supermoto bike. I saw this one go at AHRMA Beaverun, just past the start/finish it locked up hard. Rod bearing had been dying, and finally blew the rod big end. Due to the one-piece case and cylinder, it was necessary to cut the rod in order to get the piston and crank out, and parts for this are scarce at best. Ain't racin' fun !

Bultaco 360 Bandito; Blamdito ? Bulblammo ? Blastaco ?

Kawasaki 1100 3-cyl watercraft, work order states it had ingested water,
and customer suspected a fouled spark plug.

Yes, it's fouled...with piston and rod giblets.

This 951 Sea-Doo suffered a seizure, resulting in a broken rod. The customer brought it in for a tune and service, reporting that "it ran great last year". Alcohol may have been involved...

This Honda CR80 engine powered Jack Costella's 100cc class gas streamliner at El Mirage. They were unaware it had blown up, as it had just made a pass of nearly 100mph. The engine had been ingesting dirt, which destroyed the rod bearing and blew a hole in the crankcase.

SCR prepared a replacement engine, which then set a new land speed record of 123mph at Bonneville, eclipsing a record of 113mph which had stood for over 30 years. Later runs of the same engine have now raised the record to 143mph, and we have just delivered a motor which should be capable of raising it even higher.

This was an RZ350 crank. Beautiful job of wrapping the remains of the rod around the pin ! I didn't get the see the rest of the motor, my guess is it was none too good...

Yamaha GP1200 watercraft

	When a 3-cylinder engine siezes a piston, it usually still has 2 good pistons running to beat the dead parts to bits.