Wilsons Sandbox

Just been catching up on all of the posts.... been away for awhile... and noticed that the balancer DooHickey is still making news... Well I thought I would give people some information on it... First of all... before I say anything... if you can buy one of Jake's aftermarket jobs... go for it... I'm sure that will be a big improvement.... if you are keen to try and fix it yourself, here's a little information about it. Kawasaki seem to have 2 versions of the DooHicky... the earlier pressed metal version wasn't strong enough to cope with the job, and Kawasaki quickly brought out a thicker 2 piece job which was welded together. However, because this is a thicker piece, the circlip which held the original one in place could no longer be installed (someone asked about this a few days ago ). I'm not sure if this was rectified in later models... Anyway... as everyone knows... the new DooHicky still breaks! --------------------------- A SOLUTION --------------------------- Anyway... it is my believe that this piece is failing due to improper heat treatment... something that you should be able to rectify yourself. Welding a small piece like this can often lead to very fast cooling - effectively embrittling the piece... To rectify this, the DooHicky should be placed into a kiln (go to local pottery or hobby ceramics shop, or go to an engineering firm) and heated up pretty bloody hot (red hot), and let cool over a number of hours in the kiln. This will give you a nice uniform metallic grain structure, although it will be pretty weak at this stage. Once it has cooled, you should reheat it again- this time to around 200 degrees C, and then take it out and dunk (quench) it in a dish of oil (not water). This will toughen up the piece so that you shouldn't have any more problems with it. I cant guarantee that this will be the cure-all... but I have talked to some Material Engineers that I know and they seem to agree with this. Other people on this list might like to comment. cheers David McClymont A1 A1