Congratulations to Roger for his continued racing participation at the grand age of 71. I know he will enjoy the Alps again as much as in 2002.
There used to be an adage that “racing improves the breed” – AAS proved it 100 years ago and it’s still true. Roger, through his long racing career, has made many contributions to enhanced performance and reliability of the Scott engine from which we can all benefit. Linking this with the adjacent thread about Banbury Scotts and the subject of piston seizures (and the valuable advice about running the engine on the rich side ) there is the fact that through-piston porting to enhance transfer efficiency also helps to cool the pistons and reduce distortion.
Lofty Avis had his share of piston problems in the early days including severe skirt ovality. His successful use of wooden vee blocks in a large vice to re-distort oval pistons was documented. I know Roger will shudder but we must remember that most enthusiasts operated on a shoe-string back then. He also used a single crankcase packing block under the piston to displace trapped hot gases and help in the cooling process – having noted that Schnurle-type transfer ports encouraged the flow of cool mixture through the pistons in modern two-strokes but “which could not be applied to a Scott”.
I don’t know for sure who came up with the Scott version of through-piston porting – perhaps George Silk ? – but it was certainly not known about in the Lofty era, pre 1967. I can’t recall him writing about it in his later articles but he would certainly have recognised its value.
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