It seems that we are mostly agreeing here. The fact that Club 100 run BT 82s for 50 hours plus shows that rebuilds are not needed as frequently as normally suggested. I wasn't suggesting that only water cooled engines would last if looked after properly. However it was shown years ago that a water cooled 2 stroke is more durable because it is better for regulating the temperature. I also agree that lower revs is a massive factor but forgot to mention it in my first post. As for the Nikasil bore, that comes down to design and manufacture and that undoubtedly has the biggest influence of all.
Warming up on the stand at 4000 or 5000 revs is probably preferable to using full revs with a cold engine, but I agree is still not good. The ideal would be to have two or three warm up laps before the race starts, and I don't actually know why they don't.
If failures are happening at 10 or 5 hours it will probably be due to faulty components, in which case more frequent maintenance may well make that worse. Although I appreciate that championships etc. may be lost on mechanical failure, rebuilding an engine at 25 hours that was going to last 50 hours, and then it failing 5 hours later doesn't help.
The weak link in a badly designed engine may well be the bearings. The rate of ware will increase as the ware increases. But if properly designed and manufactured ,the rest of the engine should have worn to the point that their isn't enough compression for the engine to start, long before bearings fail.
Finally If you can get them to remove the seal so we can rebuild them ourselves the drinks are on me.
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