Monthly Archives: April 2019

Quite a few of our trade guys have been with us now for over 5 years. However it is still surprising that alot of our customers still dont know about our gasket making service.

We have invested heavily in CNC machinery over the last 18 months to give us the ability to produce gaskets in virtually any material. Our industry knowledge combined with our manufacturing ability allow us to give our customers the competitive edge.

Our abilities include:

Vintage Motorcycle gaskets, in cork, copper and felt.

Modern performance gasket in aramide, aluminum, carbon fibre, nitile or viton.

Specialist design, from custom thickness's to complete re-design.

Ultrad rapid production - from design to on the bike in under 24 hours.

We are the UK's only dedicated motorcycle gasket manufacturer. We specialise in our in house produced gaskets and reeds.

We are also distributors for Koyo, NTN, SKF, TTO and NAK. Again we specialise in motorcycle bearings and seals. We have a full range of bearings more the 3 main manufacturers and probably the UK largest stock of motorcycle seals. From the common to the very rare.

For the 3rd time today I have been asked to quote on custom reed petals. One for a Kart, an old out board motor and also custom stiffness/shape RD 350 YPVS. I thought that if people are asking, it must be worth talking about.

Firstly, I must get this off my chest. Reed thickness has absolutely nothing to do with stiffness, over the years I have probably wasted over 100 hours explaining this. It is all about stiffness, generally the more flexible the reed the better the throttle response and a small increase in performance. However go to far the reed will fail quickly. On the over side thicker reeds will open more slowly and to an extent, not as much. However they will certainly last longer.

The middle ground is generally where the manufactures fix there petals. However as a rule older bikes use spring steel or fiber glass types. Carbon fiber offers something a little stiffer than either of these materials dependant on weave, number of ply’s and machining orientation.

I will go over carbon fibre reed manufacturer in another post, but I did have to get the thickness thing off my chest!

So, here how we quoted:

The Kart customer is able to send us a sample of the reed they require. This make life a lot easier for us. We will draw the reed in CAD, match the stiffness as close as possible to our carbon fibre stock and produce 8 blade/petals. Total cost £95.

The outboard motor customer has got a worn set of reed for us to copy from, again saving us time. He requires 4 small blades. Total cost £65.

Finally the Yamaha RD 350 YPVS LCII customer has a custom design which he wanted maching, we will be able to use his drawing (however as the drawing is owned by the customer we will not produce this design for anyone else). He requested a total of 80 petals, with a sample set to confirm suitability. We have quoted £365.

All these cases will be completely in under 5 working days.

As you can see, custom reeds for either for out of production or a performance solution can be had for a lot less than you might first think!

Any queries, please contact either Brett or Ian @ Showe

Well, we have been busy over the last few months researching and creating our range of water pump kits for Motocross and popular 2 strokes. We are by no means complete, but you can now view our current range. We have pretty much got the complete series of kits required for Motocross bikes from around 1982 to present for Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and KTM (KTM is still being fleshed out).

You may ask what is different about our kits, well for one, we have sourced the correct (OEM in most cases) specification seal, not some cheap third rate seal as a basis for the kit, we then have produced in house the water pump gasket in either Novus 30 or 45 (which is totally over specified for this task), and to complete the kits where applicable we have match either a premium bearing by NTN, SKF,  Koyo or our own brand if you are cost concerned. We can supply the kit with or without a clutch gasket made from Interface Materials N-8094 (again over specified for the task)!

We are really proud of these kits, we have priced them ultra competivitly, however as far as we are concerned these do exceed the orginal manufacturers components and generally at 1/3 of the cost!

https://showe-performance.co.uk/bearing-seal-wheel-steering-fork-kits-sets/gasket-kits/water-pump-repair-kits.html