How were the Wildcat engine enhancements proven?
Mostly through trial and error based on previous knowledge and experience of what works on 2 stroke engines and what doesn’t. (Although this wasn’t always successful, as Les discovered when tuning a variety of different capacity machines.) Unlike today’s methods of computer engine mapping, we most generally had to find out the hard way. Either by road testing after a mod and an engine rebuild, or track testing it on race day. Sometimes the latter was the only way of ultimately proving the reliability of an engine mod, but could prove costly to your championship points if it turned out to cause engine failure. I know some teams were rumoured to be using Dynamometers to extract the maximum grunt from their machines. Geoff would sometimes ride his racing bikes to work so as to put some mileage on a new piston before a race meeting to prevent the risk of seizure, and use the ride to test out different carburetion settings. We had our disappointments with some engines, and with only a limit
