Strip down, rebuild and then some

quitly ignoring the fact that we have already looked at the engine rebuild, lets go back to stripping this thing and talk about some little bits.

As I received her I had: A rolling bike with an engine and fuel tank. She lacked carbs, front brakes, throttle and a chain amongst many other little details.

The previous owner had braised on foot peg mounts, ignition mounts, fairing mounts and had sourced a tail unit which saved me plenty of work but I still had a great deal to do and in not too much time.

I stripped the bike right down to nothing which wasn't hard as the bike was basically tacked together.
The frame had already been mostly delugged and didn't need much tidying up at all. After tidying what little needed doing; I rubbed the frame down and painted it matt black. This not only looks nice but it is also really easy to touch up when it gets scratched.

For those parts that I wanted bare metal; I hit them with the sand blaster. The engine rebuild, If you haven't read it already, is here.

The rest of the bike was thrown back together if only to keep all the parts in one place so I didn't loose them.

Controls were sorted out with some cheap CNC clip ons, a Domino quick throttle, a kill switch and grips . A really good find was this new Hornet 250 front brake master cylinder. This fed the front brake with an RD250 fit braided line by Wezmoto. This proved to be a mistake as, with the clipon,s this made the line too long which is a shame as the line is otherwise very well made and cheap.
Throttle cables were made from a kit which I may expand upon another time as they were something I had not made before.
I already had a clutch lever which I polished and painted the bits that should be presented as such. A cable and engine cover were sourced from a friend ready for when they would be needed later. Not that much later mind as the engine was soon back in the bike after a lot of work by a number of people.

Carbs were another loan in the form of a pair of 28mm stock Mikunis made up from another team mates spares box. Jetting was guesswork for now, running on the rich side to be sorted out on the track. There will no doubt be a very in depth talk of carbs coming soon so I wont go into too much detail here.

My front brake caliper was proving an issue. I had a rebuilt standard two pot triangle caliper. Unfortunately the banjo bolt hole had badly damaged threads and repair attempts did not work for us. I ended up buying a Grimeca 2- Piston Caliper which is a copy of the AP lockheed.
This is a great caliper but my early forks with their forward caliper mount would not work with this beast of a caliper. The caliper also needs a mounting bracket and by this point I was days from my first race. I ended up borrowing a spare fork and bracket from a fellow racer who would be away for the next race. This worked a treat, saving me precious money and time that would have otherwise been spent fabricating. I popped the tops off of the forks to at least check the levels as I knew there would be balance problems. This is when I noticed the forks had different internals. Unfortunately time was not on my side so I was stuck with what I had. Hindsight says I should have borrowed the pair of forks as front end handling would later prove to be interesting at best. 

The wheels were cleaned up with wonder wheels and new rubber was sourced and fitted to give me a cat in hells chance of getting round some corners.

A new rear sprocket was made at very short notice by B&C Express to fit the RD wheel to run a 520 chain. The front sprocket was an off the shelf TZ250 sprocket which just needs a spacer to keep it in the right place as it is a touch thinner than the RD one.
A gear lever and linkage was broken from an R6 and after a little spacer making and bush removal fit my custom foot rest.

The stock rear caliper came with the bike and had been rebuilt. A fresh set of pads and an HRC style reservoir were fitted along with a Goodrich build a line hose. The hose was a very expensive way to get a line of the right size and not something I would likely do again unless in a pinch.

The exhausts I had in my garage were a loan set of  TZ250 expansion chambers.
Early on we had planned to weld up a set of new pipes matched to my porting.
Later we looked into making some new flanges for the set of pipes I had before time really ran out and another memeber of the team got a job-lot of RD and TZ bits including a few sets of pipes.
One set fit the bike, just, but I received them the day before my first race leaving me to fit them in the padock adding to the fun of the day.

I won't spoil that story however.

In three months (of which I was actually home for only a week or so) I had got the bike to a rideable position.
She was miles from perfect however with mismatched forks, stock and very old) rear shocks and plenty more besides.

This would just have to do. Having not even run yet I was packing the bike up ready for her first race on the Snetterton 200 circuit.