RD250

This is a work in progress but as the blog is being written at the same time as I am working (for a change), I thought I might as well publish it to make it a live update of sorts. So do pop back in the future to see when I finally give up and set the lot on fire. We never thought that 2020's race reason would even happen so when we found ourselves at Cadwell park, all be it as privateers and the sun was out, we were all pinching ourselves.  All of the bikes were going well and so something had to give and it was the RD250. 2 laps into race 1  on Chris curve the RD suddenly lost power, regained it then died all together. My EGT and TTO temperatures all looked fine so I wiggled carbs and throttle cables but the engine came back with a noticeable rattle so the clutch was pulled and my race was over. I had a back to back race on the VFR750 so by the time I was back in the pits, Roy Dale had kindly put my bike on its stand outside the van. We had a look to see what the pr...

It's that wonderful time in winter when you take a perfectly good bike to bits to see what isn't so perfectly good anymore. This wont be blow by blow break down and rebuild, that would be boring. This will be a few key points of interest and the odd finds along the way. You can tell I was excited to write this one as I managed to forget I had started it at the beginning of the season and just found it this December. At least I got it done before the year was up! Frame The bike doesn't need a complete strip down every year. An engine strip down and general poke about would suffice normally but the frame needed painting so everything was coming apart. I had thought about powder coating the chassis but didn't fancy the expense or weight so I went with paint instead. Halfords tool box red is cheap and the colour is about perfect for what I wanted. After a little bit of tidying up including lower engine mount bracket removal and he odd weld I was ready to get...

 When the front wheel is on the ground, I really didn't have too much trouble with the front end on the RD/TZ thing I was riding. The huge gun sight tubes sticking out of the headstock however were a little unsightly though so off I went to Classic Racing Green to see what he could do for me. Andy had talked about chopping my forks before but when I saw him this time he made short work of convincing me to upgrade the internals whilst I was there with top notch K-tech parts. The forks I have fitted to my RD are from a Yamaha FZR400 1WG. K-tech don't do an off the shelf set of cartridges for them but after a fair bit of measuring, Andy was able to specify and demand all the parts he needed to make them. Whilst we were there some fixed rate springs were ordered rather than cutting down my progressive springs and Andy's signature classic look top nuts were also made specially for these 38mm forks.  The parts took a couple of weeks to come together so whilst we wait...

Changing the chassis is a bit of work but I really didn't want to be getting bored this winter so I thought I'd go and mess up my engine as well. The basic plan stood that I would take my existing RD250D aircooled cylinder heads and mate them with a set of RD250LC cases. Why? Well you get a better gearbox, but more importantly the cases are fully rubber mounted. Shakleton the RD250 had suffered greatly with vibration induced lack of structural integrity throughout 2017 so a rubber mounted engine was high on my wish list.  The cases I started shopping for a set of cases as soon as the season ended but could find nothing under £900! Andy Green, one of my racing team mates, offered me a set of cases to get started with. They came from the back of his shed but for all my appreciation for his help and generocity, they looked like they had come out of a canal! These things were covered in grime, missing/ bent studs and some rather seized looking internals would all n...