New to Me 200m

[ZacH_GrifF]

Pick up a 1985 Honda 200m yesterday. Has a little bit of rust on the chain guard and brake drum housing and the tank will need some fixing, but its all there. Guy sold it real cheap. Bought it thinking it was locked up but the starter was just locked up on it. Pulled the motor last night. Got really lucky the exhaust studs looked terrible but amazingly they both came out easily with a regular box end wrench haha. Went ahead and tore the top end down. Definitely needed a new cylinder. Ordered a good used one and piston off ebay so it should be running next week. Plastics are in great shape, as is the forks, headlight assembly, and wiring harness. Even has the original mudflaps, and the exhaust is intact too. I think it'll make a nice rider.

[BarnBoy]

Nice! Love to see people fixing up 200M's. Wish I could find ones like that for cheap up here. What brand of piston are you buying? Or are you not boring it oversize? I am looking at rebuilding my 200M in the future, so if you are able get some pics while you are inside it I would appreciate it. Should be a great bike, lots of potential.

[ZacH_GrifF]

For now I'm just gonna get it running so I'm just running a stock piston with new rings and a hone. I'll probably do what I usually do and run a xr200 cam and 10.25:1 piston. Makes em pretty peppy motors.

[ZacH_GrifF]

Got it running. The used ebay cylinder, piston, and rings looked so good I decided to just run with it and I got lucky haha. No smoke at all. Still needs some carb work, but it works good. Fixed the starter. Shifts through all the gears fine. I think this was a low hour bike that someone let sit with the plug out, because the crank looked mint. The rod has zero wear/slack on it. Clutch pulls great. Lots of little stuff left to do like fixing the airbox, putting a pull rope in the recoil, etc...

Had to just swap my 185s rearend on it, because the original axle was really rusted, and I didn't want to swap the hubs to use these tires I put on. Also, having to use my 185s tank to run it the 200m tank is rusted pretty bad.

Still gotta put the rear plastics back on and figure out what I want to do about the rust in the 200m tank, but here it is...



Original Top end



Ebay top end

[BarnBoy]

Looking good Zac. You did good on that one.

Boy does that old top end look bad though. An idea for the 200M tank that is rusted; you might look into electrolysis. Quite easy to do. I did it on an old steel jerry can and it took the rust right off. Just got to seal it will something or at least flush to get the water out so it doesent flash rust. I have heard that Red Kote is supposed to be good. Heres a good link I found on the topic.

http://www.myfordtractors.com/electrolysis.shtml

[ZacH_GrifF]

Thanks for the link.