1984 KLT250 Restoration and Exploding Flywheel Magnets

[berlow94]

Hello,
I recently picked up a 1984 Kawasaki KLT250.
The FB Marketplace ad stated that it didn't run but the motor turns over. After 4 hours of driving to take a look at her I discovered that the motor definitely didn't turn over...
So I took it home for $400 instead of the $800 he was asking for it.
Although it’s electric start ONLY, I’m really excited for the fact that it’s a standard clutch w/ motorcycle 5-speed gearbox. Having driven plenty of quads and a few Honda Big Red’s, I’ve always found the normal ATV semi-auto gearboxes to be kinda boring.
Here's how she looked:




I couldn't even bring myself to look at her with the plastics in that shape so I took a drive out to MA to meet Mike P. at Vintage Motorsports and bought a set of his red fiberglass reproduction plastics.
I then bought some ITP Mud Lite tires (made in the US) and had them mounted at my local dealer.

Once the bike was sitting level and with all of the plastics stripped off I got to work on making her functional again.

First things first, I pulled the plug and soaked the combustion chamber in copious amounts of Marvel Mystery Oil. After 2 days of soaking I put a standard ratchet on the crank bolt and she spun free with relative ease. After pulling the carb and spraying through the intake valve and out the spark plug hole I got the combustion chamber squeaky clean!

Surprisingly enough the brake pads looked brand new, but the linkage was very sticky so I pulled the front and rear brakes apart. Got a new cable for the front and cleaned/polished/lubed all the moving parts. They feel brand new now.

The muffler was rotted out in multiple spots so I found a universal ATV muffler that was designed for this displacement engine and had the right external dimensions and welded on the mounts from the old piece.

I rebuilt the carb with all new jets/seals/o-rings, checked the valve lash, then cleaned the ign. switch and handlebar controls. (Lots of critters made homes in there over the years)
Once I got all of that together I put a battery in and operated the electrics. Surprisingly everything worked except for spark!

After testing all the individual components of the ignition system I determined that the CDI box was dead. I ordered a cheapo chinese one from Amazon, quickly discovered that It was wired completely backwards out of the box, wired it correctly, plugged her in and to my surprise she fired right up!

While I was waiting for chinese CDI box to show up I changed the oil/filter. Flushed the diff out and filled with Redline Heavy Shockproof gear oil. Cleaned/lubed the chain. Adjusted both rear hubs and lubed all of the wheel bearings.

After taking her for a maiden trip down my driveway I parked to check over everything again and discovered that the starter motor had seized.

After pulling the starter and left side crank case cover I discovered that ALL of the flywheel magnets had exploded into pieces!



I was able to clean all of the shrapnel out the best I could but i'm definitely having some difficulty finding a replacement flywheel. New stator and pickup coil seems to be pretty readily available.

The more research I do it seems that this was a pretty common problem amongst many bikes of this generation including the Kawasaki Tecate. I saw on this forum that a member (now deceased) actually had a company manufacture magnets for him, built a jig to line them all up, then epoxied them all in and turned them down on a lathe to the proper dimension.

I do have access to a lathe, but unfortunately the size and shape of the magnets on my 84 KLT250 are completely different than the Tecate ones.

Does anyone happen to have any of these flywheels around that they'd be willing to sell? I obviously need one myself, but i'd also be willing to try to source magnets and take over repairing/rebuilding other peoples flywheels with destroyed magnets. I would offer this to more than just the Tecate owners.

Thanks ahead of time!

Here’s a few pic’s of how she sat before I pulled the crankcase cover.
Just waiting for Bruce at Blue Line Graphics to finish up my decals so people can stop complimenting my sweet looking “Honda”.

[El Camexican]

You have to have confidence in your abilities to order new plastic and rubber for something that doesn't run.

Looks great!

[berlow94]

You have to have confidence in your abilities to order new plastic and rubber for something that doesn't run.

Looks great!

Thanks!
In the short time after my original post I actually found another complete engine off of an 84 on eBay.

It looks like 82 flywheels are available but are a different P/N from the 83+ motors.
The only other part that I can tell is different along with the flywheel is the pickup coil that tells the CDI to fire.
The starter clutch, stator, voltage regulator, CDI box, woodruff key, and fixing bolt all look identical.
I’m assuming the size of the external bumps on the flywheel that the pickup coil sees are a different size and therefore the other coil has a different resistance of windings.

I ordered the right flywheel for my engine off of Megazip, but they are an international company and haven’t shipped yet or been able to confirm that they actually have it in stock.
I’m also trying to acquire an 82 flywheel and pickup coil as an alternative solution.

My backup backup solution is just to use the pickup coil, stator, and flywheel (if they are all in useable condition) off of my eBay parts motor and slap them in.

Fingers crossed on the NOS flywheel though. Once something breaks I hate to replace it with a used part that was just as old and used as the original.

https://youtube.com/shorts/QF4MuWP2JU4?feature=share


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[ATC King]

[QUOTE=berlow94;1520704]
Just waiting for Bruce at Blue Line Graphics to finish up my decals so people can stop complimenting my sweet looking “Honda”.[Quote]

You mean so you stop getting this look when you tell them...Kawasaki.



Afterwards, they probably still ask if it's a Big Red.



It's looking good BTW. That key location though...looks like just the right spot to grab a hacky sack. Not sure what Kawasaki was thinking with that one.

[berlow94]

They sure do!

I'm not sure either! My background in the woods is on a 200 2-stroke KTM woods bike. I'm very used to "nuts on the tank" for cornering. From watching videos, it looks like maneuvering a 3 wheeler quickly around turns definitely takes a different technique. STILL is not a great key location IMO. I think mounted up on/by the handlebar like Big Reds is much smarter.

We'll see, once she's running again w/ new flywheel & stator I might put the original key & switch aside and mount up a different solution.

[berlow94]

Well I found a parts motor for sale on eBay and bought that since I couldn't find a replacement flywheel for sale anywhere.
Luckily the flywheel and stator on the parts motor were in great shape!


Got it all put back together and now I have a new issue.
Spark timing is off. I took the flywheel back off and re-installed just to make sure that I did have the keyway lined up properly. No change.
There was a 50ohm difference in resistance between the pickup coil from my motor and the one on the parts motor so I pulled the case cover again and swapped that out. Still no change.

I can get it to start using choke and high idle (didn't have to touch the choke at all before) and if I can get it to warm up enough, it will run and drive. It isn't happy and still backfires and skips alot, but it does seem to get better once it warms up. It idles perfectly fine though.

I've already installed a new CDI, double checked that the coil is producing a strong spark, and confirmed that the external magnets on the new flywheel are in the same exact spot as the old flywheel.

Other then ordering a brand new pickup coil, I'm not sure what else to do. The fact that it idles perfectly tells me that once the rpm's climb, the pickup coil is missing some revolutions of the flywheel which gives the CDI a bad input. I also noticed while driving it that where I could hit the revlimiter before, it will now rev higher. (Which again tells me that the CDI is getting bad RPM input)

Does anyone have a known good pickup coil for an 84 KLT250/KZ250 laying around they'd like to sell me? (P/N: 59026-1018)

[berlow94]

Well I figured it out!
After realizing that magnets have both a north and south polarity and the fact that the sensor has a coil I realized that the sensor actually gives voltage to the CDI, it’s not an open/closed circuit.

I switched the wires on the pickup coil and she ran like a top!

Went right up the side of a mountain behind my house!





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[berlow94]

Blown away how these perform in the snow!






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