F-F-F-Foolin'!

[Motorious]

Well this fool went ahead last night and pulled the trigger on an '84 250R that I'd been thinking about buying off c-list for the past couple days.

Ad went like this:
"1984 250 R atc - $400
1984 Honda 250R atc run good needs silencer was in the process of restoring it
But got layed off need money it needs some parts front fender
Headlight pics via text messages only"

Short on cash so I ended up paying him $200 and trading this cool little 47cc pocket bike motor powered "micro cart" for it (of which I had only about $100 invested into it).



It's a bit more of a project than I anticipated, but it's a runner and based on the brief little screaming rip (sans silencer down a residential street at 7PM ) the seller took up and down his street, it's fast as hell.

The Good:

Straight frame
Good swinger/axle bearings
Good forks (might need new fork seals though-no biggie)
Freshly painted (spray canned, but the PO did a respectable job on the frame, pegs, shifter, motor, and exhaust at least; gas tank is a little crappy, but still looks OK)
Good seat
Good tires
Runs and Rides
Grab bar and skid plate in good shape (not mounted ATM)
Adjustable rebound damping on the rear shock

The bad:
Needs
New plastics
Headlight
Front brake MC/brake line (contemplating stealing the bright, shiny, new aluminum Nissin MC and line off my 200X-not sure if it'd work though)
Control pods
Might need new chain/sprockets
Needs a silencer
No airbox
Needs parking brake lever/cable
Needs adjustment barrel for clutch lever
Gas tank dented
Harness has some cut wires
Handlebars bent slightly
Has twist throttle (think I'd rather have a thumb throttle)

The really bad:
Rear shock may be a little tired (makes a bit of a wheezing sound when compressed really hard)-verdict is still out on that
Discovered some engine leaks around the motor that were not there after it was ridden by the PO before I bought it last night (I know this because I checked very thoroughly with a flashlight in a lit garage last night)-rolled it outside to take some pics of it this afternoon and discovered the apparent head gasket leak, a little oil on the bottom of the motor near the drain bolt but also right in the center of the motor cases, and a little fluid near the front drive sprocket......crap

Seems like the bad list is waaay longer than the good, and I've got my work cut out for me on this thing. Really disappointed about the oil leaks, apparently sometimes it takes awhile for them to manifest. Most likely I'm going to have to at least replace the head gasket. But oh well, for the price I still think I did OK.

Without further delay, pictures of my Semi-Polished Turd:

[whyzee]

I think ya did fine. Are you going to do a full restore?

[hillbilly 200x]

Thats is a great find.. change the back tires out for something differnet if you can

[Motorious]

whyzee-with my current budget that's not likely to happen anytime soon; the immediate goal is to just get it in decent riding and looking shape. If I had the money though, I'd love to do a full-frame off resto-mod, so if things change, that may happen.

hillbilly-yeah, some meatier low profile tires and rims always works wonders on these things. I may have to sell my 200X in order to fund this new project.

I've never ridden a 250 2 stroke trike, can't wait to experience what that is like (200X just doesn't have enough cojones for me).

I've also never seen a 2nd or 3rd gen R in person before...these things are BADAZZ...pics don't do 'em justice...never realized how long the forks are...looking forward to riding this badboy.

[HondaRidr]

Congrats on the fooler. The R will blow the 200x out of the water! I went from a 84 200x to a 83 250r and love it! A pipe and a bigger carb wakes the foolers up a lot.

[Motorious]

Spent a couple hours fiddling with the R today, my first baby steps towards getting her trailworthy again.

Found a clutch lever adjustment barrel that fit perfectly from my FZR600 parts bike, installed it on the trike and adjusted the cable.

Pulled the spark plug, discovered it wasn't even finger tight, saw that it had spit some fuel from the hole on top of the head, and apparently some if it had dripped down the sides. Proceeded to check the torque of the head nuts; seems like about 3 or 4 out of 6 were a little loose. I have some hope now that I might not have to replace the head gasket. Plug was a little fouled (but not too bad looking) so I cleaned it up with an air compressor powered spark plug cleaner (handy little device), checked the spark (looked good). Got a very rough idea of the compression by plugging the spark plug hole with my finger while turning it over with my hand; blew my digit very nicely off the hole felt and sounded nice and robust.

Had a little scare when I decided to wiggle the axle again to check for bearing slop and noticed some wobble in my right rear wheel at the hub. Thought the axle splines might be stripped, but thankfully it turned out to be a loose wheel/axle nut. Wobble went away after I snugged the bolt down.

Ran into a little snag when installing the grab bar as 2 of the mounting hole threads were buggered. Cleaned them up real nice with a M8 1.0 pitch tap, found some nice matching bolts with lockwashers, problem solved.

Took a lot of restraint on my part not to start it up and give it a little rip around the ranch, but I don't think my landlords would have been too thrilled with me spooking their horses and dogs with the snarling obscenity that is an unmuffled 250 2-stroke (I need to at least wait until they're not around ).

Still haven't tried to adjust the chain yet, picture in the manual is very bad, and I'm not sure what the chain adjuster looks like. It's obvious where the lock bolts are, but the lousy B & W pic isn't clear enough to definitively show what the adjuster looks like. There is a large slotted ring-like the compression ring on the rear shock-between the bearing carrier and the sprocket; for the life of me I can't figure out how adjusting it might tighten up the chain, but it's the only thing near where the manual depicts where the adjuster is. Can anybody be kind enough to give me some '84 250R chain adjusting tips?

[HONDA_ATC_FREAK]

Thats it you found it, by the bearing carrier. DON'T USE A SCREWDRIVER TO TURN IT theres a tool made for it, if you do you'll end up with a chewed up mess like mine the previous owner left me with it.

[Motorious]

Thanks for the info ATC_FREAK.

A little too late to save the adjuster from damage though, as the PO already buggered it up pretty good with a screwdriver as well.

Still, it makes no sense for me to make it any worse, so I'll just wait until I get the proper tool.

[atc007]

The carrier is a cam,,it's oblong in the swingarm. As you twist back,,it pulls the axle back. A GOOD pair of channel locks,or very skinny pipe wrench will work nicely to adjust it. IF,,it is free,,which it probably is not. They tend to seize up under the disc holder,,requiring a disassembly to clean and lube everything up.

[Toledo_Tommy]

Looks like you got a fair trade . The previous owner must have thought flat black paint was restoring . lol I don't know what area your in and what bikes like this sell for in your town but in Toledo you can get a complete fooler for like 400-800. They are fun machines , I know alittle about them . I didn't pay much for mine and it came with a parts bike. I'm sure you will have a blast on it !

[Motorious]

atc007-thanks for sharing that; I got ansty today and remembered that I have a narrow-jawed oil filter "pliers" that was just about the right diameter for the chain adjuster ring. Took a lot of effort, but I finally got it to move without effing it up too much more (I helped it along a bit with a few well placed shots of P' Blaster). So initially it seemed to only want to turn forward (clockwise), and after a bit of movement I realized it was loosening it (whoops). Changed direction and it seemed to get tighter, ring got harder and harder to turn, until it reached a certain point (chain tighter than when I began, but still really loose) the adjuster started to turn easier again, and then chain loosened again. Went back and forth this way for awhile, until I decided that A) either the adjuster is broken or (more likely) B) the chain and sprockets are worn and need replacing; or probably even more likely given my luck these days) C) a little bit of both. Do you think my chain adjuster is working properly?

Toledo_Tommy- I live in Washoe Valley NV, between Reno and Carson City (it's in my sig). I've never seen a running 2nd gen 250R at this price before (he would have taken $300 if I had the cash), so I jumped on it. Cheapest R I've ever seen in my area was an '82 that I paid either $100 or $125 for, and yes it was complete, although it was pretty trashed and motor needed at the least a top end job. I wanted to restore that one frame-off including powdercoating the frame and swinger, but I had to sell it due to my bitchy ex landlord complaining about it (wish I still had the silencer from it right about now). I didn't do too badly though, I ended up selling it for $200. Right now this 1st gen R is for sale for $350 in my area. Said it runs, but it's hard to start due to sitting (who knows though ):http://reno.craigslist.org/mcy/2676177854.html

Kinda had a craptastic time working on the fooler today. After greasing all the zerk fittings, messing with and oiling the chain, I decided I couldn't stand it no more and had to start it and take it for a little spin. Pushed it off the property a ways and away from the closest neighbor to avoid pissing anybody off too badly.

It was very hard to start, but eventually I got it fired up and ring-ting-tinging. Seemed to be smoking a lot, didn't want to idle, but revved up pretty well. After just 2-3 minutes (just as it was warming up enough to ride), she started bogging, (like it was running out of gas) and died. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to fire again. Plug was dark grey, but fairly dry, great spark, compression felt good, gas seemed to be flowing out the petcock-although it had an odd amber tint to it and smelled kinda funky (I've seen bad gas look and smell that way). Getting dark so I decided to call it a day.

Rather than pushing it back a rather long way up a slight grade, I decided to tow it with my Cherokee. So I attached a strap to the steering head and the other end to the bumper and started towing; bad idea, the trike wanted to roll faster than the Cherokee and kept trying to attack my poor Jeep from the sides. So I decided to try towing it from the grab bar, thinking that with the front tire towards the back it would track behind the Cherokee better. Wrong again; the handlebars kept pushing to one side causing the trike to turn to the right, and I kinda had to drag the thing slowly cockeyed behind me worrying all the while about it toppling over. So I get to within spitting distance of my house, and the trike falls over. Crap. My first crash and I'm not even riding the thing. Now significant damage done, but it did bend my clutch lever into a nice graceful curlicue on the end. I don't like it, makes it harder to pull in the clutch.




So I pull the carb, and it's all shiny and clean looking (inside and out), but it's not the stock unit, and it has a huge main, venturi, and slide. It's a Mikuni VM 34 with a 310 main and a 34mm venturi ( according to wikipedia, stock carb for the '84 carb had a 30mm venturi , and the main jet's should be around a 158. Seems like too much carb for this thing. Also found a lot of oil in the fuel, and it looked kinda like motor oil instead of 2 stroke. Wondering if my crank seal's are bad now. And to top it off, discovered my carb intake to be cracked.

Can I get this to work on my 250R, or do I need to buy another carb?

http://www.google.com/products/catal...ed=0CDsQ8gIwAg

[Toledo_Tommy]

Great story ! Sorry but i couldn't help but to laugh , haha. I would seriously invest in maybe a small tilt trailer. To answer your question about the carb , Yes it will work great ! That is one of the best upgrades you can do to these machines. To bad is not a Keihin pwk though but hey it's still way better than a stock carb. I would drain all the gas out of the tank , start with the proper 2 stroke oil , replace the cracked boot , put the proper main jet in it. Now Has the motor been ported do you know ? Most of the time you can look into the intake to tell and compare it to stock porting. Also if it has aftermarket pipe on it i would go up one jet size and if it's been ported i would go up another 4 or 5 sizes then start tunning it in.
Good luck getting her running.
p.s. I wish i wasn't onboard for my first crash ( broken collar bone and hand ) Atleast you didn't get hurt.

[Motorious]

Actually, I do own a small trailer with built-in ramps; just too lazy to hook it up to tow the R the relatively short distance back to my house, and I didn't realize that towing it directly behind the Jeep would be such a PITA.

That's good news about the carb, thanks for sharing that. Has the stock expansion pipe on it, haven't taken off the intake/reed box yet to check if it's been ported. Need to get a silencer for it still, haven't decided yet to whether to go OEM or aftermarket, but probably leaning towards aftermarket at this point to go with the naked Uni airfilter. So I guess the proper sized main to start off with would be closer to the stock carb's 158? I'm also pretty high up here, ride about 5200-7200 FT elevation.

Love how easy the carb was to pull on this thing, especially with the airbox missing...beats the hell outta yanking a 250SX carb by miles (I'm sure Fabio can relate )

[bigworm626]

Get rid of the 200x, with that monster, you don't need anything else. seriously!! You'll need to pay for your addiction..

[Motorious]

I hear ya bigworm, once I get the R going I doubt I'll want to ride the X except maybe when the R is down. Still, it would be nice to keep to have an extra trike in case I can ever find someone around here to ride with me...and isn't afraid of the almighty 3 wheeler and it's dangerous rep.