Giving a dead a bigred another chance to ride again

[Footy]

I recently got a 1985 ATC250es from a friend. It has been sitting in the woods for 5 to 10 years.
I am having some questions for the forum so I decided to start a thread on this machine.
i will get some photos as well.
I noticed yesterday that there are holes in each of the tail light lenses in pretty much the same place.
I am guessing that the bulbs got hot and melted the plastic lenses?
My question is would this be caused by someone using the wrong bulbs, or could these lenses be low quality after market and the polymer just cannot handle the heat from the standard bulbs?
Have any of you seen this before with the 2nd gen bigreds?

[deejaycee_2000]

I have never seen bulbs melt these as they can take quite a bit of heat. Is it clear as day that it is melted holes? Could it not be knocked out in the same place by accident somehow?

[J!m]

I just refurbished a tail light that had a 20W bulb inside. It should be a 5W bulb and they are not easy to find.

[Footy]

The holes are in the middle of the lenses on both taillights.
I have not taken these apart yet but I assume the bulbs are in the center of the tail light.
I will check the watts at some point and that is good info for sure.
At this point I am working towards hearing the engine run and the transmission go through the gears.
I hope to start it in the next day or so.

[Footy]

I just refurbished a tail light that had a 20W bulb inside. It should be a 5W bulb and they are not easy to find.

I might try a LED bulb if I can find one that fits the tail lights.

[pantodd74]

Holes in the middle sound like someone at one time put the blueish lenses in the center for the different colored tail lights?

[Footy]

I have gotten far enough with this project to ride it around the yard. All of the gears shift so i am happy about that.

[Footy]

Seems like most of the fuel petcocks from amazon or ebay have a fuel spigot that is too small (usually around 5mm).
I ordered one from Caltric (also ebay) and the fuel spigot is about 8mm which is about the size from honda but the strainer screen does not fit (too big) into the aftermarket plastic fuel tank.
Seems like nothing is ever easy with these machines.

[Jd110]

Footy, did it come with 2 sealing washers? A round o-ring washer is used without the filter and the flat washer is used with the filter.
Oem Petcock came with one sealing washer at the tank and it can only be used in conjunction with the filter. If you don’t use the filter, you need another sealing washer and also install an inline filter.

[deejaycee_2000]

Agree with the inline filter, I have them on all my bikes for extra peace of mind

[Footy]

Footy, did it come with 2 sealing washers? A round o-ring washer is used without the filter and the flat washer is used with the filter.
Oem Petcock came with one sealing washer at the tank and it can only be used in conjunction with the filter. If you don’t use the filter, you need another sealing washer and also install an inline filter.

I am planning to use an inline filter.
There was only 1 oring with this petcock but I trimmed down the screen so that the plastic base is seated into the petcock as it would have been if the screen would have fit into the fuel tank.