Messages

16

General Two Stroke Talk / Sad Day.

« on: March 04, 2019, 12:30:42 PM »

Hello everyone.

I just got the sad news that our TSM friend Coop has lost his battle with cancer and passed away.

We had sincerely hoped that he would beat the cancer and get back on a bike and that we would have a chance to get to know him better.

When we put the site back up Coop was the first one to reach out to me and offer to help.

Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.

In the days to come we will find a way to honor his memory here.

--Ron.

17

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 21, 2019, 06:10:14 PM »

I've ordered a Lisle 58430 Seal Puller.  I want to replace the crank seals and hate the idea of drilling a screw into the seal.  I'm always afraid of driving the screw in too far.  I'll report back as to how the tool works.

Interesting, I don't have one of those. If it works well though I will order one for sure.

--Ron.

Sorry Ron, the tool did not ship and I wanted to get onto the rebuild.  I ended up pulling them a little cave man style...  Tried the drywall screw method... didn't work, so I went at it with various screw drivers.  The stator side was leaking and came out without too much fuss.  The opposite side was a bit more stubborn.  But with some perseverance and some choice words I got them out.

No problem I ordered one from Amazon, should be here tomorrow. I'll give it a try and let you know!

                                         --Ron.

18

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 19, 2019, 07:11:44 PM »

Good progress!

On the plating, here is what I have at the moment:

Vendor	Cost	Delta
Power Seal	$189.00	$267.04
Mellennium Technologies	$224.95	$231.09
Max Power RPMs	$225.00	$231.04
US Chrome	$243.00	$213.04
Kustom Kraft Performance	$369.00	$87.04
New (RMATVMC)	$456.04	$0.00

This is for a YZ250 but that only matters on the delta from new.

The cylinder is currently enroute back from Powerseal in PA so I will have a report on the quality once it arrives.

--Ron.

19

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 18, 2019, 12:13:53 PM »

I've ordered a Lisle 58430 Seal Puller.  I want to replace the crank seals and hate the idea of drilling a screw into the seal.  I'm always afraid of driving the screw in too far.  I'll report back as to how the tool works.

Interesting, I don't have one of those. If it works well though I will order one for sure.

--Ron.

20

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 18, 2019, 09:40:41 AM »

Back around 2005 I had an '86 MX250 that the CDI went bad. They were no longer available and at that time nobody sold an aftermarket one. I bought two on eBay and both were bad also, the sellers refunded my money and told me to throw them out both times. I actually threw the bike out on county cleanup day out of frustration. I also had an '84 MX125 and could not get lower crank bearings. Luckily I was able to cross reference them to a CR80 big wheel and was able to rebuild it. That was a very fast 125.

Hmm too bad about the 250.

I am going to do an article here shortly about bearings and where to find them.

But the Cliff's Notes version is that they are what manufactures call "standards" i.e. stuff they buy out of a catalog.

Except for a very, very few exceptions where they are one offs (very expensive for the mfg so they don't do that much) you can get almost any bearing for any position from places like Applied Industrial (formerly Bearings Inc.)

Any town of even modest size will likely have a bearing supplier for the local repair and industrial operations.

--Ron. 

21

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 17, 2019, 04:40:30 PM »

Wow that is nice! 

How hard is it finding parts for those earlier KTMs?  I see some good deals from time to time but I always worry about parts.

I may need to do something besides Yamaha next time just for variety.

--Ron.

22

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 16, 2019, 01:36:24 PM »

  Just getting to the water pump seal is a major pain... but I guess that's what winter projects are for...

We are on bike 3 of the quest to build Nanci a Revolution II class race bike for the upcoming season.

So far this one is better than the first two. Other than the usual missing fasteners (this one might be a new record though!) the only really strange thing I have found is they used actual gear oil like you would put in the differential on your car in the transmission (RIP clutch plates...).

The biggest surprise was it really did have a new top end!  No copper crush washers under the head nuts but hey whats a little coolant on the garage floor?  At least it actually had coolant in it. Clean coolant at that.

I finished servicing the shock last night, it needed the bottoming bumper replaced and had some signs of oil on the shaft so new seal head along with fresh oil.

Once I get the wheel and suspension bearings changed I can switch to the front suspension. I'm a bit worried because they said they changed the fork seals.... They aren't leaking so someone must of, but I'm hoping they sent that one out [pray].

23

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: January 07, 2019, 09:34:26 AM »

I actually took it around the block... lets just say I am definitely a two wheel rider... The quad is running so rich, the fumes will burn your eyes. So to dig into the problem,
 
   1st  - I'm going to lower the float, its definitely too high. 
   2nd - will be to pull the jets, and try to get the numbers off of them so I have a baseline. 
   3rd - I'm going to look at the choke (enricher) to make sure its completely closed when turned off. 

Any other suggestions as to the jetting?

That is a good beginning. Too high a float level cause rich jetting across the board so that one should be number one for sure.

--Ron.

24

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Happy New Year!

« on: January 03, 2019, 03:14:27 PM »

Hey, Coop, what part of Texas are you in?

Nanci and I are thinking Texas may be in our future. We took a trip down and really liked the Tyler/Longview area.

There are so many tracks and the dirt, ah the dirt!

--Ron.

25

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: December 16, 2018, 05:54:20 PM »

Well this is a new color I haven't seen inside an engine before.







I'm pretty sure someone put mixing oil into the transmission. You can see there isn't the usual water droplets you get from coolant and the blue stuff that has separated out is oil.

--Ron.

26

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: December 15, 2018, 06:32:53 AM »

Maybe "Whatever (kinda) works" bolts....

--Ron.

27

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: December 14, 2018, 07:29:20 PM »

This may be the worse case of motorcycle abuse and mechanical ineptitude I have seen so far.

These were driven in in place of the front and lower motor mounts on Nanci's project YZ125.



I had too use the BAH (Big Ass Hammer) and a punch to drive them back out.

Fortunately they were wedged into the frame tabs and didn't damage the cases.

--Ron.
 

28

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: Winter Projects....how many do you have going??

« on: December 10, 2018, 05:02:34 PM »

Side note Eric on resistance checking coils. The battery in the meter will start to charge the coil. The longer you leave it on the stranger the readings get.

It is extremely rare for an ignition coil to fail. There is very little to go wrong with the.

racer-x: Sorry to hear that man, been there, not a good time.

--Ron.

29

General Two Stroke Talk / Re: 10/21/18 ride report

« on: October 23, 2018, 08:51:01 PM »

Thanks for the write up.

Where is the facility? It sound very fun!

--Ron.

30

General Two Stroke Talk / Beta Ride Day at Washougal 10/20/18

« on: October 22, 2018, 07:23:40 PM »

Saturday we made the 3 hour trek down to Washougal for a chance to ride (almost) all the new Betas.

Unfortunately the new 200 wasn't available yet, so despite it being on the punch card, it wasn't actually there. 



This is the first time I have ever done a demo day with any brand. It was pretty damn fun getting to ride so many different bikes back to back like that.



After the riders meeting we were turned loose on the bikes, they disappeared fast!



The weather was very atypical for Western Washington in that is was dry, sunny and warm. None of those things we usually expect to see this time of year.

The course started at the National starting gate where they punched the plastic card with the bike you were riding, went through the first two turns and up and over Horsepower Hill then into the trees and down a moderately difficult but fun trail that winds its way above the track and eventually dumped you out behind the staging area.

Everyone got a chance to ride any and all bikes they wanted with the only limit being how fast you could get around the loop and how well your fitness held up.

I ended up riding 9 different bike and making 10 loops. I rode the 250RR Race a second time, not because it was my favorite, but because I wanted to make one more loop and it was available.

My favorite was the 300RR Race. It wasn't as "racey" on the short bit of the track we rode as the 250, but that engine is magic in the tight single track that is off-road in Western Washington.

The primary difference between the race and the non-race is the fork, and I will say that it would be worth the extra money. Universally across the whole product line the Race Edition fork was noticeably better.

I also rode several of the big 4Ts for comparison.  I could never find the right gear on the 430, the 390 was too heavy, the 480 wasn't suited to the tight trails we were on and I passed on the 500 all together.

The 350 was the best of the 4 strokes, but it wasn't nearly as much fun, nor as easy to ride as the 300RR Race Edition.

Nanci stretched herself a bit and rode several of the full sized 2Ts along with the latest version of her XTrainer and the new 125 (which is fun but way under powered for someone of my generous size.)

Here she is on my favorite the 300RR Race Edition.





All in all it was a great time and I am looking forward to getting a chance to do the Yamaha and KTM ones next time they come back to our neck of the woods!

--Ron.