Picked up this old rocket. Big Plans!
The bike when I picked it up was 1 owner and just been ridden, thats it , but the engine was worked on by a bike mechanic. Still has plenty of compression just general wear and tear and neglect of a bike that age. ie bearings, linkage bushes fork seals etc.
My aim is to build it into 144. The only thing I'll be getting done is the 144 top end. So far I've rebuilt the forks and rear shock and gone through alot of the nuts and bolts that were seized, rounded or torn off which must of been from superman hanging off them with a 1 inch drive socket set. haha
Its a bad phone photo but its the only one I got when I first got it..
Bad black plastics and all! And dodgy stuff everywhere. All the bolts had no anti seize and seemed to be torqued up to "FT" tension (*@#in Tight) as we say.
Rode it for a while then gave it a freshen up. Flu designs sticker kit and full set of new plastics, FMF fatty and powercore 2 silencer. Not too sold on the graphics, might change them down the track.
Another bad night time dodgy mobile phone picture. Sorry. I didnt even ride it like this...
Then I decided to pull it apart.
Used my arms and hands in a sequence of motions. Result was back to bare metal then waved a spray gun around a bit and this happened.
New Swingarm linkage bushes and bearings, polished the swing arm and started to bolt it back together.
Bottom end is rebuilt.
With new OEM crank, bearings and balance.
Every bearing replaced. Every seal. 5th and 3rd gear dogs were a bit rounded, so they got replaced. Drive shaft collar, Crank collar. New gear selector drum segment. Drum stopper from a 02, has a better design. All new springs on p/v gov, shift shaft, shift stopper... New clutch plates, steels/fibres and springs along with the billet clutch basket. The list goes on. Everything will be tight and operating like new in there like its just rolled off the showroom floor.
The 144cc top end is being built and should be shipped shortly. Its a bored to 144cc and re-plated 02 cylinder. Ported/polished and high compression head. All done by Harris Performance in Texas.
Installed a divider plate into the Mikuni TMX 38 I'll be running instead of the TMX 36. Cost me $8.60 for a length of 1.6mm alloy. And about 3 hours of fiddling around. Works the same as a "Power now" insert except its on the straight bore side of the carb instead of the bell end. I made a jig with and straight edge and stopper for length, used a fine tooth hacksaw blade and some fine needle files. It was a nice fit, tapped in with a hammer. And a little bit of epoxy (devcon plastic steel) for extra safety.
Hopefully it works well with this. Boyesen RAD valve. Nice bit of gear.
My aim in this is to try get low rpm air speed increase for a bit more bottom & response and maybe torque. TMX carbs are not strong in the low rpm air signal department.
New ASI Aluminium Radiators. 40% larger. Dual cores. Should keep the little monster cooler. I'll be making my own aluminum radiator braces that has all the mounts built in to run a 05 yz gas tank.
So pretty much I'm waiting on the top end to arrive from Harris Performance. Suspension to be finished getting re-valved. Suspension tuner is still waiting for parts to come in for the forks and shock.
Once the motor is tuned and run in...
I have a friends stock 02 yz125 to run a comparison to my heavily modded 99 yz144 on the Dyno.
Should be interesting! Stay Tuned!
Cheers
Street Kleaver
