Where are we going

Where did all this come from anyway?
Well that is a good question but for the time being at least you are going to be finding out where this project has already been as this blog is a little way behind so I will try not to spoil things.
Lets start from the original plan. That being to buy a  2 stroke 250 sports bike to fill that gap that I missed out when I was starting out on bikes. The hope with this machine was to give me a fun bike that I could fettle and tweak whilst my trusty VFR800 RC46 remained my main work horse. It basically came down to a short list of the NSR250 MC18 (late model) and 21. There was also the wild card of a VJ22 RGV250. I have been a bit of a Honda rider of late and the Suzuki was the one that got away when I went GSXR400 instead but my riding history is for another day. This was not an exclusive list however. It was all a matter of what is available now? Many other bikes like the KR1S were getting rare so a bit steep and the the only TZR that really did it for me was the 3XV and that also came with a fruity price tag for a bike that would have been a second choice. This didn't discount them as options though. I even briefly flirted with the idea of getting an NSR150 SP I found down in Cornwall. This was the same for the MC28 NSR. If they came up at the right price then they were getting a cheeky bid and as you have already seen; one of these came through.

Where are we going?
The MC28 is the cream of the NSR250 line, tip on the tree and dripping with cool tech. Well her looks and age put her above the rest but as I'm sure many of you know; tuning wise, these are not so great and tuning was supposed to be a big part of this purchase. Doh!
Never the less I now own a dream bike so I need to decide what to do with it to get it from a tatty but fairly original example to a highly desirable and fun to ride machine.

                VS                              

Looks
These are far from being bad looking bikes, so her good looks have kept me out of the Tyga performance bodywork section. The one bit I would have changed, being the mudguard, has already been done to this bike. The aftermarket mudguard does point towards a few problems with the bodywork though. One being her identity crisis with her clothes and the other being the state of them. The wheels and colour sticker tell me she is a Red white blue (RWB) but her front and side fairings are quite clearly Blue white red (BWR). The paint is rough all over bar the wheels, which are fairly tidy for the bikes age but otherwise a respray is going to be needed.
The standard thing to do here is to go for a Rothmans paint job as it is the nicest colour scheme this bike ever left the factory with. but that was on SP's and this is an SE so wouldn't feel right. So if I'm staying honest to the model then that leaves me with the RWB of BWR in either this or the later style. Annoyingly I like them all so picking has been very tricky. I still haven't really chosen!
I had decided on staying true to the colour code and keeping her RWB. That was until I found a guy near me who would powder coat the wheels white for £70 the pair! So now I am stuck between these two colour combinations and trying not to think about the newer models as it would be just as easy to paint the wheels black.
Food for thought on this is what direction to go panel wise. Do I repaid and respray the fragile originals or buy all new painted copies. Now I am no fool, £450 for a full set of plastics painted is stupidly cheep and I can only expect quality issues. However having spoken to people who have bought these I have mostly been hearing good things. In buying the best of the cheep stuff people have had some nice looking fairings for half the price of a simple respray.
Either way when this is done it needs to still look as stock as possible with only the odd hint as to the fettling under the plastic.
The tank on my bike does need painting though so its getting at least that painted so it might be a case of when in Rome...
You can see all of the colour options on the NSR250.net website and here is an example of the after market fairings I am considering. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this so stick a comment below.
Getting away from the plastic paint work for a sec, there is still allot of work that needs doing to other painted surfaces. All of the subframes are starting to show corrosion, so are the top & bottom yoke, the forks are also looking rather furry.
More will be told after a strip down but for now the plan is clear, tidy up the little bits and hope to have finally made a decision by the time its respray time.

Performance, Handling etc
It is important to remember that I don't want this to become an outrageous cash cow.
Just a small one would be fine.
A dream sheet of bits would have me fitting VHM heads (to get around the hrc front cylinder head mod where there isn't one anymore and I get to have cool gold bits) Tyga pipes with Arrow cans, airbox mod, a jet kit, hrc stuffer blocks and have a good go at flowing and porting this engine. The big spending bits will be done in a year when I should have some free cash to throw about. But like I said this is a dream sheet so some ideas may fall away in the aim of keeping this cow manageable. Until then I have whatever bargains I can find and whatever I can do with a file and some wet n' dry.
Handling wise I won't be messing about as there really isn't much reported wrong with these bikes and i won't change anything till I find a problem. A cheeky ride showed the bike to be firm (well I have been riding a sports tourer) and quite capable of putting the power down on the crap Z roads near me.
The brakes fitted to this bike are the same as those fitted to all  Fireblade models that weighs near twice what this bike does. The only difference being smaller rotors on the NSR. So much as the Brembo's do look cool I will be sticking with Nissin here. Front lines are braided already leaving the back with original hoses still fitted needing a replacement.
I intend to keep this running on unleaded as it will be for road use as well as track and for the same reason the oil will remain injected.

Where to from here?
With a clear(ish) plan made I can now set out to bring this bike back up to a good standard. I have 2 months to get things tidy before I have to leave this project for a year. Then with some pennies in the bank I will hit this hard and finish the job.
So for the next thing to do I will need to strip this thing down to get a better idea of what is going on down there.
It's time for the little 2 stroke to get her kit off!