Project NSR

As the year wound down I had to face facts. I was going to have to put the bikes to bed and start packing for my impending year long trip to the States. Yep 1 year away from tinkering with motorcycles only sweetened by a big helping of freedom and as many beers as I could fit down my neck. Any plans I might have had to buy a bike out there were squashed when I took the 'un like me' decision of buying something sensible instead. So I bought Solar panels for the house. Anyhoo before I left, I did stretch the budget a bit and manage to pick up some rather lovely performance parts, ready for me to come home. The first and most exciting purchase is a set of Ethos design GP pipes. With a stainless system and carbon cans that both exit on the right, they look stunning and should give a nice performance boost over the restrictive stock system. Second hand, these weren't allot cheaper than a new set of Tyga pipes but for the quality and "look at me I have cool old tu...

 One really big giveaway that your bike is getting a bit old is when the forks start to get a bit flaky. You look at them thinking how naff they look but at the same time knowing how long and much of a pain in the ass it is going to be to restore them. After all its not going to cause a break down is it? Well I didn't buy the tarts handbag NSR for it to have furry forks so its time to get at them fork stanchions. This wasn't going to work well without being able to get the front end off of the ground and without any paddock stands to hand this wasn't going to be straight forward. I stuck some axle stands under the pegs, getting the back end up and leveling the bike off then  stuck a well padded hydraulic jack under the engine and lifted the front up. With her front wheel off the ground I removed the mudguard, brake calipers then the wheel to give me maximum access to the forks. Whilst I was there I checked the headrace bearing play and was pleased to find them notch fr...

When I looked down into the airbox and saw that thin coating of grime along the intake trumpets I knew cleaning the carbs was a good plan. I had already whilled the airbox off and cleaned all of that gunge off with degreaser leaving me a better view of the carbs themselves. With the trottle held open you could see browny gold wax deposits on the needles that could only mean bad things through the rest of the carb. Mind you the bike ran fairly well so on the other hand it couldn't be that bad could it? NSR World  have a great walk through on breaking down the carb on the MC18-21 bikes. Althought eh cars on the MC28 are different they are pretty similar so this was a good reference to help if I got stuck later on when trying to put this all together. So with the confidence inspired by a few reference photographs and the guidance from the website above, I cracked on with removing all the throttle cables, choke cable and various hoses. Two cross head screws held the clamps do...

The headstock was looking tatty and the mirror stems on my VFR were beginning to flake so seeing as the tape was still on the line from repainting the subframes I decided to do the same for black bits. I had already gone round the bike with a tin of Hammarite recoating some of the fairing brackets and the bar ends so there wasn't allot of bits that needed doing.  I removed the preload adjusters, headstock nut and head stock then looked around for more bits to paint. The bottom bracket of the headstock could have done with a paint but at the time I didn't have anything suitable to use as a stand so I could drop the front end off. This could wait for another day perhaps.   The brake reservoir cap is also metal so that came off and then my attention turned to the brake resevoir bracket. For some reason the previous owner had put a blue anodised after market bracket o this bike. These are far from expensive to replace but i knew the original was black so for the tim...

During the run up I had noticed that I had some rather funky goings on with my indicators. My fronts were permanently on only going out when that sides indicator was selected and the rears were flashing on the wrong sides. that was if they worked at all as they were pretty intermittent. As I was stripping down the bike I took a look at the wiring under the tail unit. All the wiring was connected up correctly yet I was still getting a back to front indication.  I disassembled all the connections A took the time to polish the little brass connectors to reduce resistance in the system and put it all back together again. I tried swapping the wiring round, leaving the common earth as it is and swapping the live wires. Success!  Everything worked as it should but why only when the wiring was plugged in incorrectly?  This was baffling for 10 seconds longer than it aught to be when I realized the indicators had just been installed on the wrong sides by the importer. So ...

Brew in hand I opened the dirty work garage, tripped the alarm off and plonked the cup on the side. Walking over to the other garage (yer I have two, I don't like to brag..) I rolled the NSR out and over to the the second garage where all of my tools were kept. Bumping her up onto the wooden platform that served as floor insulation in this garage, I sat her on the side stand, cursing my lack of forethought in not buying a suitable paddock stand. I grabbed up my allen key bits and went about removing fasteners. This ended abruptly when I was confronted with m10 bolts on the side fairings. Note new fasteners needed! The right side dzus fasteners were okay however, so with this small pannel off it allowed me to take off the lower and left side panels off with a socket wrench. The front filler had a large crack threw it that the importer had plastic welded back together and seeing as the lower clips had cracked on the left and right lower fairings I left this all as one piece...

A week off work gave me some time to get into a quick strip down inspection of the NSR to really get a good picture of what I have gotten myself into. But hang on, I have a [purple] smokin' hot 250cc 2T pocket rocket of joy. Lets fire this thing up!!! I put the ignition card in with a click that brought life to the LCD display of the PGM IV unit and simultaneously disengaged the steering lock: something that had stumped the importer initially with no battery connected and a bike that only wanted to be pushed in circles. I wheeled the bike out of the garage, tuned the fuel to reserve and put the choke on. With the ignition briefly off I gave the kick start a couple of slow pokes to prime things then clicking the card back in and gave her a sharp kick making her immediately rasp into life. The tick over rose then slumped into an uneasy stumble quickly, so I disengaged the choke and felt the bike settle down. Hovering my hand about the throttle the bike continued to burble a...

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 ...