Project NSR

Back in the garage After 8 months being bike free I am finally back in the garage getting some work done. During my time away I had subdued my need to play with motorcycles by buying bits for them. As a result I had a rather large collection of bits in my bags and waiting for me when I got home. Sharing garage time with the VFR800  I have started to dig through the long list of tasks I had set for these machines. Top of the list would be anything that was easy to do before the bike goes off  for respray and wouldn't need taking off again straight away for that task. Front brake master cylinder One item I had picked up in the states was a radial front brake master cylinder off of a late model CBR1000 fireblade. I would have loved to put some Brembo porn on here but as this was only $60 with everything bar the reservoir I couldn't really justify the extra. Plus the levers were a better match and the brake light switch is the same with the Nissin unit....

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 of the coolest bits about the NSR250 MC28 is the smart card PGM IV ignition. One of the least cool bits about the NSR250 MC28 when it comes to tuning is the smart card PGM IV ignition. All you need is an hrc P-030 card and the bike is fully derestricted. With a wire splice you even get your lights back. Unfortunately hrc cards are like hens teeth and even if you did find one, the speedo becomes one big temp gauge so making the bike even less popular with the law on the road. Clearly the thing to do here is to bin the PGM IV unit and buy a programmable ignition unit like the one offered by  Zealtronic . Plug it in, book some dyno time and happy days your bike isn't only derestricted, it now has an optimized ignition curve with exup valve opening times to match! But that does away with the smart card and that was one of the coolest things about the MC28 wasn't it? The HRC card might be an idea for the future but for now there are a few things I can do. First off w...

 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...

I have already mentioned early on in the break down process that the boot/ tool box lid catch was an issue. Well in the seance that it wasn't there that is. I made a quick temporary fix using tie wraps that worked perfectly well but for obvious reasons I wanted something a little better. Still with no original part available I opted to fabricate something out of some old bits of aluminium that I found lying about. It didn't need to be a work of art as it's all a bit out of sight but it needed to be functional. One of the scraps I had was an L bracket with two holes along one edge and a slotted hole in one corner of the other edge. The other piece was a straight piece with a long angle cut out of one corner, it was also base coated green unlike its plain ally, L shaped buddy. Both pieces had rounded corners and the L bracket had two sprung anchor nuts with it that would prove to be useful. The L bracket just so happened to have its two holes drilled exactly where the ...

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...

You know when you can't see something but you know it's there and you know its not quite right? Well that's how I felt about my NSR's subframes. They were far from ghastly but they were spotted with corrosion from where wiring looms had rubbed and heavy handed toolmanship had chipped away at the old paint. So having raided Halfords for some paints I took all of the subframes off of the bike. I have seen and liked the Tyga clock stay and front fairing subframe but I still decided to spray the originals. I have seen a forum post where someone managed to snap their Tyga clock stay during disassemble (sorry couldn't find a link), putting me off that a little and for the time being it was worth tidying up the original parts whilst I already had the paints out. The first job was to remove all of the corrosion and old paint. This I achieved with a couple of wire brush bits on the end of my drill and smoothed off with some wet and dry. With all of the parts off and ...

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...