Vintage Dirt Bike Q & A

Hi I'm new to the forum and hope someone can give me some advice. I recently purchased an almost mint condition '74 MT250. 1200 miles it still has the hone marks in the cylinder, the engine had never been touched until I repplaced the head gasket because the head was loose. It has the original Nitto tires. The bike is perfect except for 2 small items: rear brake cable and the spring that activates the rear brake signal. First off the kickstarter interferes with the brake cable (it hits the corner of the U bracket that attaches the cable to the petal very slightly). Nothing appears to be bent it just seems like a bad design. Suggestion on how to fix is it a design flaw or just my bike? Second, the link between the rear brake light switch and the rear brake pedal is missing. I assume there is some sort of spring that goes there? I can't find a good picture of what it is supposed to look like from my Clymer book. The way the spring would have to bend to make it work seems impossible. I have wasted too much time trying to come up with a homemade alternative.

Please help! Pictures are much appreciated. Thanks Rob

Rob,

Re the cable issue; you might want to double-check if the brake pedal pivot has been bent slightly. My buddy dropped his MT250 at, like, 1 mph, and all sorts of stuff got mangled, including the pedal pivot mount. It's also possible the kickstarter is too far in on the shaft, or the cable clevis (U bracket) pivot pin has backed out after losing its cotter pin.

The brake switch spring is (discontinued) Honda P/N 35357-358-000. Here's a link to a place that apparently has 3 in stock:

http://www.hondarestoration.com/nosResu ... Sport-1976

Another link to the shop manual, right here at VDB:

http://www.alp-sys.com/honda-elsinore/m ... 5mt250.pdf

Check out page 31 (it's actually the 33rd page of the .pdf file), and I believe there are other photos in there that might help too. It looks to me like the spring runs straight from the clevis to the switch.

Ray

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'74 CR125M (175cc), '75 MR175, '82 RM250Z, '08 YZ250F, '14 Zero FX electric, '14 Zero MX electric, '18 Alta MXR electric