Vintage Dirt Bike Q & A

Hi All,

I know this subject has been covered before, probably just as many times as the "Red Engine Paint", "Water pump Corrosion" or "Swapping the forks for '83 CR480 units"! I just searched the forum and I didn't find much info, so I'm asking again, what is a good fix for the floppy kickstarter on these bikes and does anyone know if someone is repopping these? Thanks for bearing with me on this.....

Kevin

not sure what you are talking about if its like the 81 cr250r there is a spring in side that has to be 1/4 wound or is it that the lever swings out if so take the screw out the slot should be worn out hop it helps

The design is really poor. I am fortunate to have a good friend in Georgia who's a machinist, and he repaired some for me. It was very involved to do it right, and his impression was that the amount of time it took made it commerically unreasonable to do. Robert Boucher, a guy in Minnesota was doing them too, on order and for EBay, and he made the same sort of observation (and charged and got on EBay $250-$275 for a fixed unit).

The repairs typically entail (1) fill-welding the gouged out part of the arm where the spring pawl in the knuckle presses on it, and and then redoing the open and close notches, and (2) then putting a hard material sleeve in the aluminum arm with a new pin.

Step one seems like could be done with JB Weld and some grinding, but the second step still takes some thought.

The 81-84 ATC arms, which are steel, will work in a pinch.