Vintage Dirt Bike Q & A

Hello! I am very excited to be on this site. I own two MT250's: a 1974 with the orange stripe and 2000 original miles, it was what I call a "hanger queen" in that it was sitting in a collectors warehouse for 20 years before I bought it. The mainshaft bearing was totally rusted and as a result the shaft was frozen. (Most likely because someone began a repair or rebuild process and left the entire head off the bike and the camshaft exposed to dust and moisture in the air for years and years.) I am rebuilding it currently and did my best to match the motor paint. All else on the bike is cherry except a university sticker and a dealer sticker. The cylinder was still within specs and I ordered an original factory spec piston, which I'm picking up today. (I did find something odd when I split the case, I found a two peice washer that dropped out as I split the case. I can't find a two peice washer in Haynes diagrams or Clymer?? I'll most likely ask about that on a new thread.)

My second MT250 is a 1976 with blue gas tank stripe and white fenders. The best I can gather is this was a paint color and fender color for the 125 in 1976 wherein this was a rarity with MT250's. It has 3000 original miles and it was a "barn find". I could not believe how pristine the bike still is. It has all the rubber on the kickstart, shifter and some wierd little rubber thing on the kickstand. Almost no rust and I do not see any evidence it was every subject to painting anywhere after leaving the factory. It did have some wiring issues from corrosion which I'm cleaning up now. Luckily I have a background in electronics so this does not look to difficult. I am tempted to update some of the elctronics to some better technology , but don't want to change the original nature of this bike. I don't like the oil ijection unit as I marine mechanic of old oil injected outboards that was the first tthing I threw in the trash. If I keep the oil pump I pplan on adding a small LED or something similar to give me a visual indication that oil is pumping or not, perhaps a oil flow gauge like many boats have for fuel flow. This would not be an unreversabl echange so I guess it would not hurt.

I need to go work on my bikes and this screen is doing something weird where I can't type furhter without the page scrolling back up. I guess that means I've typed my limit!


Cheers and I look forward to chatting!