subject: Chicken in a basket case to 100% road legal - Honda CR250 [print this page] Chicken in a basket case to 100% road legal - Honda CR250
I have a dream - buy an old crate and turn it into a road legal lightweight green lane/enduro/evo machine..
The saga begins on the 1st April 2008 (!), drive up to Newport in South Wales and collect a 1987 CR250 non runner which I'd won on eBay. I took my daughter with me for a day out and something to do during the holidays.
So, found the right house, in the middle of a building site, looked at the bike, went ho, went hum, went ho hum and loaded the bike into the van. Now, the woman who was selling the bike for her husband who worked away from home had a back garden full of chickens, she had some more arriving soon so she wanted to get rid of a few. We travelled back into England with a knackered old CR250 in the back of the van and a free white hen sitting on my daughter's lap and it sat there all the way home.
Not much happened to the bike for a few months as I had my first enduro that weekend and then I came down with glandular fever the following week. After a few months I started to strip the bike down bagging up and labelling all the parts as I went. Then my savings got stuck in Iceland as the world's economies started to self destruct. So a few months more and then I went to work.
I thought I'd start with the swingarm so I ordered all the bearings I thought I'd need from Off Road Only (www.oro2u.com). Well, looking back on the process this was probably the hardest work. Not because it was technically difficult but because the old swingarm bearings were so difficult to get out. They self destructed, all the needles fell out and I was just left with the outer shells stuck fast.
When doing the job make sure you rest the swingarm on something solid, Workmates have two much give and concrete coal bunkers crumble. With the help of a neighbour who just happened to have a old strip of railway line in his garage I got the shells out with an aluminium drift and a 4lb hammer. A few weeks later I had a rebuilt swingarm and suspension linkage.
Now I needed to attach it to something so I took the main and rear sub frames to 1st Choice Finishes (www.1stchoicefinishes.co.uk) in Exeter for shot blasting all the hand painted silver paint off and powder coating to as close to the original red as I could get. Luckily I had a patch of the original colour on the frame that hadn't been molested by the Hammerite monkeys.
I had to get the bottom rails repaired as the shot blasting exposed some nasty holes in them. This was done by a local bike shop for a very reasonable price. Then back to 1st Choice to have it all magically turned red. Now that I had a nice frame, I installed the swingarm, bought new rear shock mounting bolts, fitted new shock bearings and it was starting to look like a bike again. I'd left the old head races in the frame when I had it coated so I got those out and fitted new ones, fitted new steering bearings and refitted the stem and yokes just to get them out of the way.
Next up was getting the forks rebuilt, this was done by Jamie Holmes at Bike WorX (www.bike-worx.com) in Exeter. Jamie is an experienced motocross and speedway rider and has also campaigned a CR500 hill climber. A few months later I also used Jamie for the complete rebuild of my engine once I had sourced some parts from Service Honda in the USA. It was cheaper to buy the big bits I needed from the USA than from Honda UK, even after postage and VAT.
Once I had the forks back they were fitted in the yokes. I'd already fitted new wheel bearings into the old wheels which still had the old motocross tyres fitted, so I put the wheels in, added the old handlebars and I now had a rolling chassis. For the sake of the modern world I was trying to buy as many parts as I could online. I'd managed to find an online retailer which stocked 1987 UFO plastics so I ordered a full set, some hand guards and a headlight unit, all in Honda red. I'd always liked big desert racing petrol tanks and the standard CR250 tank was too small for what I envisaged using the bike for, so a plan was hatched.
I came acrossjustgastanks.com, again in the USA, they stocked a 3.5 gallon Clarke desert tank which incorporated the radiator shrouds as part of the tank. I found it listed for sale in this country but it worked out cheaper getting it from across the pond. When it arrived I was relieved to see that their bright red colour was very similar to UFO's 'plast red' that all the plastics were in.
As I mentioned earlier, Jamie rebuilt the engine for me. The reason it didn't run when I bought it was because the engine had seized, the barrel was badly gouged and the head had lots of bits of piston impacted in it, the big end bearing was shot, the clutch casing was broken and the water pump was held together with JB Weld. Instead of a barrel re-sleave which can cause overheating problems I spent a little bit more and had the barrel replated so it was as good as when it left the factory back in 1987.
The complete engine came back to me a mixture of a spanking looking bare aluminium barrel, new side casings and the scruffy old crankcases. Jamie had recommended using black Plasti-Kote BBQ paint to paint the engine, after a quick trip to B&Q for the paint, some masking tape over the engine's ports and a large three sided cardboard box as a painting booth I was ready to go. I wire brushed the crankcases and started spraying, four coats of paint all over the engine and the job was finished. I used the same paint on the radiators too, I only used 1 can for the engine and rads - 6.
A couple of weeks later I got around to fitting the engine which I thought would simply be a case of picking it up, putting it in the frame, standing back and drinking coffee. 1st rule of anything - double or maybe triple the time you think something will take. As I was trying to fit a complete engine into the frame I had to remove the rear wheel, swingarm and rear sub-frame. Once I'd done that it fitted in easily, then another half hour to rebuild the back end of the bike and it looked even more complete. I'd bought a stainless steel bolt set months before on eBay just as a 'that would be nice' purchase so I replaced the most visible bolts with shiny stainless steel items, now the whole thing was starting to look really nice.
Now that I'd done so much in a short space of time I couldn't stop, I dug the ignition system out of a cardboard box and fitted it and was very pleased to see a spark when I kicked the engine over. As it was now about midnight I thought I'd wait until the next day to get it running. Run it did! Having toyed with the idea of getting all the lights working before the MoT, having spoken to Roger Hart I realised I didn't have to, just buy a battery horn and try my luck for a 'no lights fitted' MoT. I'd bought a Pro-Circuit exhaust from the USA as the UK importers mucked me around so much, I repacked the silencer until I thought it wasn't too loud and booked an MoT atGreen Lane Motorcycles in Exeter. Fail! Wheels, now with road legal tyres, too badly corroded and not enough damping in the rear shock.
It was cheaper to buy a second hand shock on eBay rather than get what I had rebuilt so that is what I did. Having priced up complete new wheels or new rims and spokes on my original hubs I went toDave Massam Motorcycles in Colyton for new rims and spokes. 3 months later (long story) I collected my lovely rebuilt wheels with stainless steel spokes and gold anodised rims just like the originals. Fitted the new second hand shock, put the tyres on and then put the wheels back in the bike. Then I booked another MoT test atGreen Lane Motorcycles. Pass - hurrah!
Now it had an MoT I could get it insured. I'd had the bike inspected by the Exeter DVLA Office just before the first MoT test to make sure it was what I said it was. So with a form confirming that I'd had the frame number re-stamped as the original was not very clear, the insurance certificate, MoT certificate and a letter from Honda confirming date of manufacture I went back to the DVLA office to get the bike registered. I was really surprised to be in and out in 25 minutes. I completed a V55 form for 1st registration of a vehicle, paid my 88 (55 registration, 33 tax) and was told I be sent a tax disc with a letter advising me of my age related registration number within 7 working days. The tax disc and letter turned up within 7 days and the V5 about a week later, I was now the proud owner of a 'brand new' D reg 1987 road legal motocross bike.
To get to this stage from purchase took me 1 year 3 months and 28 days. It cost me a bit of a money but I learnt a shed load of skills and I've now built my first ever motorbike, from scratch. I still want to get the lights working as intended, I have a 40W lighting coil fitted to the engine so all I really need is a wiring loom and a switch cluster. I'll get around to it in the winter. The restoration is not yet complete but the bike is now road legal, time to have some fun. To be continued
