So Close!...
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The amount of times I've had a pushbike chain snap on me, and I've gone over the handlebars, because the fricken salt has corroded it
I've had it a few times where I've gotten to work and ended up with a puncture, to repair the tyre only to leave the car park to cycle home and fall flat on my arse
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Link (@ least one) on the chain locked up solid because of road salt. So freeing off the chain and adjusting is going to be my first job. What good is an X~ring chain if it doesnāt survive a couple months of winter?!ā¦
If I'd just done a complete engine rebuild I wouldn't be messing around with a used chain with tight links. How will you feel if you end up with smashed crankcases?
And I'm not sure I'd want an O- or X-Ring chain on a 125 either; when they first appeared in the 80s, advice in the MX world was if you ride an 80 or a 125, stick with standard chains as O-Ring chains take an extra half a horsepower to turn. Now translate this to road bikes; in the cold light of day a well-sorted DT125R mates the power output of a YZ80 with the weight of an XR600, so you really don't want anything getting in the way of what power you have got reaching the rear wheel.
There's also another side to this which is, a lot of people seem to think a sealed chain is the equivalent of armour plating, i.e it requires no maintenance whatsoever and will never wear out. I've seen people in motorcycle shops adjust the pressure washer to a pinhead-sized jet and point it directly at the chain to avoid cleaning it properly. You can't expect any O-Ring to withstand that. Whereas spending 5 minutes with some Jizer and a paintbrush, you'd only need gentle mains water pressure to rinse it off.
Possibly more than anything else, chains are sensitive to how they're treated. A timing chain inside an engine can last hundreds of thousands of miles because it's in a completely clean environment with filtered oil being constantly sprayed at it all the time it's in motion. I used to work for a guy who owned a Yamaha 660 Raptor quad, he fitted a chain oiler and immediately experienced less chain wear in an entire year of Devon greenlaning than he previously got in a single outing. And quads have a lot of grip with those fat tyres meaning they're hard on chains. That thing was an animal, I rode it once and that was enough.
Here's a picture of a chain which regularly did a 40-mile loop of greenlaning and looked like this after every time I cleaned the bike. Nothing special, just 5 minutes scrubbing with Gunk/Jizer and a paint brush, rinse with the hose (a MX bike stand so you can rotate the rear wheel is essential), dry with WD40 (which corrodes nitrile rubber; another thing you can't do with a sealed chain) and bog roll and re-lube. I think it looks more beautiful than a highly polished fairing on a sportsbike, because that is my passport to scalded cat acceleration, reliability when freezing my bollocks off 50 miles from home and a left crankcase without a hole in it. It's a little bit like the passage in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the author Robert M. Pirsig talks about trying to remove a stuck engine case screw and says, until you remove that stuck screw, it is worth the market value of the motorcycle so you have to re-value the screw. And if you're riding through a British winter with salt on the roads, you have to re-value the chain.
A top-of-the-line non-O-Ring D.I.D 428HD costs Ā£25 and you can get the correct split links for like Ā£1 each so any time it needs to come off you can just throw a new split link on. Other ways to bulletproof the drivetrain include using a new front sprocket nut and tab washer, cleaning the output shaft threads with a Dremel wire wheel and degreasing the shaft and nut threads with Brake Cleaner before using blue Loctite and tightening to 60Nm (one person can do this by sitting on the bike, holding the rear brake on and putting a fork leg on the end of the torque wrench with the old chain temporarily refitted), and using genuine rear sprocket bolts and nuts; the 35Nm Yamaha recommend for these is more than double the default 16Nm you'd expect to use on an M8 x 1.25 fastener.
I realise I've gone full Hermione Grainger over this (not the 1st time lol) but you've moved mountains doing a full rebuild in winter without having anywhere to work indoors, I think I would have found it very hard to achieve what you've done, and for the sake of a new chain and sprocket set all that work could be undone (plus the fact a snapped chain at highway speeds is bloody dangerous). Keep cleaning and re-lubing a non-O-ring chain and it'll stick two fingers up at the gritting lorry.
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Interesting read as always @HOTSHOT-III
I know you're right in a lot of what you say, I always think if it cost more...it must be better.
I do need to replace my chain on my DT, not because it's worn or damaged, but because back when I built the bike, I was going for "Style" and therefore sourced a 520 pitch chain, but to be honest I'd rather reduce the reciprocating parasitic losses from the engine. That said, it's difficult for my build since I run RS125 wheels and the RS never came with a 428 Pitch chain thus sprockets aren't supported. Can use smaller chains, but I had that let go on my RS and I had to walk home
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Hey bud! Iāve just spent the afternoon fitting a new JT chain (o~ring!) I ordered for Ā£20.50 yesterday. I canāt believe it turned up so quick! I wish I had a hose pipe! Fuxin salt kills me every (snowless!) winter. Luckily I had sprockets around from before when I had monies!ā¦
SHINY!!ā¦
the chain!
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@SpookDog Cool, my views on O-ring chains on smaller bikes are just an opinion but you have a new chain and that's the main thing
@Calum I ran a 520 conversion drivetrain on a 3DB DTR at one time and never had an issue, including a trip from Southampton to Donington Park for the 1998 British GP. Including campsite mayhem (now sadly banned by the nanny state) I must have done about 600 miles that weekend and the old round slide carb '88 never missed a beat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbSCsNda4e0&t=67s
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Ahh! Real deal endo blue, not like my shabby pretender was! Interesting tail end setup. Was there a number plate light up under?ā¦
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@SpookDog Thanks bud, yes what I did was to make a U-shaped piece of 1mm thick steel with the centre section the same width as the distance across the indicator mounts on the grabrail. The parts each side were about 30mm at the top tapering to 20mm at the bottom and I then mounted it fitted over the indicator mounts, sloping downwards at the same angle. Although not visible in the pic there was enough space under the blue rear mudguard to fit one of those little oval standalone number plate lights, nicked off a Kawasaki Eliminator down the breakers IIRC. Taillight is one of those scaled down TS125R pattern lights and always worked very well, the only drawback being it took a 21/5W stop/tail bulb with a smaller glass about the same size as a 10W bulb which were difficult to get hold of:
Back in the 90s no-one had thought of making tail tidys, all the grey import 400s and 250s had much nicer rear lights and indicators than UK versions of the same bike, so it was something of a pastime to try and emulate that if like me you were stuck in a low-paid job (in a grey import shop ironically) and couldn't afford a V-Twin TZR250 fresh off the container from BAT Motorcycles etc.
Here's a TDR250 with a home-made rear light I made out of 2mm aluminium and a rear reflector lens from a Honda FireBlade. It had a twin bulb holder from a Yamaha Virago which has the rear light bulbs very close together (I cut out the part I needed with a junior hacksaw and screwed it to the alloy backplate before sealing up the holes around the edge with JB Weld). It was extremely bright and passed several MOT tests, and I had to line the inside of the tailpiece with heatproof tape to stop it melting. It also featured tool-free mounting as the TDR250 tailpiece has a shallow ridge on the inside so I shaped it to clip into that and then you just refitted the tailpiece/grab rails and it was pushed against the rear subframe and couldn't go anywhere. Once myself and a mate who had a TZR250 Parallel Twin swapped bikes, I was behind him and I couldn't believe I looked like that, it just looked illegal and against the laws of physics cranked over with 6" of space above the rear wheel. Eventually I sold it to buy a Kawasaki KR1-S, the buyer complained it wasn't original, then about a year later I bought another TDR250 cheap so I contacted him and said do you want to swap the custom rear light assembly for a stock one? He said OK so I rode over to his house and we changed them over. I thought more fool him, the stock TDR250 looks bloody awful with the numberplate stuck below the tailpipes, almost as bad as later KMX125s with the rear mudflap 2 feet long!
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Tail end looks good. The personal touches, gotta love them!ā¦
Quite like the colour scheme as well
Strange, quick question! Have you used or know of a decent front mudflap? Or a frame gusset guard to help prevent muck being thrown up into the front of the engine-barrel-ect?ā¦
Anyone use ACF 50?..
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@SpookDog Cleaning looking good, I've never tried ACF50 but lots of people say it's very good.
Mudguard extender, a lot of the ones I see are aimed at road bikes but it might be possible to make one fit the DTR mudguard if you get inventive with the Dremel:
https://www.powerbronze.co.uk/products/mudguard-extenders.html
Also try and organise a rear shock mudflap (the one that attaches to the bottom of the airbox) or the chrome piston rod will get showered in road crap/salt and once it becomes pitted it will soon rip the seal and knacker the shock. People are asking stupid money for (usually broken) 30-year-old OEM DTR ones on eBay so I always used the universal Acerbis one; thick plastic but easy to cut to size with a large pair of snips and drill the holes where you want them:
https://acerbisb2b.co.uk/products/acerbis-universal-mud-flap
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Cheers bud! Itās just hard work cause Iām really feeling old & achy in my joints (& back!) latelyā¦
Iāve got a couple of the rear flaps that fit under the air box. I just need to find the best way of fitting one. Both embedded nuts have spun and come out. I tried epoxying them back in but they have both āgone home nowā (as my gran used to say!)
The ācasingsā where they fitted are split and useless. Iām going to have to drill them and use small nuts&bolts with decent size washers either side. Itās on the top of my to-do list!
Iāve greased the pads and re~aligned the forks, also quietened down most of the expansion chamber resonanceā¦I thought that mudguard extenders went on the front of the mudguard? I just want a good old fashioned one that clips on the back. There is so much cheap and uncheerfull stuff out there, I was just hoping that there was something that was āhead & shouldersā above the rest?! I thought that you green laners would be in the know!
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Bike is still running copacetic! I know I keep on about it, but it so often is OK for a day or so then reverts to being SNAFUād
This time feels like the real deal.
Iām not convinced that the 3db CDI is terminally fuxed. I think itās more likely a broken core on one of the two āfeedā wires from the stator source coil. Iāll investigate in due timeā¦Got an 18T sprocket ordered to try, maybe even a 19T if it feels right for my riding āstyā (
ās ear comes to mind!) I did have a NOS 55T rear sprocket as well, but itās gotten up and walked off apparently 
Shame, it would of been nice to experiment with the gearing, what with all the extra low RPM torque at hand nowā¦Got some ACF50 on the way too. Got to be worth tryingā¦
Got to suss out how to keep this road running viable during these salty months!ā¦ -
@HOTSHOT-III Lovely looking bikes, very jealous of your ownerships. I just can't seem to get any smokers for a good price my end. My Yamaha is my only bike that actually works. Also, good shout on the Acerbis mudflap, my genuine one done a Houdini and that's exactly what I bought. Can't say I'm worried it's not OEM, I just needed to elongate the holes to get it to fit, it's a tad longer than the stock one but it's not hurting anyone.
Always Originate, Never Pirate!
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@Calum Thanks for your compliments bud, yes all 80s/90s two-strokes are expensive nowadays, looking at 7 grand for a well sorted TDR250 but I paid Ā£1000 for my 1st one in 1993 as no-one really understood what they were at the time.
I guess I was in the right place at the right time but it came at a price in the form of parents etc. getting on at me to think about my future and stuff (my brother went straight through higher education, degree by age 21 but I walked out of school at 16 with no qualifications) but I just wanted to be around motorcycles. Got my fingers burned a few times trying to work for Honda and Yamaha main dealers as an apprentice, answering to a workshop foreman didnāt suit so eventually I ended up as a general dogsbody in a place which upset them all by selling grey imports direct from the US and Japan. Very low wages, I had mates at the time earning three times as much as me working for Mercedes, BMW etc., but they didnāt have what I had; some of the guys at the grey import shop were twice my age, ex-forces/prison etc. but I fitted right in and when there were errands to run theyād let me borrow their GSX-R1100s and stuff like that even though I was still a teenager. The boss was a laugh to be around as well, he was a bit of a barrow boy made good and we shared the same sense of humour. He once got me to record a Mr. Cholmondley-Warner style answerphone message for when the shop was closed, wrote a script and everything and we spent a whole afternoon doing loads of takes until it sounded exactly right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzDcecbHnAs
I stupidly swapped the KR1-S for an RD500LC which was a big disappointment; only 5mph faster than the Kawasaki (which even today is I believe the fastest road-going 250 ever made, Performance Bikes Magazine radar gunned one on an airfield at 139.5mph about 5 seconds before it seized) and it was a big heavy thing with tankslappy 16ā wheels and quite weedy suspension by todayās standards. The engine was a bit strange as well, both banks of cylinders were different and it was needlessly complicated for what it was. And you couldnāt really modify them unless you had a blank cheque book to give Stan Stephens.
The TDR250s were definitely the most fun out of all the two-strokes Iāve owned; all my mates at the time had RG500s, NS400s etc., much better on paper but in real life they couldnāt lose me anywhere. They all had a go on the TDR at one time and came back howling with laughter swearing they were going to go out and buy one the very next day but none of them ever did. You have to remember the French had only invented Supermoto racing a few years previously so in the 90s if you showed most British bikers a CR500 with lights, 17ā wheels/road tyres and a dustbin lid-sized front brake theyād just shrug their shoulders and say ānah, donāt like trial bikesā. In 1994 me and my TZR250 buddy rode up to Donington for the Yamaha Owners' Festival which included free track use for Yamaha owners. We were very tired by the time we got there (weād ridden 200 miles up there on Friday night after work) and ended up colliding exiting the M1 less than 5 miles from the circuit which broke his footrest hanger. The next day we went into the village, bought a MCN and found a Yamaha breaker at a place called Lutterworth 50 miles back down the M1 (which is where Frank Whittle developed all the jet engines in WW2) who had the part for Ā£15 so I rode down and got it, and bought an 8mm allen key from a hardware shop in the town to change it (everything like this suddenly becomes easier when youāre not in southern England any more). On the Sunday (exactly 28 days after weād been there watching Kevin Schwantz take his last ever 500GP win) we were out on the track waxing a lot of bigger bikes, including a particularly obnoxious married couple with matching brand new his ānā hers YZF750s who camped next to us and made fun of our oily jeans, DIY repairs etc. which was very satisfying. Also met a guy with the same bike as me who had a huge āTDRā graphic on the back of his one-piece leathers and had a good battle with him for a few laps.
If I could live that part of my life again I guess Iād do a few things differently but one thing I wouldnāt change is being the proverbial young lad in a bike shop. Crap pay, no qualifications/future but it was a very special time, after being booted out of secondary school, going through the special education system and told Iād never amount to anything I felt valued, like I was right where I needed to be and you canāt put a price on feeling like youāre part of something.
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Sounds a tad more idyllic than a YTS
Life is better when things (& people!) end up where theyāre meant to be. Makes for for a harmonious, balanced world, I recon.
Ta for sharingā¦ -
@SpookDog Try 17 front and 51 back sprocket.
@HOTSHOT-III Nice story mate. You did what you wanted and that is the goal.
I would like to ride the RD, it's a 2 stroke dream for me along with the YZ490.I always try to set goals/dreams and go for them,not for money/power/fame but for the ride and the satisfaction of "yeah done this"
