So Close!...
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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!…
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?…
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! It’s just hard work cause I’m really feeling old & achy in my joints (& back!) lately…
I’ve 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 ‘gone home now’ (as my gran used to say!)
The ‘casings’ where they fitted are split and useless. I’m going to have to drill them and use small nuts&bolts with decent size washers either side. It’s on the top of my to-do list!
I’ve greased the pads and re~aligned the forks, also quietened down most of the expansion chamber resonance…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 ‘head & shoulders’ 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 SNAFU’d
This time feels like the real deal.
I’m not convinced that the 3db CDI is terminally fuxed. I think it’s more likely a broken core on one of the two ‘feed’ wires from the stator source coil. I’ll investigate in due time…Got an 18T sprocket ordered to try, maybe even a 19T if it feels right for my riding ‘sty’ (
’s ear comes to mind!) I did have a NOS 55T rear sprocket as well, but it’s 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 now…Got some ACF50 on the way too. Got to be worth trying…
Got to suss out how to keep this road running viable during these salty months!… -
@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.
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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 £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 didn’t 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 didn’t 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 they’d 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 16” wheels and quite weedy suspension by today’s 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 couldn’t 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 I’ve owned; all my mates at the time had RG500s, NS400s etc., much better on paper but in real life they couldn’t 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, 17” wheels/road tyres and a dustbin lid-sized front brake they’d just shrug their shoulders and say “nah, don’t like trial bikes”. 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 (we’d 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 £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 you’re not in southern England any more). On the Sunday (exactly 28 days after we’d 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 ‘n’ 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 “TDR” 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 I’d do a few things differently but one thing I wouldn’t 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 I’d never amount to anything I felt valued, like I was right where I needed to be and you can’t put a price on feeling like you’re part of something.
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Sounds a tad more idyllic than a YTS
Life is better when things (& people!) end up where they’re meant to be. Makes for for a harmonious, balanced world, I recon.
Ta for sharing… -
@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"
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I haven’t found a gaiter that doesn’t keep in wet. I’ve pulled them in the middle of summer and had dirty, rusty (seal clip) water run out. I even made drain holes but it didn’t seem to make any difference…
I might try the neoprene ones. If they fail I’m just gonna go with old fashioned dust boots, maybe with stonechip protection extentions. Just to keep the couple inches above the seal of the stanchion from chipping…
Edit: I’m going to try the neoprene ones. I doubt that they last long, but as long as they get me through the salt season (& I dry it all out before fitting) well sealed I’m okay…
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Bikes developed a horrible ‘snatch/shunt’ when changing gear under hard acceleration. Feels like a loose chain but isn’t. The rear linkage is the only point with wear.
Remember to get a bush kit for the rear linkage! Is an All Balls the one to get?…Also, I’m getting a lot of fuel mess around my petrol cap. The seal is actually fine so I’m guessing it’s the pressure vent in the cap?
Anyone recommend a decent replacement? Or are OEMs available?… -
@HOTSHOT-III hey man appreciate the memories. As a 25 year old struggling to get a 35 hour work week and is constantly seeing my piers drive nice cars, have mortgages and all of the rest of it it’s nice to be reminded life isn’t all about money and looking good for other people it’s going it your own way and doing what you love. I relate a lot to what you said and the weight on my shoulders feels a little lighter now. Thank you.
Also @SpookDog whats going on with your bike? I’d have thought she’d be sorted by now
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@Stevie-Wonder No worries dude, TBH reading about what's happened to you and @SpookDog has made me feel quite humble. Good on both of you for keeping on in there and turning things positive.
