1988 RM 250 build : Revisited and done

Update: refinished all blue items! Welding shop took forever with the frame! waiting on vendors can really bog a build down. The only vendor I'm waiting on now is the plating company, they have everything I need to go any further! Several issues came up: I wanted to replace 3rd,4th & 5th gears, slightly worn & Suzi's known for weak gearboxes when new, but these gears are very hard to come by, I only found new 4th gear on ebay, some sites list 5th as available from Suzuki, but NLA! I waited 3-4 weeks looking on ebay, new gears never came up, so I moved on. THis is a bummer because it can never be a dailey rider if no trans gears avail. I also had a "paint bomb" spray can made at an autobody store, very good color match with PPG auto paint, single stage enamel. I get everything prepped & go to start painting, spray can does not work! this is 30.00 can of paint! I go back to autobody supply store, they give me new cap. try it again, no go! I ended up using rustolium, sail blue paint from Home depot! rustolium actually works good & goes on nice shinny, but no way is it as good as auto/ppg paint, color match slightly off. Photo's show new clutch kit, inner hub, pressure plate & bearings replaced, Baskets are NLA, mine was not too bad, filed notches out of tangs. repaired clutch case, frame, footpegs, ect. painted. This may be the last refinishing I do in my garage! I had just expoxy coated my garage floor a month before this, the floor is so nice, I don't want to get it dirty! when I painted all the blue items, the overspray stuck to the new epoxy floor, I mean heavily, the floor was blue! I was on my hands & knee's for 2hrs with mineral spirits cleaning the overspray! What started as a 2hr refinishing of the frame & other related parts, turned out to be an 8hr fiasco! there is light at the end of the tunnel! I'm going to finish swingarm sanding & blasting today & hope the Plating company calls me with good news. I almost forgot, I had Factory Connection rebuild shock & forks, my 1 fork leg starting leaking from bottom rebound nut, so, back to FC to have them correct it! I will take more pho's when reassembly in process. Thanks for the motivation Gun Rue! sometimes these builds can get frustrating! eating trans oil, sounds like right side crank seal? can do it with motor in frame...

zzpzz....by the looks of that head I would do a complete teardown & inspect the crank bearing, when I redo an old bike, I split cases & replace all bearings & seals, then inspect and replace anything else that is out of spec as per manual. Donot pound on swingarm shaft bolt if stuck! use pb blaster, heat & be patient! my bolt was frozen/ rusted & I should have used heat, the pounding on the shaft/ bolt cracked the swingarm in 3 spots, where bearings are pressed in, I did have it repaired, but I had alot of time with die grinder afterwards! trans gears VERY hard to get! cannot get from Suzuki nla! I needed front rotor also due to rust, found nice 1 on ebay. Some 86 & 87 parts interchange, chk partszilla for interchange. Overall Suzukis seam to have cheap bearings & nuts & bolts, I have replaced every bearing on the bike & either replated or replaced every bolt. I just recieved my batch of hardware from my plater & began reassembly 2 days ago, I will post sOme more photos soon. If you plan on doing any serious riding with this bike, get frame reinforced at lower cradle & foot peg area& you can use newer/wider rm foot pegs.

if you are in this to make money then stop now & sell, i have more money in this build than i can ever get in resale. im not in this to make money. i enjoy doing these restores & 1 thing i have learned is, if your going to do it, do it right! i"m sure i have at least 3 k in my bike now, but, when it is done, i wont be wishing i did something different. all depends on your end goal, are you flipping a bike or bringing a piece of mx history back to life?

Update: picked up all hardware from my local plating company, first time I ever had anything plated. o/all pretty happy with plating, as all nuts, bolts, axles ect look new. some of the threads on the bolts had to be cleaned up, the owner of the plating company told me sometimes the process leaves built up material on ends of bolts. the owner also stated he was sorry it took so long & after I had brought coffee & donuts for his employee's he would not take any money from me! The only part I'm waiting on now is a rear master cylinder rebuild kit, It took me 2 days to get pressure at the front brake lever & the rear just would not pump up, turns out seal was bad on master cylinder. This build has been brutal! Seems like not even oem Suzuki parts fit correctly! I had to use a scissors jack to spread frame apart to get swingarm in place, I have never had to do that on any bike I ever owned. I will send up some more in process photos, kind of a pain to get them off my phone. This will be my last Suzuki build for sure. I'm going to ride the bike just to make sure everything I rebuild was done correctly, went way out of my mechanical comfort zone on this bike, but learned a lot! Most proud of the pipe, see original photo's of pipe, it was plated type & pretty hammered, thanks to my buddy G.Gallucci for blowing out all the dents, then I learned on this site how to remove crome & bring back raw look with blueing of the welds.

Update/Help! bikes is pretty much done! fired it up , but gas running out of vent tubes & i could barely keep it running. when i turned gas off it cleaned out nicely, sounded great, so off comes the carb! i had cleaned carb, but should have just rebuilt it completely! i
oring that held needle & seat body to carb body was hard & not sealing, replaced. measured float height or attempted to! varying ways to do this as per manuals. ordered new needle & seat assy. before i put carb back on, i was wondering if anyone out there has good baseline jetting specs? i have manual for stock specs, but i know these rm"s used to have hit or miss jetting from factory, anyone have old issue of mxa they can post any jetting info for me. i know jetting is relative to locals but any input will help. bike has pc pipe & silencer & i will only run 50/50 non ethanol & race gas @ 32:1, i"m expecting to go leaner on pilot & main, kind of remeber these bikes were very rich from factory. thanks in advance for any info. I will post up some better Completed photos & maybe video when running, as with alot of these builds, it"s so pretty, you dont want to ride it, but, I need to ride this bike to make sure everything I did is 100%,

just finished putting carb back on, after replacing needle & seat assy. started it up, better, still loading up a bit off idle, but seems to clean out quicker. need to bring to track for test ride, throttle chop test.

Help! ok vital experts, i need some direction on my mikuni tmx issues, i"m stumped ! bike is loading up at low rpm bad. i"ve cleaned carb, replaced pilot jet , needle & seat assy, & main jets, settings are all stock. i set float height to 14 mm"s as per manual. cleans out if held wide open for a long time & when ridden mid range & top end is good but dies at low rpm. no fuel leaking out of hoses, but if i turn petcock off it cleans up nice until it runs out of fuel. thinking of replacing needle that clip attatches to next.?

thanks for input Matt, if it were a slight loading up i would say you are correct, the jetting is stock and really runs so poor there is no way it could have been this bad from factory. of course all my years of collecting jets are all from keihins! i"ll have to visit suzuki shop for some leaner pilot jets and keep playing with it. i pulled carb off again & double checked float height & for debris, everything was perfect, i"m baffled by this mikuni tmx! i just for giggles i had a keihin off a 96 cr sitting on my bench so i compared the 2 carbs, very close in dimentions, low & behold it fits ! started bike, no more loading up! i have to bring to track to test it, but appears to have totally solved loading up problem. i was starting to think maybe power vavles were not operating correctly but this appears to be all carb related. now this keihin carb has a pretty worn slide, that is why im not using it for my 96 cr project but appears to be better than the mikuni tmx. im still baffled as to what could be wrong with the mikuni, i still want to use the original carb but if the keihin works at least i know where the problem lies.

zippy 895...:i searched for as many new gears as i could find during rebuild, i replaced what i could get, which was not many, luckily the tranny was decent, but could never be a daily rider due to NLA gears. 1 ring piston is ok, just have to monitor compression & be ready to re ring when needed. If I put 8 hrs on this bike it will be alot, I have modern bikes for pounding laps when needed, I really enjoy the build process, we"ll, when iʻm not pulling my hair out! jtracing6: I had cylinder replated by powerseal in Pa. they media blast the cylinders as part of their service, I liked the way it looked. garage took 1 year to get to this point, its a carraige house, full heat, plumbing& electrics, I could live upstairs and may end up there if I spend any more time out there says the wife! I used real expoxy on the floor, expensive & very time consuming, but floor is so nice you could eat off it! thanks for kind words!

great looking bike, suzuki France! I would take a stock silencer as well, they were oval and thinner, compared to the pro circuit that we both have, my pro circuit muffler rubs on tire, I have it shimmed out as much as possible, I have a 110/ 90/18 rear tire, which should be same size as original size, maybe I need smaller back tire? I did not realize this when I first rode it & wore the awesome pro circuit decal off the silencer! parts are hard to come by for these bikes in US also....