my $400 99 yz250

cleaning begins

buffed cases.

ole wire wheel and mothers

I schotch brited the frame, the primered it and used some rattle can auto zone dupli color code 0337. factory ford color, $8 a can.

toofbrush on the carb

millenium did the cyl .080 wiseco pro lite piston. 265 cc. I would not have gone with an over size had i known it would be another $100 in machine work to cut the power valve.

used the same old bars it came with but bought a new bar pad. i liked the color pattern the best

done, minus the chain.

I ended up with $1200 total in the bike. My biggest regret was not buying a new pipe but at the time, I was off work with shattered heel hobbling around the garage and building this bike on my $340 a week unemployment check. I never rode it, it sat until I sold it to a buddy for $2400.

heres everything I did to it, basically everything came off ebay

new maxima air filter
new pirelli tires
powdercoated wheels nd hubs black
new bar pad and grips, new oem levers
new wheel bearings and brake pads
new throttle and clutch cable
new clutch kit
new wiseco piston and millenium maching cyl and pv
rebuilt stock suspension, seals and fluid
new ufo plastics and graphics
rattle canned frame
new enjoy seat cover
new cheapy $20 steel footpegs
new knockoff cycra handguards
trail tech 12oz fww

thats it for parts. as far as labor, every single part on the bike was scrubbed down and refinished, or polished. every pivot point was grased when it went back together. i do know it badly needed rejetted when it was finished. my biggest regret was not powdercoating the frame and buying a new pipe and silencer, the pipe was dented pretty good and kills the looks. plus anything spray painted is going to last as long as a fart in the whirl wind when your talking about off roading with it. every bump scratched it. I considered buying a new pipe and just storing it in the house as a show bike of sorts. i would have liked to do a barry hawk replica with it.

some past projects and my thoughts on them : dont have any before pics.




my 09 kx450f. i put more hours on this thing than any bike i ever owned. I traded a 05 rmz450 that youll see later in this thread for this bike. my buddy liked my rmz way more and he owned this bike so i traded him, in hindsight, i liked the 05 tmx better also.

this bike was pristine as you can see. it ran amazing, tons of power butter smooth too, rock solid reliable always fired with up. pretty damn good suspension too once it was setup for me. however it was 50/50 whether the front end would wash out on you in a corner or not. and i eventually grew to hate the handling of this bike and the more i rode it the more timid i got as the cornering was so unpredictable....

I raced that kx450 a bunch and usually spent alot of time on the ground or fighting the bike white knuckle around the course. i was frustrated as hell with dirt bikes and quit for a while. this was the next bike i bought, and i only got it cause it was cheap.

07 yz450f. i figured after coming off the EFI kawi, this bike would be a big step backwards,,, holy dog shit was i wrong. this bike handled razor sharp compared to that kx, and it felt like lifting a mountain bike on and off the stand compared to the kx. it literally felt 60lbs just picking it up. I paid $1600 for that yz, it had never even seen dirt. i drove 4 hours in a snow storm to pick it up. some kid in ohio lost his lisence and the yz was his transportation. he lived in a rural area and rode the bike everywhere. other than tires and a scratched up clutch cover the bike was showroom condition. i put new tires, graphics, handguards, flywheel weight on it. to this day, this is my favorite bike.

my 05 rmz450. traded a quad for it. this bike handled amazing, suspension wasnt great but the way it cornered and stuck to the ground made me look past that.

where it went downhill with this bike is i let this jackass local mechanic adjust the vales and put a new piston in it. he talked me into a rekluse also. $2000 later I loaded up my bike from his house thinking ive got me a dime piece and headed straight out to the powerline park gncc. he fucked this bike up so bad it was sickening. i ended up pushing the bike out of the way cause i kicked my brains out for a minute and it never started. once it did start i had to pump the throttle to keep it going. you could hear the valves chatter. the rekluse was way out of adjustment and it stalled constantly. i traded the bike for my 09 kx450f with a heap of cash to a buddy shortly after - i loved the rmz at one point but was tired of fucking with it

I think my bill was $300 for a bore, replate, head mod and pv mod. had i just gone .20-.60 over I could have saved $100. to go.80 they had to cut the head and pv.

thanks fellas. new project on the horizon.... I did a crf250 over this summer i may post up also.