Building a 1987 YZ250

Got the front tire mounted. It was cold out. I do car tires all the time. A trick we do is to leave them out in the sun. It makes them way easier to mount. So I stuck the Hoosier in my powder coat oven and set 1 gun on full. 6 minutes later the tire was nice and toasty and went on like nothing lol.

I ordered up some extra powder. I got 3lbs of clear, and 2kbs of chrome. Decided to add a clear coat to the rear shock. It came out amazing!

Ran into a snag now. An electrical issue. Ugh. Plus my new caliper doesn't fit for shit, I'll have to bust out the grinder.

Been building this bike for a few months now. It ran when I tore it down. It's 70% done now, so I decided to fire it up and check for coolant leaks and whatnot. It fired up a few times then died right away. 3rd time it fired, it RAN AWAY for 5 seconds at 12,000rpm+ I hit the kill switch and NOTHING happened, so I scrambled and pulled the plug wire off. Before you go saying crank seals or something like that, when I pulled the plug wire I felt the plug wiggle.

Stupid me never tightened the plug, it was literally finger loose. Easy fix right? Now it has ZERO spark. I tested for continuity thinking I damaged the plug wire yanking it off. Nope, all good there. Stator tests good for sending voltage across both the brown and white/red to the cdi. The output of the cdi is sending voltage to the orange wire going to the coil when I kick it. But I'm getting nothing out of the coil. So luckily for me, I have an 85 YZ 125 here that has the same coil. Continuity good, plug it in and no spark either. I cut back the wire on both coils to access some fresh wire and still nothing.

In the home stretch now. It's running good. I decided to paint the tank and shrouds because they look funky next to the brand new fender and panel plastics. That was an ordeal to say the least. I bleached them for days and sanded with 4 different grits. Got them as best as I could but they were still too yellowed. So I hit them with white primer, then 2 coats of bright white, and then finally a clear coat. As soon as the clear hit it started to react, ugh. Major separation and flaking. I was so pissed. Had to let them dry and sand it all off and start over. I just did 2 coats of white and they are sitting drying. I'm not putting clear on them. I will get them mounted on Tuesday. Just waiting on a new front brake lever that I broke trying to unbend, 1 rear spoke so I can relace the wheel, and a throttle cable.

Got a bunch of the plastics on, get 1 rear spoke in the mail, so I rebuilt the rear wheel. I still have to true it. In the homestretch now, only waiting on a few small parts. Hopefully I'll take it for a test ride this weekend! Ran into a snag with the aftermarket radiators. The bottom shroud bolts do not line up at all. I'll have to fab up a small bracket for each side. So annoying that companies sell stuff as direct fit, and they need so much tweaking to get them to work.

She's almost done! Waiting on a throttle cable and the rear chain slider. 

For the no-spark all that I can assume was I yanked on the spark plug wire real hard and it pulled on the wiring harness going into the CDI. After a few hours of farting around with it, I cleaned all the terminal ends (the 3 prong connector for the CDI was dirty), and viola, it has spark again!

There's a bunch of Hot Rods in there. 73 Mach 1 351 Cleveland 4bbl, 86 IROC-Z TPI 305/auto, '79 Y84 Trans Am 400ci/auto, '80 Z28 Orange-basket case, and on the trailer is my '15 Z/28 bad-ass autocross race car!

The PC pipe I bought fits perfectly. The UFO front fender , rear fender and front number plate are also perfect. The Maier side panels suck. They sort of fit but nothing like the original Yamaha stuff. The fork boots were good, the seat cover not so much.  I guess I'm about 50/50 as far as cosmetic stuff goes lol.

Had a couple of setbacks. 1 was the rear shock that decided to puke out all the oil, and the other was the clutch that decided to not engage. I sent the shock out to our local madman Steve Mathewson. He rebuilt it, filled it with oil, charged it with nitrogen, vapor honed some of the parts, and even fixed the B.A.S.S. system! Turnaround was a few days. He does AMAZING work!

The clutch was also an easy fix after some disassembly. I drained the coolant and oil. As I was taking the side cover off , you could reach in and wiggle all of the clutch plates. Mind you the lever is out and the clutch should be fully engaged. It almost looked as though the last guy inside forgot to put in a clutch plate and friction plate. The pressure plate was a good 2mm away from the 1st clutch plate. As soon as I removed the pressure plate and turned it over I noticed that the adjuster rod wasn't sitting in the recess it needs to be. It must have spun as the last guy was putting it together. With it spun, there was no way for the pressure plate to be able to make contact with the clutch. 5 minutes later, and it was back together as it should! 

Just waiting on upper and lower shock bearings which will be here tomorrow!

The pull rod was all frozen up. He got it working again. If the next owner wants to disable it, he's more than welcome to do so.

Back together and up and running. I ran it up and down the gears. Clutch works perfect now!