Updated 2005 YZ125

When I got this bike it was...well, lets be honest a POS Haha, It had all original 05 plastics, Many of which were snapped, Many of stripped screws and bolts, Levers were pointing straight up and down as the previous owner was 100% uninformed on proper setup, Forks were leaking, tires bald, Pipe rusted in a beautiful coat of brown, Filter was dirtier than that girl you knew in high school, Just all around madness. It did have a few goodies like RG3 Clamps, Pipe and silencer from FMF, Aftermarket shifter, All in all it was abused when I got it, I rode it for about 5 minutes to make sure the engine was solid which so far so good, The owner told me he had put a new bottom and top into it just around roughly 16 hours beforehand but its hard to believe as he did not change the air filter or the oil in god knows how long and it had the original 05 clutch plates in it! But as beat up as the bike was, There was little wear on the clutch cover which told me it hadn't been ridden by anyone who knew what they were doing so in my mind the bike was similar to the girl in the trailer park who was not so pretty 5 years ago but you just ran into her at walmart and never knew she had so much potential. He did give me the top and bottom from where he claimed he'd replaced it and it looked not so bad. Now lets get into this! So, Got the bike, Rode it for a total of 10-15 minutes pinned going through all the gears making sure she was sorted, Got it home and tore that thing down quicker than a virgin on prom night to asses the damage, I came across many of stripped bolts and mismatch random screws and bolts all over it so a bolt kit was in order! Got her down and realized I had a nice fat motosport order coming my way to get her where she needed to be! So it began the ever so awesome bike part shopping spree in which I had enveloped many times before getting into every nook and cranny of my ever deflating wallet to make this thing the bike I saw in the frontal lobe of my ADD filled brain when I got on craigslist and laid my eyes on it for the first time. As far as parts go, I went easy on the engine as it did have good compression and the previous owner did run Castor oil which as we know smells like heaven so I had faith in it, I wanted to pull the jug and at least inspect the cylinder and head but I didn't have a torque wrench at the time and I was not going to go out and get one at the time so I took the gamble on trusting the internals for the most part, To this day I'm still unsure how many hours are on the crank and piston so they'll be in order after a few rides to get some peace of mind and reassurance. Now I did put some VForce 3 reeds on it, Which did allow me a chance to inspect the piston which seemed healthy as there was no scoring on it at all, Unfortunately I did not realize that the VForce 4 reeds had just came out and I went with the three instead of the four, I'd of liked to try the four but I knew what the three was like and I knew either way I would not be disappointed. New radiator hoses to get this thing pumping coolant a little better, Carb hoses because it still had the original ones on it that were I want to say dry rotted. I inspected the clutch and it had very minimal grooving in the basket and my budget at the time was not going to allow me to go all out and get the full Hinson system so I went ahead and just got a Hinson pack and threw that into her, The levers were toast and I'm talking TOAST, one was bent all to hell and re-corrected with a hammer from the looks of it and the brake lever was all kinds of F**ked up, so i went ahead and got a set of ASV levers off Ebay, I had good results from my last set of the F1 series on my first 125 I owned, When I made the move to my RM250 that had your basic fixed levers I noticed that just about every time I laid the bike over or anything I was going to need a new clutch lever so I had 5-6 stored up at all times just in case it fell off the stand or anything. With the ASV levers and their bending design it really offers great durability in a sense that I'm talking UNBREAKABLE, Literally these things are amazing! If we had a nuclear war the only two things left afterwards would be cockroaches and ASV levers. I can't stress how awesome of an investment these things are and I believe they hold a lifetime warranty so when ever that spring rusts up after a few years and decides to go out on you and you need a replacement you can just call up ASV and they will ship you one free of charge that day! Okay, enough lever raving for now. Went ahead and went with what I knew best as far as tires goes and that was the popular Dunlop MX51 front and rear that I had ran for years with many of good results although I will say it holds a lot to the old suspension saying "The best is only what you've ridden" and with that being said I trusted these tires in there performance ability's mainly because I'd ran them in ever terrain imaginable from Rocky hare scrambles to border line sand tracks to hard pack clay, and they never let me down. I was unaware that the MX32 and MX52 were going to be released after I bought the set of MX51's but if I had known I'd of waited and given the MX32 front and MX52 rear a run for its money. So far I've head that they are similar to the MX51's and MX32's but pick up in all the aspects in which they lacked. Sprocket wise I could tell the owner at least made the attempt to keep this gem on its last leg for a little longer because when I got a hold of it there was a very new set of Renthal sprockets on it! Now chain wise, not so much... I even took the time to question him if he had EVER used chain lube and his only reply was "No, I don't believe in it" Which left me shaking my head as the chain had frozen links all over it. So I went ahead and got a Renthal R1 Gold race chain It is a Non O-ring chain but as mentioned before I went with what I knew worked and lasted. Grips were in order too, Renthal Kevlar Duel Comp Tapered took the place of the old and worn Pro Taper pillow top grips. The Renthal Kevlar grips are on a whole other level compared to many of the other grips on the market and I have had the chance to try them all, Now I was a fan of the pillow top for the most part as they were half the price of the Renthal's but they had very little durability and wore easily and just couldn't stand the test of time like the Renthal's can, I mean these things are amazing. The only way I could describe there ability of performance is for you to go out and get a whole bottle of grip glue and just douse your palms in the stuff and grab your bars and let it dry, They just have so much grip its amazing! As far as intake I went with a Twin-air filter and also got several No-Toil pre-oiled filters for later on down the road in case I run out of filter oil or something. I went ahead and picked up a new clutch cable, reason being you just can't go wrong with a new lubed clutch cable and let me tell you right now, Smooth as butter! Being the bike was a YZ125 having a smooth and comfortable clutch pull was important to be because with riding a 125 comes riding the clutch lever! I was currently out of oil and in my RM250 I had ran the last batch of fuel with a advanced auto parts brand of premix oil because I was unable to get a hold of any Castor before a race, Now just a little word of advise I do not recommend ever changing to a lower quality oil. Get a decent oil and run it, with that being said this is recommended by many because the engine gets used to the specific oil after a while and changing it will confuse the lubrication process and decrease your performance in a sense, That was the best way I could word that for it to make sense. Hopefully you understand what I was trying to convey onto you. Now my OOC (Oil of choice) is by far and will forever be Castor 927 It is a synthetic biodegradable oil that smells like heaven, I mean let me say it again, Smells like heaven. Once you catch a good whiff of that stuff you will ride behind that 2-stroke just messing up your riding because your not breathing due to all the sniffing your doing! Nothing in this world can compare to the sweet smell of Castor 927 running in a ported and polished and properly jetted 125 with a good batch of fresh VP110 in the morning as the dew rises from the ground and the sun beats upon your face. So I went ahead and stocked up with a few 64oz bottles of Castor that were on sale on motosport. Okay this is starting to sound like the moto version of 51 Shades of Gray so lets move on! I forgot to mention this above but with the fresh MX51's went a brand new pair of heavy duty tubes. The FMF Factory finish Fatty was hanging onto the cylinder with 1 spring and a few mounts so a fresh set of springs were needed along side a set of O-rings that were probably melted 30 hours ago and never replaced. The pipe was aged a bit, It had a fine coat of rust on it that initiated the brown finish a neglected works pipe will get over a short course of time if not properly oiled and cleaned. Having had nothing but factory finish pipes in the past I have went through every method of maintaining the finish known possible. From clear coating them to waxing them with butter, The clear coat will work for the most part if you apply a few coats but it creates a heat barrier which I do not think is good for the bike, Now don't hold me to that but I think the pipes are supposed to be able to put off heat in order to work to their full potential. With that said Clear coating the pipe was not the answer this time, Neither was butter as it worked for a very small amount of time before needing to be reapplied. Now for my tried and trued method of keeping that pipe looking fresh and awesome is a very good cleaning with a scotch pad, or several scotch pads and a bit of fine sandpaper to get the rust finish off but to keep the look of the welds that they have when you first get them you don't just clean the whole pipe but around those weld marks and the brand logo that is welded to the pipe so it gives the old weld marks and logo some color to where they still stand out and you can see where they put the heat to the metal that gives it the factory finish that you bought it for, I will include pictures to show examples of what a cleaned up pipe looks like compared to a new one. The pipe also included many of very small dents that were almost unnoticeable, It looks as if they were larger but someone used the old water and freeze method to get the pipe to expand where you plug both ends and fill the pipe with water and freeze it so it'll expand and pop the dents out for the most part but it won't make the pipe look perfect again as there are still small indications of dents afterwards. This method is easy and gets the performance gains back from a properly shaped pipe but its not 100% cosmetically perfect afterwards. One way I could tell he had fixed it using this method was the process of elimination as the only other method requires plugs in both ends and compressed air sealed into the pipe and a very good heat source to get the metal to expand and let the air under pressure inside to return the metal to its original shape, Now I have used the heating method before... actually let me tell you about my first real experience with repairing the expansion chamber on the all mighty 2-stroke. So here I am lined up at one of my first hare scramble races that I had decided to do and I was nervous as all hell, But it was the best feeling ever and I was not in say the best of shape whatsoever (I was topping 200 at the time at around 5"7 and I looked like a little butterball) So with the nerves comes the arm pump not even 100ft after the start which I failed epically at the new to me dead engine start method they used at these style of races. Took me 4-5 kicks to start my bike as it was in gear and the RM250 was very sensitive to the way you had to start it in gear on the first try which I did learn and perfect and pull starts in future races so I didn't have to work through the pack on the goat trails known as woods racing, So here I was riding super tight and my arms were pumped up more than I think they ever had been before, I was making mistakes left and right running into everything, now to my credit it was my 4th or 5th time in the woods and I had not learned to navigate trees properly at all so I was hitting everything in the direction of that sweet brand spanking new works pipe from Pro Circuit, Angry and pissed off that I had not invested into a pipe guard I hit a tree in 3rd tapped going up a hill and just couldn't have hit that tree anymore perfect for me to do a handstand over the bars and get real familiar to what the density of a 75 year old tree was against my whole body. After that I was in salvage mode and just wanted to finish which was my goal in the first place but I was still going to ride my ass off to place well but I had no hare scramble experience at that point and the first one is always like a murder scene when you get out of that forest assuming you were in hell the last two and a half hours and were 100% sure you were never going to do that again because you feel like you let Mike Tyson go at you for 30 minutes for the next few days. So to end this rambling story in short, I got to the finish and went back to the trailer to access the damage and I could see the $$$$ just falling out of my wallet as I observed the carnage that sat on the stand for a while, At the end of the day I needed a fresh clutch pack, seat cover, bars, clutch lever, front wheel, fork guards, radiator shrouds, and the numberplate was not even on the bike anymore but when I looked down at the pipe I was a little bummed to say the least. When I hit the trees the way I did I hit them pretty much head on and I wondered why the bike was running differently but the reason for this was the fact that the pipe was pretty much flat on the front bend of a 250 chamber and the side had wrapped around the frame and there were a collection of miscellaneous dents littered all over the thing, So to get to the point I had to pull the pipe and I created some home made plugs for both ends and put about 35psi into it and began to reshape the pipe and get all the dents out and after a few hours of remoulding the shape back the pipe looked brand new but had heat marks all over it which laid in a thick coat which is very hard to remove and ruins the pipes finish until you can get it off which is very hard and this is how I knew that he had not used a torch and air under pressure to fix the pipe, and the finish on it was relatively good for the most part besides the coat of brown rust it cleaned up very well. Now the method I use to maintain the factory works finish on the pipe that I found worked best was after you clean it up very well and wipe off all the dust and what not you're going to take a rag or paper towels and go into the kitchen and steal some of moms vegetable cooking oil and give the pipe a real good coat of that and then warm the bike up and get the pipe to a warm enough temperature to bake the oil to the metal then repeat this two to three times if its the first time doing it and it'll give the pipe a real nice finish and if your fast the pipe will form those purple and blue colors indicating the heat that has passed through the metal that looks super cool on any expansion chamber. Now that you have your base for that after you ride your gonna clean your bike and wipe down the pipe with either water or simple green depending on riding conditions and after it drys take some more of moms vegetable oil, Word of advise at this point its probably best to buy your own before she starts kicking your ass haha! But after every ride I wipe it down, then put a coat of the cooking oil and this time and from now on out you don't heat it up until you go ride so it'll preserve the metal, I repeat you only do those heat cycles with the oil the first time to create a good base to apply the oil. Well, that's my method that I learned from trial and error over the years and it works 100% and I love how easy it is to maintain the works look of the pipe. Now you will need to clean the pipe every few rides with a scotch pad and reapply the oil to keep it looking flawless. Now with this bike I decided to try something new and that was Factory effects product that is a sticker that tells you temperatures of the surface of whatever its applied to which in this case was the radiator and cylinder, I was a little worried about keeping this thing cool due to the amount of RPM's a 125 receives and for being on the pipe 24/7 I took keeping it properly cooled a bit serious because I've seen many people not watch their temperatures and just waste tons of cash wondering why there bikes pistons keep failing after they don't allow good air flow to the radiators and rev the damn thing as if they were Barcia when he was on a CR125 or 250F. I just figured that if I am able to have a visual reference to be able to track temperatures I could avoid such issues if they ever arose on those middle of July weekends out at the track. My old exhaust plug did not fit into the FMF shorty that the bike had, So i went ahead and got the FMF plug and honestly I think it could have been better because its made for 4 strokes I assume and the first out of about 6 little notches fits into the silencer so its not 100% sturdy when plugged and would fall out if in the back of a truck or if it was hit right with the pressure washer. I also went ahead and cracked the silencer open to look at the packing and it was all original from the looks of it so I went ahead and ordered some fresh 2-Stroke packing and took a torch and cleaned the carbon build up off the insides and installed the fresh packing. Another huge recommendation by me if you run your bikes very rich or don't have it properly jetted and get a lot of spluge coming out of the exhaust is to well, one get it jetted properly thankfully this bike was almost perfect but will get a little more tuning done after a while. But change your packing often, the packing gets very nasty from absorbing all the build up of spluge and pretty much becomes useless after a while, you're bike will sound like shit if its bad and you'll get a lot of dripping going on. Go ahead and drop the $10 I think on packing and take 5 minutes to replace it after a while and get ready to hear the sexiest noise known to man even better than before. You will notice a huge difference in sound afterwards and you won't get dripping for a while but once you do its recommended you replace it or once again jet it properly and make sure when cleaning not to get any water into the silencer, If the plug won't stay in the silencer just get some duct tape and cover the hole which is what I've had to do a lot. Not very important I suppose but I want you to know everything that I did and one thing that I always run is Grip donuts for a few reasons. If you ride like I do without donuts on your grips your gonna be looking at golf ball sized blisters at the end of the day even with proper size gloves and all. I try to run through 5 gallons of fuel every time I ride so blisters were a problem for me for a while. Donuts saved the insides of my thumbs for me along with a bit of electric tape and gripping the bike with your knees. But all in all there nice to have and I think they run like $2.99? or something like that so its really just personal preference. I went ahead and hoped on ebay just browsing at the junk on there and found a Works connection skid plate for around $30 and shipping that had some oil build up on it but after a scotch pad and some elbow grease it looked brand new and it was a great buy because a $30 skid plate beats a rock knocking a hole into the cases any day! I also got the blue radiator hoses and carb hoses off of ebay for $40 in total which was a pretty damn good deal compared to the $100 radiator hoses alone on motosport. The seat that was on it was the original and the foam looked horrible the cover was ripped in a spot and just ugly to be honest so I went ahead and ordered a whole pretty much brand new seat off ebay with the OEM cover that I liked for $50 plus shipping only to get it and realize it was listed under the wrong thing. Turns out the seat was off of a 05 YZ250F which does not become interchangeable so that seat was out unfortunately but being the kind of person I am I was not going to let that get the best of me so i did what I could with it which was to just take the cover off and use the old seat foam which honestly was more comfortable due to it being older and softer. So the seat wouldn't fit but the covers were the same. I also went ahead and picked up an hour meter off ebay for $10 from japan but I'm not going to install it until after I do the first full rebuild anyways I keep pretty good track of how many hours in my head anyway but for $10 you couldn't beat it and its pretty much the same as the $100 ones from the popular brands. Now for the fun part! With what I knew about the 05 suspension it was pretty much like a woman, Extremely hard to figure out and have it work with you and its a obvious decision to go ahead and swap the suspension out for some of the newer and amazing KYB "SSS" stuff that is all the rave and honestly 100 times better than the 05's suspension kit. The upside do the swap is whatever money you dump into the new stuff is some what recovered from selling the old suspension so its not to bad depending on what you spend. I have not sold mine yet or even tried to sell it so there just collecting dust as of now. I took my time finding the best deal I could on the shock and forks that are up to date with the current and unchanged 2014 YZ 2-strokes so I'd have a pretty much 100% similar bike as the new ones at the end of the day and everything from 05 and up is the same for the most part except in 06 they changed the suspension but the motor and frame and everything else are the same from 05 and up, Oh and a new front fender and numberplate in 06 was added. So my hunt began searching ebay from top to bottom for a week or two I was able to find a 2006 YZ125 shock that had been freshly revalved and rebuilt and was in very good shape with brand new bearings for $200 plus shipping. So at that point I had half the deal, I knew the 06 shock would bolt right up but the hard part was the forks and clamps for the newer setup needed. I did my research and found out it'd be smart to just get a set of 06+ YZ450F forks as there all the same from then up regardless of the bike and the 450 forks come with stiffer springs that are already perfect for my weight so it would avoid me having to dish out another $100 for new springs. I was able to get a hold of a set of 2007 YZ450F forks that were pretty much brand new complete with the clamps and fork guards for $270 plus shipping which was a killer price compared to the $500 or $600 shit that was pretty much every fork from 06+ on ebay. So the issue would be that the axle was 2mm shorter on the 07's and the brake caliper would need to be replaced completely along with the brake rotor but I made the better choice and went ahead and ordered a new axle off a 07 YZ450F for $30 and it all bolted up perfect. Now I didn't use the clamps that came with the new forks as they were stock and the bike already had RG3 clamps so I went ahead and just slid them in and got them fitted and the front end was complete thankfully the RG3's could take the bigger 48mm forks unlike the stock 05 clamps. Not to forget I also ordered all new plastics that were up to date with the 2014 models that looks pretty sick from acerbis. So at this point the whole bikes able to be assembled and I can finally go ride this thing. But then..... Wait for it...... I get the whole bike together and its beautiful and I go to crank the thing and she starts first kick and sounds AMAZING and smells even better and I ran it for a little and warmed her up and stepped back and looked at it only to notice the Carb was dumping a shit ton of fuel out of the bottom so I inspected it and came to the conclusion that between the time I'd taken the carb off and put it back on the float had become stuck and was causing the carb to dump fuel so I was a little bummed but went ahead and pulled it off and tried the quick remedy's like trying to knock the float free but nothing worked. So after that I put the bike together and tried it again only to not solve the issue but to discover another and that would be the 05 throttle cable I somehow overlooked and did not replace that was routed wrong and had pretty much been sticking since day 1 when I got it and I played with it for a little and got it to run free and took it for a quick spin around the neighborhood to get a feel for the power after all my changes and I was blown away by the power, I mean this thing was insane! and that's even with the damn cable being super sensitive to movement and sticking while I had to cover the clutch the whole time to make sure it didn't decide to turn me into loop out Larry and go ahead and take off with the throttle stuck and take out the little girl riding her tricycle down the road. So now we get to the nearing end. I pull the carb and went to pull it apart and found that every screw was stripped so I just went ahead and ordered all new screws including a new throttle cable and a carb rebuild kit, Oh and some new goggles of course! Hehe I also got a new hose for the tank to the carb after finding out it had a slight leak from being so old and the bracket for the brake like mount that goes to the triple clamp. As far as everything else goes its solid, I've greased all the bearings which were perfect and went over everything else that was not replaced which at this point was not much. I didn't get new brake pads though as they are pretty much 100% new and the rotors are in amazing shape! but for now it sits waiting to get the carb and throttle cable put back on! Thanks for reading! Brap!