Nightmare 2003 CR250 Purchase

My well-intentioned yet inexperienced and undiscerning brother recently bought his son a real lemon of a CR250. On the surface, it looked pretty, had the modern plastics, black wheels, Magura hydraulic clutch, and all that jazz.

But as soon as my nephew rode it, the center cases started leaking, a lot. I offered to go through the bike top to bottom to assess the damage. And damage there was…

Used buyers beware. There's a lot of activity in the used markets right now. Pay close attention to what you're buying. Start it, ride it. Ask questions.

As far as the damage goes, let’s just start with the swing arm



Great little surprise lurking under the chain slide. Good ol’ JB Weld.

Quick rip on the wire wheel revealed…


Super awesome. At this point I quickly learned that CR250 swing arms are hard to come by… because this happened a lot. There was only one decent looking used swingarm on eBay for $1000. All the others on eBay had the chain slider on them and the sellers wouldn’t remove it and take a picture. Buncha dirtbags, I tell ya.

Thankfully, this is only the seal bore and doesn't carry much load. It's also sandwiched between the frame with a 1" shaft passing through it. So I tig welded it. A 37mm bearing works as a great backer, except when it gets super hot. A solid stainless plug would be ideal, but I don't hav a lathe...