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Another KX250 Project...

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Gravy

Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
Paid to have the dents popped and then spent some quality time polishing the chrome.



And changed the plug



Good compression.



Rebuilt the silencer



Came with a spare (dented rim) fixed it.... and removed the duct tape.




New tire on the other (non dented rim)



Polished the plastics.
 
Rot Box

Rot Box

Diesel and Dust
Supporting Member
Location
Smithfield Utah
Awesome. Good lookin bike :cool:

Dear Kawasaki, Please make the KDX's again and offer them in both 200cc and 300cc versions. Love, Rot Box.
 
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Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
This one wouldn't start, but had great compression and spark, so it was a risk but not a huge one.

It's a 2000 but had a 2001 Mikuni TMX carb on it.

I cleaned the carb and rejetted it and detailed the motor.
Then got a new filter (because it was crusty) and inspected the reeds (which looked new).






Repacked the silencer.



And I got it to start with starting fluid, but it would run uncontrollably high revs.
It took a while of me searching out every option for an air leak: like crank seals, intake boot seals, reeds etc to finally figure out that only one specific throttle cable routing didn't pin the throttle slide open whenever the tank got set back down in the frame.

So an oil change and maybe a shifter seal later, I got it to run pretty sweet.

I had to get one new lever too.

Also it got some EBC red rear brake pads.
 
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Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
Then I rode it and the clutch felt grabby until it warmed up.

Then this...

Groovy...



So I found a factory service manual and it detailed the allowable width on the clutch basket fingers and inner clutch hub and actually explained how to file out the grooves. (I always thought it was a little cheap, but who am I to argue with the engineers who design these things. So I figured I'd smooth it all out and see if it was still grabby I'd just replace them both.

I wasted my time filling the inner clutch hub for like an hour, then found that my dremel tool had a tiny cutoff wheel that worked perfectly, then I sanded it down super smooth and measured the spacing with a mic and found it to be in spec.


My little helper
 
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Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
Also I read Eric Gorr's performance manual and he talked about modifying your clutch basket by drilling holes in the fingers and inner hub valleys to get more oil to the clutch plates and keep them cooler and better lubed. It also has a paragraph on filing clutch baskets (so I guess this is a ok practice).

Anyway I figured it couldn't hurt because those Hinson and Recluse baskets have huge holes carved out of the clutch basket fingers.



and this clutch spring bolt broke too...



so I fixed that.



Slapped it all back together and it was super smooth and to my surprise the clutch didn't need adjusting when it got hot on my test ride (which it seems like 125's always do because you have to fan the clutch lots more to keep them in the powerband).

Anyways these mods are a totally free way to improve clutch life and feel.
 
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Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
Rot Box said:
Looks great! :cool: Clutch mods are just fine imo I've seen that work well many times in the past.
Click to expand...

Thanks! That reassuring. That Eric Gore book has a lot of cool stuff about performance. Like how to port and polish and what areas to grind to change performance characteristics.

I may delve into that on another project. I got some cheapo parts bike that with a little work and some used parts from other old projects I'll bet I could get running and play around with porting.
 
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Gravy

Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
Well. I got another one. It was leaking oil and some dummy had piled up at least two tubes of JB weld on what he thought was a cracked inner clutch cover. Well I bought a new case and I pulled the case to replace it, chipped it all off and guess what? No Crack, just a leaky gasket. So I'm cleaning it up.
 
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Gravy

Ant Anstead of Dirtbikes
Supporting Member
Location
The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
Here's the clutch cover before and after polishing.






Also the side case I bought off ebay before I cleaned it. My new magic is Mag wheel cleaner: it's got phosphoric acid in it. You scrub it on the Aluminum and wear gloves and a mask, but it pulls stains right out of the aluminum cases.

 
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