willis_racing
I Liek Biek
What's up Irate, This is the project I've got going that's going to be getting the most of my attention over the winter, so I figured I'd post up before I got too far ahead and lost motivation to take pictures and stuff. Current goal here is to catalog building out an older bike to be competitive with more modern bikes in the Woods/tech/singletrack hare scramble series local to me, and give the dirt bike guys some YZ250 tech to browse through.
Background:
I've done nothing but build bikes out for desert riding my entire life, but after a season of racing my heavy tank of a deserted out YZ450 in tight singletrack hare scramble races, I figured I'd go out on a limb and try something a little bit different. I wanted a brand new KTM 250XC TPI, but go on ahead and ask me how easy it is to get ahold of one of those right now.
Enter This 2004 YZ250 that I scooped up off of face space marketplace for 2000 bucks:
And it came with some spare plastics and other goodies.
(This bike wouldn't have been worth a penny more than $1500 two years ago. Fuck Covid prices.)
Short mod description: FMF SST Pipe complete with dents, Clarke 3.9 gallon tank, port match job between the jug and the cases, and I think a shaved head.
Anyway being that it was cheap, I starting dicking with it immediately. It had stock sea level jetting in it for some reason (50/175, needle clip 2nd from bottom).
Being that I ride this thing only in the range of 4500ft-9500ft, I got to work on that right quick.
Current settings sit at (40/168, needle clip 2nd from top)
That cleaned up a lot of spooge and woke the thing right up, particularly off the pipe. This setting runs nice and clean at 4500-5500ft, might be a hair on the lean side.
Other mods included swapping out the plastics to the spares that I got with the bike, bending the mounts on the silencer back into a reasonable position, and swapping out the sopping wet air filter that was leaking filter oil all over the swing arm and air box. (Sorry, pics of that whole process didn't happen)
Up next: Fork swap
Background:
I've done nothing but build bikes out for desert riding my entire life, but after a season of racing my heavy tank of a deserted out YZ450 in tight singletrack hare scramble races, I figured I'd go out on a limb and try something a little bit different. I wanted a brand new KTM 250XC TPI, but go on ahead and ask me how easy it is to get ahold of one of those right now.
Enter This 2004 YZ250 that I scooped up off of face space marketplace for 2000 bucks:
And it came with some spare plastics and other goodies.
(This bike wouldn't have been worth a penny more than $1500 two years ago. Fuck Covid prices.)
Short mod description: FMF SST Pipe complete with dents, Clarke 3.9 gallon tank, port match job between the jug and the cases, and I think a shaved head.
Anyway being that it was cheap, I starting dicking with it immediately. It had stock sea level jetting in it for some reason (50/175, needle clip 2nd from bottom).
Being that I ride this thing only in the range of 4500ft-9500ft, I got to work on that right quick.
Current settings sit at (40/168, needle clip 2nd from top)
That cleaned up a lot of spooge and woke the thing right up, particularly off the pipe. This setting runs nice and clean at 4500-5500ft, might be a hair on the lean side.
Other mods included swapping out the plastics to the spares that I got with the bike, bending the mounts on the silencer back into a reasonable position, and swapping out the sopping wet air filter that was leaking filter oil all over the swing arm and air box. (Sorry, pics of that whole process didn't happen)
Up next: Fork swap