Last fall, MDC columnist and resident smart ass Mike Keefe got a little under the weather and had to spend a day or 50 in the hospital. While sitting in there feeling sorry for himself, he constantly cried about the condition of his dirt bike, "Trigger," a 1988 KX250.
Mike has had many adventures with Trigger, with pretty much all of them ending in failure of mind, body or bike. Trigger is Mike's Moby Dick. They are waged in a relentless struggle for the upper hand. Of course, Mike is usually out foxed by the dirt bike and in his defeat slips ever so further backwards in the transition most of us enjoy from bad bikes to better bikes as time goes by.
Feeling more pity for Mike than usual, we decided to knock Trigger a few lumps ourselves. We didn't expect to win the war for Mike, but we knew with a small investment of cash and a massive investment of time that we could tip the battlefield in Mike's favor.
We found the piece of shit under a pile of garbage in Mike's garage. Please understand that the only exagerration in that last sentence was the word "garage" to describe the building along the alleyway behind Mike's brick bungalow. A garage is something generally used to house a car, not mountains of tools, scrap metal, duct work, tubing, PVC hose, etc., etc.
While dragging Trigger out to our trailer, we took note of the pieces that weren't secured by the globs of literally 12-month old dried mud. Those would likely fall off on the ensuing ride and would need to be replaced or written off as weight savings in Trigger's new life. After saying bye-bye to only a few bolts, but nearly the seat (it was dangling by one of the zip-ties Mike was using to hold it in place) we got the old nag home and disected it.
After scraping on the bottom end for what seemed like all day, there were a few hours left until daylight, so we cleaned the frame and cut the gaskets for the bottom end -- the sidecover, the clutch cover and the waterpump cover.
Day three: We cleaned the cylinder and powervalves. What a mess. Mike's idea of cleaning his powervalves was to take off the pipe and spray carb cleaner -- or whatever benzene-laden solvent he happened to have handy -- into the cylinder. This process was easy for him because he always managed to lose the springs holding on the pipe and just had to jerk it out of the way to spray in the carb cleaner. We did it right, removing the powervalves from the cylinder, scraping the carbon off with a razor blade and soaking them in solvent.
On the fourth day, we stripped the old paint off the main frame. We don't own a sand blaster, so we had to resort to using the hand grinder with a wire wheel. The swingarm, which although it was aluminum came from the factory painted gray, got the stripping treatment as well.
Building it up
On day five, we had the fun job of painting the frame. We were going to use "Suzuki gray," which the frames on the yellow bikes have been since the late 1990s, but found a cooler color in the auto paint section of Wal-Mart. The color we used also was gray, but was lighter and had a few more "sparkles" than the Suzuki version. After a few coats of clear, we were done with this job.
Day six came -- just for the sake of full disclosure, these days didn't take place consecutively -- and we dropped the bottom end back into the frame.
It's always nice to start putting things back together, especially when
they're clean and shiny.
Day six wasn't all fun and games, though. We also cleaned and greased the linkage, cleaned and installed the swingarm needle bearings (minus a couple needles that rolled too far under the workbench to bother retrieving, but Mike won't notice) and cleaned and installed the subframe, airbox and triple clamps.
The airbox, like everything else, was packed with mud and grime and took some real care to get presentable. The subframe got the royal treatment, as well. In the grand tradition of the 1980s, Kawasaki painted the nice aluminum subframe green, 40% of which had flaked off by January 2004. We took care of the rest with our hand grinder. Some aluminum dust ended up polluting the air in the garage, but that's just weight savings.
On day seven, we took care of a few little things. We sharpened, cleaned and painted the footpegs, grinded that ridiculous cherry red paint of the pipe, cleaned the kickstarter and packed it full of grease, cleaned and sanded the rust off the axle, and cleaned, repaired and cut a new chunk of teflon for the rear chain guide.
Is that a motorcycle?
eBay is getting more worthless with every passing day when it comes to finding good deals, but good deals are still to be had for bikes that no one gives a shit about any more. You know, those bikes that fall between the classification called "vintage" and the classification called "modern" -- rat bikes like Mike's 1988 KX250.
Thus, a couple good deals we did find. We purchased a new top end kit (piston, rings, wristpin and circlips) for less than 20 bucks, and that included shipping. We also got a complete top end gasket kit with all the fixin's for under $10. If you've followed Mike and his misadventures with Trigger, you know that at one point he busted off a prong on the clutch hub in a fit of insanity. We found an intact hub on eBay for around $25 -- a little high, but we'll take it.
While we're on the subject of good deals, the best deals we found were directly from Kawasaki. In late 2003, Kawasaki's retail Web site buykawasaki.com had some killer deals -- prices that seemed almost bogus. But the orders went through, and the parts were delivered. We got some grips for $0.95, number packages for $0.95, a KX500 heavy duty graphics kit that fit the 250 for a couple bucks and a bunch of OEM Kawasaki stickers for around a dollar or so.
On day eight we installed the new-to-us clutch hub, clutch basket and clutch plates. We installed a new waterpump seal that we did not get a good deal on because we bought it at a local Kawasaki dealer. We cleaned the carb (man, was it varnished up), installed the reed cage, boot, carb and throttle slide, and bolted on the CDI box and coil, complete with new connectors (yes, we ground the paint off the points of connection).
It was on day eight that we also used that gasket kit and new top end when we installed the cylinder. A note about the cylinder: It's trashed. Well, not trashed in the sense that the bike won't run, but trashed in the sense that there are some serious scratches on the intake side and an inch-long, quarter-inch wide vertical scrape just above the middle exhaust port all the way through the electroplating and into the bare aluminum underneath. Yes, it needs re-plated. No, we're not paying for it.
The home stretch!
Day nine: If you had any fantasy that we may be attempting a quality restoration project here, this is the day you join the rest of us back here on planet earth.
Generally, one does not paint dirt bike plastic because it is a stupid thing to do. Paint cracks, peels and flakes terribly when applied to flexible plastic that is routinely scraped against trees, gouged with sticks, dragged across rocks and sprayed with 1,000 PSI pressure washers at close range. After about 20 minutes of normal riding, painted dirt bike plastic looks like a leper recovering from a bad sun burn.
But, ahhhh! The miracles of modern science! The paint company Krylon has come up with this stuff called Fusion paint that is supposedly specially formulated to paint plastic. Is it a line of crap? Specially formulated or not, the stuff does work.
Of course we did not find a matching "Kawasaki green," but we did did find some green paint (think "Hulk" green). We gave the fenders, front number plate and side panels several coats, let it dry for a week and after several rides and one serious pressure washing, it hasn't showed a sign of wear besides the scratches that would have marred the plastic itself. (If we knew it would have worked so well, Mike would have been the first guy on his block to own a yellow and black 1988 KX250.)
After we set the plastic aside to dry, we cleaned the gas tank. Assuming the gas fumes permeating through the plastic would bubble the paint, we did what we figured was the next most ridiculous thing to do: We covered it with black duct tape.
We also installed the KX500 graphics we got off buykawasaki.com on the radiator shrouds, painted the pipe with high-temp silver paint, repacked the silencer, installed an old kill switch that came off our CR250, new aluminum handlebars, new grips and newly painted levers. We also bolted up the pipe after it dried, along with some new pipe springs.
On day 10, we took it a little easy. We cleaned the front wheel (we hate cleaning wheels -- how the hell are you supposed to get all the sides of the hubs?), installed the forks into the triple clamps and attached the front wheel.
The pipe looks better silver than red, no?
Finally! On day 11, we bring it on home baby! We attached the front engine mounts. We bolted down the tank then installed new cheap but tough steel sprockets (we upped the gearing a few teeth to help with Trigger's lack of oomph) on the rear wheel and slid on an old, slightly worn DID x-ring chain off our CR250.
Surprisingly, the painted plastic is outlasting the duct tape.
We put in new brake pads, installed the rear wheel (liberally coating the rear axle with anti-seize), painted on blue number plate backgrounds, applied the numbers (Mike's #98 -- no, there's no significance to that), applied clear plastic over the numbers and painted on backgrounds, stuck on a few assorted stickers, bolted on all the plastics and bled the brakes.
Heeeeeeeere's Trigger...
Let's rock!
Mike tries his damnest, but he can't catch the PW50 in the woods. Trust us, though. It's not the bike.
midwestmotocross.com Bike Test Consultant Noah Holter gives Mike some much appreciate tips about better trail riding practices.
Trigger at rest.
