|
Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Mon, 23 Aug 2010This may be the fastest I've ever acted for something like this. Last week, maybe Thursday (it being Monday as I write this), I got a message from one of my fellow racers: he was looking for help checking out a Ninja 250. I asked why he was all hot for a Ninja 250 all of a sudden, and he pointed me to this thread on the WMRRA forums, which was closely followed by this one. Racing Ninja 250s? Hell yeah! I've always wanted to do that, but never wanted to make the leap after it became clear that the only people who were racing them (I met one, and one only, nearly three years ago) were wannabe big-bike racers with attitudes. Not where I want to hang out. But with people like Bateman and O'Mahoney racing 250s, that starts to sound pretty appealing. So, I set out to look for one, turning to the One True Source for all things of a classified nature: Craigslist. The first one that my eye lit upon was a 2005 listed for $1500 just a half mile south of where I live. I contacted the seller, and we set up a time to check the bike out this weekend. I met him and looked the bike over: it looked to be in pretty good shape, although it had obviously gone boom onto its side a couple of times: the right muffler was pushed in and rubbing on the swingarm a little bit; the upper fairing had a 3 sq-in section broken out of it on the lower edge under the turnsignal stalk; there were scrape marks here and there. Everything seemed to be present, though, and nothing vital was bent or broken. I got the key from him and started it up, only to be horrified at the awful clattering noise coming from the head. It sounded like there was a low-speed grinder rattling around inside the head. Not encouraging. I asked Tom (our seller) about the noise, and he said it'd always sounded like that -- he'd just assumed it was normal. It did basically go away when the engine sped up, so I clambered aboard and took the bike out for a spin. Everything about it was loose and sloppy-feeling, which wasn't really unexpected. It's only a year older than my street 250, and has 4000 fewer miles, but has clearly lived a harder life, with some abuse, and some time spent sitting in the rain outside. There was nothing obvious, but there were little signs: the ignition keyhole cover didn't slide to like it should, and the finish on some of the painted parts was characteristically dulled. There was no rust to speak of, though, and nothing seemed structurally wrong with the bike, which is all I actually care about. I liked it, and told him so, but said I had to come back the next day to finish the test ride. He was very willing to humor me, as I think he'd had no nibbles on the bike in a week of having it up on CL. So I came back the next day, and he agreed that I could take it back to my house, adjust the chain, and try cleaning out the camchain tensioner to see if that would take care of the rattle. Several hours and a trip to the hardware store later, the rattle was gone, and the chain was actually the proper tension again -- when I rode it the first time, I pulled up the bottom run with my toe, and it hit the swingarm without any resistance. Not a good thing, and doubtless a source of some of the loosey-goosey feeling I got from the bike. Riding it with the chain tensioned correctly was definitely a mixed bag. On the one hand, it wasn't so loose, but on the other, there was an exciting new grinding feeling when the bike rolled forward. I pulled off the front sprocket cover, and discovered that the front sprocket was moderately hooked (a bad thing), and the chain pulled far enough off the rear sprocket to see a bit over a millimeter of daylight under the link (a bad thing, indicating a new chain is needed). There was an odd thump when the bike rolled over some bumps. The throttle cable needed about 10mm of adjustment to be correctly tightened. I'm hopeful that with a new chain, a lot of the grinding feeling will go away (although some of it is obviously in the transmission too, so I'm equally hopeful that the tranny doesn't need new bearings). As you may have already guessed, I made an offer, and Tom accepted it, and I now have a fourth motorcycle taking up precious space in my little garage. Something's gonna get booted out to tarp-land soon, but I haven't decided what. I really need to get to work on planning for the backyard shed I was just sure I was going to build this year.
Posted at 11:15 permanent link category: /motorcycle Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
