Suzuki TS250 Bobber

Today I picked up this poor broken 1977 Suzuki TS250 trail bike from a farm on the edge of town. The owner was a man of about 70yrs and told me he had bought the bike 2nd hand from a bloke in Kendall, NSW. He had used it on his farm at the coast and brought the bike with him when he moved to Tamworth. His son-in-law has ridden the bike around the farm until it seized and had leant it against the back of the shed 10yrs ago. The old fellow rang me last night to tell me the scrappers were coming today to take it, so I hurried out to his place this morning in my ute to rescue it.

As you can see it has had a hard life, and a lot of bits are missing. The frame is straight and tank seems good, but the seat is beyond even me.

There is not enough of it to get a pattern from.
I sat down this afternoon with paper and pencil and made a list of bits it need to restore it back to original condition and it ran to two pages. This would add up to spending about $4,000 to end up with a bike worth $3,000, so not a viable project. My thoughts then turned to the current craze of 'Bobbers'. I have seen a couple of DT Yamaha's made into Bobbers and they weren't too bad. Looking in the boxes of bits I have left from other bike projects showed that I have quite a few of the bits needed to 'Bob' this bike.
The engine I think seized because somebody removed the oil tank and lines and ran it on premix. This doesn't work on Suzuki's because the oil feeds the main bearings, so it will be a complete engine rebuild.
Check out the moss growing on the engine cases.

 

Do you prefer Tomato or BBQ sauce with your hats?

 

Got a bit done today after evicting several generations of spiders. Some bolts unscrewed, most broke off or I had to drill the heads off and grab them with multi grips.
After removing the high exhaust it left a large gap in the frame. I had a cuppa and a think about it and decided to make a side cover from 2mm aluminium to match the original plastic one on the left. Took a couple of hours, but it turned out alright. Look better when painted.



I then got onto stripping the rest of the frame. Before removing the engine I tried a socket on the flywheel nut and after a bit of a wriggle the engine turned. Unfortunetly it is a bit 'gravelly' when turned. The flywheel cover is made of magnesium and had had a bit of water in it. This white powder is magnesium corrosion, I hope the coils are ok.


The swing arm bolt was stuck fast, and took me nearly two hours to get it free.

The exhaust had a 'farmers repair' on it near the barrel. I removed 23 pieces of wire, copper sheet and tape to find that it was not a very big hole anyway. Bit of weld would have fixed it but I will not be using it anyway.

Not a bad days work.

 

Picked up a 19" front wheel while away last week to replace the 21" trail bike wheel. Am going to powder coat it and back wheel to match.

 

Before going to powdercoaters.


You can see how the rims and spokes are rusty, would cost a lot to replace them so am just going to get them coated.