Hi Guys Thanks to this awesome forum/website I was able to get the service manual I needed to get my bike running, so I thought I'd throw up a post and mention my appreciation for this excellent resource you guys have created! So I bought a pile of 89 ZXR250 bits sight unseen off the internet. Looked like it was mostly there and had been in dry but dusty storage. Its been fitted with a ZXR250 C engine at some stage. Towed it back home so I could see what I'd gotten myself into. First mission was to figure out what was missing, so I sort of roughly sat it together Most of the components seemed to be there so the next mission was to get it going. It came with a set of incomplete A carbs and a set of incomplete C carbs, so I bought some more carbs off the internet. They were pretty dusty so I tore them down and gave them a good freshen up. One of the diaphragms had some nicks in it so got that swapped out with spares from one of the old sets. Banged the carbs back in, would fire a little but cough a splutter and backfire. Threw some new plugs at it, still no bueno. I noticed one of the HT leads looked like it was on the wrong cylinder. Checked out the coils, 1st coil was going to 1 & 3, 2nd coil going to 2 & 4. Being wasted spark I suspected something was amiss but didn't know if kawasaki had some wacky flat plane crank or weird firing order. Checked the manual that this awesome place kindly provides for a nominal fee and sure enough, wrong firing order. Changed the HT lead around and she burst back into life! Very happy camper! Been out shopping this morning and ordered new pads, sprockets, chain, battery, oil filter, coolant and a new rear tyre. After sorting out the brakes a test ride will be next then working on trying to get it road going again. Thanks again everyone, the manual was extremely helpful as were a couple of threads regarding hose routing and carb settings. You guys are legends! Cheers Mike
Good to see another KIWI doing the back yard thing. I notice that you have a spare coolant reservoir on the frame on the ground in the first photo. Is that for sale?
Look's like you've found Aladdins cave of ZXR 250 part's. Nothing better than having multiple spare's , you've done well.
Been doing some more work on this thing Brakes were blocked and horrible. Tried to get them out with an air compressor, wouldnt budge. Ended up using a greasegun to push the pistons out. A quick flick on the lathe with some autosol and the bores of the master cylinders and brake pistons were shiny and beautiful again. After I had functioning brakes I decided to take it for a little run to see what else it needed Put a new chain, sprockets, battery, pads, brake lever, coolant and rear tyre on it. Cleaned up the fairings as best I could and painted them, I'm not much of a panel beater but its a decent improvement over how it was anyway. There were lots of little cracks that I araldited and patched the back of with aluminium. There were also a couple of electrical gremlins to work out, had to replace the headlight relay but not too big of a deal to sort out. Ordered a windscreen and they sent me a C model one. Got the right one on the way but it kind of plugs the hole up for now. Other than that got it all legal and have been riding it around and enjoying it. Cheers Mike
