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Old oil and filter out. Still pretty clean, I’ve only done about 700ks on this oil. 6 Months old though so no harm in changing it.

Sump off.

Remember the bolt in the middle. Desmogod knows all about that one Other than that, everything is normal here.

So why did I take the sump off? The old sump had been helicoiled. Being a perfectionist I wanted to fix this. This will also allow the sump to drain fully again (the drain bolt thread is cutaway, when you put a helicoil in this cutaway is covered by the helicoil). I put the drain bolt in by hand and felt straight away how easy it is to strip one of these, I think the cutaway itself is the issue. It’s something that I will have to keep in mind, use a ratchet to break the seal and loosen/tighten the drain bolt by hand.

New sump. I gave this a spray with brake cleaner (leaves no residue) and a blast of air, glad I did as there was a fair amount of metal shavings/castings in there.

Block face cleaned and lightly sanded with W+D to clean the old gasket off. It was easier to work on the bike on the floor than the bench, it allowed me to get under the bike.

Oil pickup cleaned. No point pulling the sump and not cleaning this. There were a couple of little bits on the screen, nothing unexpected though.

New sump on with new bolts

Fun time

Pain in the ass to get on! The slip joins were a pain to line up. I ended up taking the two outside flanges off and put them on the headers, lined up the two inner flanges and wiggled and jiggled the system on. The headers lined up perfectly with the chassis mount. New exhaust gaskets installed too.

The muffler was a comparitive walk in the park, max 2 minutes to install.

That’s the hard stuff done. On the home stretch now, probably a week or so and she’ll be back on the road. I will take some shots of the high exit once I have the rear panels on, it’s hard to visualise the lines without them.

Puig screen. I am not 100% happy with it at this stage, it scratches easily and had a couple from transit. I am going to get it polished.

My new tool, a cable oiler. I put a new clutch cable on whilst I had everything apart. They come dry when you buy them new. The new cable is smooth as silk now, huge difference.

New brake lever.

New clutch lever. Both levers were pretty easy to fit up. Just remember to use a bit of grease on the pivot points and watch the microswitch on the clutch lever.

Old exhaust off.

Up on T stands to fit the new lowering link.

Old link vs new link

Lowering link fitted.

Front sprocket and chain off. This was a mess before I cleaned it. I didn’t get a before photo but trust me, it was bad!

More to come!

Difference -> pilot air jet vs FC adaptor. The FC adaptor is smaller. What this means is with the FC at 5 turns open, the pilot air jet will be smaller than stock! So to compensate I will change the pilot jet from 27.5 to 25. Sorry for the quality, it was one of those things that was hard to get a good shot of with my camera (lee = camera noob).

Fuel bowl off to change pilot jet. You can’t see the pilot jet here, it’s down the largest of the 3 shafts next to the main jet. The big one in the middle is the main jet.

All back together.

I have settled on pilot air FC at 4 turns open and main air FC at 3.5 turns open. I hope to get it on the dyno soon to see how far off I am.

I took the day off work today to do some work on Misty.

I dropped the pilot jet from 27.5 to 25, and returned the flo commander to 3 turns out and I had the same performance as I did with the 27.5 and FC at 5 turns out. FC at 4 turns out with a pilot jet of 25 seems to have fixed up the 1/4 throttle choking I was experiencing which improves cruising considerably.

I did try a couple of plug chops today but didn’t get any reliable readings. I have read that modern unleaded burns too clean to give reliable readings. I am postive it is running rich but I will still exercise caution until I get on the dyno. I will get onto that now that I have fixed up the pilot circuit.

I took some photos of the 1.1 PAJ and the FC PAJ adaptors to show why I have had to go down a size on the PJ, when I bring the camera to work I will upload it.

…continuing on with misty’s flo commander progress

I removed the airbox snorkel, these are useless anyway unless you plumb them direct into the airbox… The lower screw pictured had to be punched out… to get access with a punch I got creative and ripped the snorkel out. Good thing I don’t want it anymore. With the snorkel removed I will have full access to adjust the pilot flo commander.

Pilot air and main air tubing adaptors

All hooked up and installed. What a job, the templates provided are for the rs250 which has more clearance to the rear shock mount and a different size airbox. Both conspired against me, but I got there in the end. The right angle joiners are a god send with the centre wall still in place. They make fitting and removal really easy and were a tremendous help with hose routing. These hoses don’t take well to bends and kink very easily.

Sorted out the lower LHS fairing mount and put the fairings back on. Popped on a couple of stickers that I had laying around for effect.

Initally the pilot flo commander was a backwards step. It was chugging when cold and surging at 1/4 to 1/2 throttle. I wound out the adjustment (lean) and it is nearly there. It still feels like it’s slightly chugging at 1/4 throttle, not surging just like it’s struggling the breathe a little. I will play with it more, possibly requires a needle jet or pilot jet change.

Part 2 of the rs250 work… 

Getting ready for the new chain & sprockets.

Taa daa! I had to cut the chain long, there was not enough length to cut another link out. I will probably take a link out as the chain wears in and stretches a little.

New rearsets on. The shift linkages were damaged from what appears to be a previous stationary drop so I replaced these as well.

Pipes back on with new gaskets. I am hoping this will stop some of the leaks

I started her up last night to check for oil leaks. Everything appeared good but the leaks were slow and usually took an hour or two to appear. This morning I saw some fresh oil where the cases join at the RHS cylinder. So it looks like the sealant between the cases has deteriorated overtime; from what I have read it’s not an uncommon thing with the rs250s. Must be the quality italian craftsmanship I have put some threebond on the joint, the same sealant that is used to join the cases together. Being a liquid gasket I have my doubts whether it will hold or not, but with the alternative being to split the cases I’m prepared to at least give it a try.

I took her for a test run this morning. The new rear shock is awesome; the motor sounds quieter so the new exhaust gaskets were worth the money; the new rearsets are lovely and don’t rattle; and to top it off she seems to pick up off the throttle a lot better, probably a combination of clean exhausts and a new chain.

That’s it on the rs250 for now, I still have a couple of small things to sort out (new fairing bracket, shim the new pedals, rear brake light switch) but they will get done as the parts arrive.

-L

Here’s a couple of shots of misty’s main air flo commander. I didn’t take any more pics, sorry. But I will take more when the pilot system arrives.

They are not that hard to install. Follow the instructions to the letter and you’ll be fine. For those of us playing in the metric world (being a US product the instructions refer to imperial sizes), I drilled a 13mm hole in the side and a 6.5mm hole in the bottom of the airbox. A hair dryer makes the hoses much easier to fit up

Here’s a quick update on the rs250. It’s still a work in progress, I’ll be finishing her off today/tonight.

Sorry for the image size. I had trouble uploading the images… and I’d rather work on the bike than resize photos

New parts for the rs250

Penske shock

Took a shot just so I know how she goes back together

I’ve done a bit on the workshop lately as well, thanks to darren (bench construction) and dean (painting benches) for the benches. Some would say I’ve got too much bench space, but like everything else (lights, powerpoints etc) I am glad I decided to go over the top as there is no such thing as too much bench space.

Pipes off, rearsets off, up on the T stands so I can take the shock out. The flanges had quite a bit of oil between them so replacing the gaskets should sort out most of the leaks I am chasing.

Rear tyre, chain, front sprocket blah blah blah all off now. I’ve given everything a good clean and even polished the swingarm. I am very happy with the result. It took me a little while but I think it was worth the effort.

Old shock out.

New goodness in.

I got back onto Misty last weekend to do a few more things. Below is a summary of the work carried out so far.

Here we are getting ready to fit up the new temperature gauge. Red plug is 12V +ve, black plug is -ve,  green plug is temperature sensor. We need the the red and black plugs. To fit the new gauge I cut off the red and black plugs and crimped on some bullet connectors. The temperature sensor wire and the light globe plug are not used so I have simply taped these up and left them on the loom.

Both pipes were still leaking. I am going to try a different sealant and use all of the exhaust brackets (previously I was not using the rear brackets). I will prevail!

New temperature sensor in. The thread tape should stop any leaks. The old temperature sensor had some sort of glue holding it in, I don’t think this is necessary.

I had to drop the coolant to fit the new temperature sensor so I decided to take the heads off to have a look at the pistons.

Right/Front cylinder

Left/Rear cylinder

I thought that I would need to jet lean based on what I had read and have been told about the setup I am running. I will fit the flo commander first but I suspect that at a minimum I will need to go down jet size.

Pipes back on

New digital temperature gauge. A breeze to hook up and configure. The warning is set to come on at 85C… I’ll probably change this to come on at 80C. It’ll be interesting to see how visible this is, it doesn’t seem to have a wide viewing angle.

I’m using the rear exhaust brackets now. I think this has been part of the problem with the pipes leaking, the pipes were able to move a little. Now they are fairly rigid. They have also lined the exhausts up a little better, providing clearance between the LHS pipe and the RHS cylinder head. New spacers have also helped with the alignment.

Flo commander will be fitted up this weekend and then she is back on the road

-L