Saturday's workshop session was well attended as always and some good progress was made.  Here's what happened that didn't already get posted.

Various freshly powder coated compontents for it arrived in the workshop today ready for the rebuild to begin.  If you need items powder coated have a word with Phil our mechanic he knows a gent in Bury Port that does a fine job for a reasonable price.

I (Graham) finally pulled my finger out and set about putting together the order for new sprockets and tyres for it.  In the meantime Steve and Alan fought to get the hardened and perished rear tyre off the rim.  After a considerable struggle their persistance paid off.  The front brake disc was found to be quite badly ridged so we looked into buying a replacement.  Early searches for a new disc proved fruitless.  There were plenty of discs claiming to be for the front of the Z250A, but not one of them had what I would call the disc centre where the bolts go through to attach it to the wheel.  The original disc is rivetted to the centre and I never seen discs sold that need the rivetts drilled out and replaced to fit new discs.  So it maywell be a case of taking it to a local engineering company to get the disc surface skimmed.  Putting the old disc back onto the bike with new pads would mean that the brakes would not be particularly effective unt...

Since finally getting the bike running  and roadworthy Annabelle had been suffering from severe clutch drag.  There was no choice but to remove the gearbox to get at the clutch and replace parts.  Along with her team of enthusiastic mechanics Annabelle soon had the gearbox off the box and the clutch in pieces.  They managed to do it with the engine in situ which was no mean feat. We had previously spotted a warped steel place, so that was replaced and the main component in the clutch was turned around to face the correct way.  By the end of the session of the bike was back together and running with a clutch that no longer dragged.  Now all that remains is a bit of final tuning and to re-attach the sidecar.  Hopefully it will now give long service.  I have to say I have never seen a bike with so many faults built into it by its previous owner.  It's relatively simple engineering and an enthusiastic owners group on Facebook, meant that in the m...

Photo 7 Oct 2023 This is our mechanic's baby and having spent a very long time in boxes is now very pretty canary yellow trail bike.  It looks very much as Yamaha intended it to look and there are just one or two last things to do to complete it. One of which it to work out a way to install a chain guard from a different model as the original item is no longer available.

 Still we struggle to identify why there is no spark at the end of the High Tension Lead.  The bike is equipped with electronic ignition. and to date we have... Soldered a replacement crank position sensor  coil onto the generator back plate and checked that it is producing some AC voltage.  When the engine is spun on the starter it produces 0.7 to 0.9 volts.  This tiny voltage should be enough to tell the ECU to fire the ignition. Checked for continuity from the above mentioned coil to the ECU.  The wires are perfect, although the voltage drops to 0.3 to 0.5 volts by the time the wires reach the ECU. Checked the operation of the sidestand cut out switch - it makes and breaks as it should do. Checked the igntion fuse up near the steering stem.  It is fine and there are 12 volts across the fuse. Checked for voltage at the ignition coil feed  - There is a good 12 volt feed to the coil and the coil is well earthed. Checked for continuity from the coi...

 Phil H is painting the headlight brackets and handlebar clamps

Graham made a cylinder base gasket for this at and we now have all the components to rebuild the top of the engine.  The biggest challenge is going to be finding all the nuts, bolts and other components to rebuild the frame and to work out where to put them.