Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Ninja 250 Project Comes Alive!

The weather forecast for today was not great, showers and cloudy, so I opted to put the finishing touches on “The Ninja 250 Project”. It has been a never ending project, but today was the day. For those who are not familiar, "The Ninja 250 Project" is a bike that I purchased with a bad engine. The plan was to rebuild it and give it to my 16 year old son as a starter bike. I got my first road bike when I was 16…a brand new 1977 Honda CJ360T.

I started early this morning and the first thing on the agenda was to add electrolyte to the new battery and put it on the charger. After that, all was left to due was to install the side covers and the upper and lower fairing. The upper fairing was a bit more work then I thought it would be. When I removed it from the bike, it came off in one piece. To re-install, I had to disassemble the upper fairing and separate the headlight/bracket and the instrumentation cluster from the fairing. Once this was done, the headlight bracket and instrumentation cluster mounted easily, 2 bolts and 1 nut. See the three views below.







Next, the fairing had to be installed. This too was a relatively easy task as the fairing fit into place quite easily. It took me a bit of time to remember where I had put the mounting hardware, but after about 5 minutes of searching I found it and installed the upper fairing.



The lower fairing was next and it only took minutes to connect!



All that was left to do over that was to re-check all bolts, etc., install the battery and the seat. I moved the bike outside, re-checked all fluids, turned on the ignition, set the choke and pushed the start button and...well look at the video clip below!



I am pleased with the end result as this has been an off and on project for the last 17 months. A complete chronology of the project can be found here. My son is away with his youth group and won't arrive home until late this evening. How excited do you think he will be tomorrow when he sees the bike and we push the start button? Heck, I am excited! After this, I grabbed my helmet and took the Ninja 250 for a little rip around the neighbourhood…it was a blast! What a fun little bike!

Now, I need to find another bike project...any suggestions?

5 comments:

  1. This is a test comment by Faceyman

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  2. Good on you! What a sense of achievement you must have felt when that motor fired up after such a long project.

    Next project: a thumper trail bike from the '70s or '80s. XT500 perhaps?

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  3. Wow! You've come a long ways with this bike, glad to see it come to its fruitin! It looks really good, your gonna have a extremely happy son on ur hands. Way to go. Thx for sharing on @motorcyclefans!

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  4. AHHH HAAAA I'm at my mom's PC with no speakers. Damn it Man!!!! I'll have to get my other tower cleaned up quick. Missing out on some good stuff. I'll bet you son is ready to ride! Got him a license yet?
    Be well Facey...

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  5. You just HAVE to let him take it for a drive...(Carm)

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