A forum for owners of Yamaha TTR250 trail and enduro bikes!

Well after reading the many restoration story’s on this awesome forum I decided to share my own. 

My ttr was my first bike and as funds were tight and I needed a relaxing hobby. I decided to buy a cheap bike and try and fix it myself. I spent ages searching various sites and managed to find a 2000 TTR250 in decent condition or so I thought. As shown in the photo the owner had not even cleaned it for sale.

The seller failed to mention all the problems and had masked allot of them up.

The immediate problems included

-wheel bearings (front and back) rusted

-engine was blowing more smoke then about four 2strokes put together

-rear tire was not safe at all (10-20% tread)

-front tube had the valve ripped off

-all rear suspension bearing/ bushings rusted solid

-clutch plates were worn out

-oil was in desperate need of change

-ignition coil was only giving half of what it should have

-pick up/ stator (the thing the sense when to send a spark to the engine) blew after 2-3 rides

-the seller had done a spray paint over the plastics and frame with some random light blue paint

- Break pads and disks were down to below minimum

-chain and sprockets were usable but not flash

-timing chain was extremely worn (which caused it to jump and smash my valves up)

-sprag clutch (dreaded clunking sound. I didn’t replace this until about 6 months later

-carb was all gummed up

This was all in the first 3 months of owning the bike.

Things like the rear suspension I’m amazed still functioned. Shows how tough these bikes are.

So thanks to this site I was able to download a workshop manual and with the help of all of you I was able to start mending the bike piece by piece as funds permitted.

To combat the issues above

 -I got a .5 oversize  piston and rings/ rebore.

- Replaced all wheel bearings,

-replaced all the rear suspension components

-new tires and tubes

-new clutch plates

-new stator/pickup coil

-new timing chain/ chain tensioner

-cleaned the carb out

-new valves and shims

-new clutch cable

-new break pads and disks

-chain and sprockets replaced (not until later on)

So following all these I added a few optional extras including

Stickers, new hand guards, tool kit bash plate and an exhaust (which I suspect came off a yzf or older wrf)

So far so good until I took her for a few more rides to which I discovered fork oil leaking.

So after a few posts on this forum and a bit of a chat with my local bike shop I replaced all bushings ect and ran some 10wt fork oil with brand new seals (the old ones were absolutely shot) how the front forks were still operating was beyond me. Once again this bike proved it is indestructible.

Cool so after replacing all these I pulled the bike out to prepare for a ride the next day to find my steering shaft bottom bearing seized up. After some choice words I managed to get hold of the correct bearings and once again thanks to this site I replaced them.

So litres and litres of oil, allot of gaskets, instant gasket sealer, muffler packing, wd40 and 2 small bottles of loc tight later. I have been able to rebuild my bike up to near new standard for almost 1/7^th of the price it would have cost me to send it to the local dealers.  And even with all this I came out just underneath the market value. One of the things that I liked most about doing all this was the fact I know and can trust that all the parts are in good working condition.

Hopefully all that the future involves is normal maintenance.

I just want to say thanks again to everyone on this forum who helped me out with troubleshooting and suggestions when I was almsot ready to throw the bike off a cliff out of frustration

aidan