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

Hi Martyn, The why and how.

Why:
As well as sports bikes, I've ridden small trail bikes as well, culminating in a Serow back in the 90s.
That was such a nice bike I decided to ride it up to North Cape and then around eastern Europe and home, over 3 months. And it was brilliant.
Later I started looking for a bike to ride to Cape Town and was influenced by the reports of Lois Pryce. I checked out the TTR250, never having known anything about it, and it all looked good.

How:
Well I bought this bike with quite a high mileage, but it had only one owner who seemed to have looked after it properly which I think is more important. Plus it already had the 22ltr tank fitted and the home-made rack.
I'd read about the weak points, the starter train, so changed the starter clutch as a precaution as it seemed a straighforward job.
And fitted a lowering link as it was too tall for me off road.
And sawed off the exhaust restrictor which was still in place.
I had the wheels respoked with heavy-duty spokes, which was a bit of a disappointment as they are tending to rust. I only did it because the Serow broke a couple of spokes during the time I had it, so it was probably unnecessary.

That was about it, apart from a plastic topbox, soft panniers and a tank bag (all second hand) and tank panniers, new.
I took far too much stuff (everyone does it seems) and ditched the tank bag by Egypt as it was incredibly uncomfortable apart from anything else.
Total weight of luggage, which I only came to know through the entire bike being weighed at the end of the journey for air freight home, was 90kg.

And nothing broke, so it truly is a very strong bike.