(I meant to post this about 6 months ago, but only just got round to it - I have about 4-5 posts to make to get things up to date.)

My fixation with the NSR250 began whilst staring at Tyga's Rothmans MC28 project bike at Bang Saen bike week here in Thailand. I asked if it was for sale, they said no, I was relieved - how would I have been able to resist? Until then I’d wanted a VFR400 for a long time and had never given much thought to the Honda two strokes. I spend more than half of each year here and I had had a cursory look around for Yamaha TZs (my dad's had TZ/TD racing bikes since before I was born in the early 80s) but then realised that most of the two strokes here are smaller ones such as the TZM150 and NSR150. I guess there just wasn’t the demand or the cash around back then to justify importing many bigger bikes, but a few do show up from time to time. Usually they have two significant bad points: they have no legal paperwork, and they’re trashed. When I found one I bargained that having one of these two things was better than nothing… (in case you were wondering, it had the paperwork)

As purchased...



Bought for the equivalent of £900, which on reflection wasn’t as good a price as I thought at the time. Well I say ‘on reflection’, what I really mean is on getting over my excitement and actually giving the bike some proper attention. There were hints available to me back before I handed over the cash though, such as the fact that no two bolts looked the same, the fact that most of the bodywork was held on with cable ties, also the cracked tyres, the amount of electrical tape, the battered silencers. Oh and that the now-previous owner warned me before I rode it away: don’t go too crazy on it, go easy. However I had no regrets - the plan was to buy a wreck and start a project rather than risk spending four times that much and finding it rotten inside anyway. It ran, if a little roughly, and so I was able to ride it home (nothing like clutch-slipping away from the traffic lights in a cloud of blue smoke right next to a cop on a bike).



To be fair to the chap he’d had a good go at making something of the bike but the more bits I took off the more I realised it wasn’t going to be the simple case of new bodywork, plugs, tyres and fluids. By the time the bodywork was off I’d worked out that it was a mix of bits. The frame, engine and front end are MC16, the rear wheel and wiring loom are MC18. The bodywork was cheap plastic stuff from China, so that was only ever going to be destined for the skip.

Of course the carbs were going to have to come off for a clean, and then I noticed that the power valve cables were a rusty mess, and one of the valves was sticking too. In the end though it was a small but prominent patch of flaking silver paint on the frame which made me think screw it, let’s get the whole damn thing apart.

Living in an apartment definitely has it's disadvantages, chiefly the lack of a garage. Whilst my bikes have been secure and undercover, it's no place to work. Even at 9pm the humidity and the mosquitoes are a nightmare. So I set about reducing the bike into plastic boxes and shipping it upstairs in the elevator. This was probably much to the relief of the other residents who look at me oddly when they see me working on bikes (as they lift shopping bags out of their silver Toyotas - each to their own I suppose).



At this point I decided to bin off the 2T pump and tank etc and go premix. I also decided that this was all a stupid idea and that I'd never do this again (which I'd told myself last time I built a bike). The boxes of junk were then lined up between my desk and the door onto my balcony - the fairing, wheels, exhaust pipes and all the rest were out on the balcony. And then the air conditioner broke. Unable to fix it I had to call the repair man, which meant a visit from him and the building manager - cue more odd stares (and no doubt wondering: "What's wrong with this foreign guy?! Why can't he just buy a silver Toyota instead and be happy with that?").

I wasn't about to just sit there and stare at it (not yet anyway), so I dragged the engine onto the balcony, got the toolbox out and got stuck in:



Initially things were going ok and then I had a look in the exhaust ports and saw the state of the pistons. Shortly after I had the top end apart (including one ruined power valve shaft because, too hasty to read the books/not be a gorilla with a spanner, I didn't realise it was left-hand thread and snapped it) to find that the nikasil on the bores was ruined - holes in some places, and other bits lifting off. About now I contemplated heaving the whole lot over the railing and down into the swimming pool below, but decided that would probably seal my eviction from the building so thought better of it.



At this point I realised things were definitely going to get expensive and I started to have doubts about how worth it it all was. Sure I could claim the noble cause of saving one more NSR from the scrapyard, but really... On the bright side the crankshaft appeared to have a bit of life left in it (as yet the bottom-end hasn't been stripped further), and Tyga had a few OEM pistons kicking around. And Rome wasn't built in a day, and it was nearly Christmas.

Time to spend some more money.

looks tidy, all worth it in the end