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posts / Honda VTR-250? VTR-500? 11/18/2023
I always keep any eye on what kinda bikes are on Craigslist, and last fall came across a VTR-250 that had an Ascot 500 engine swapped into it. For $500. Naturally I picked it up. This was about a year ago so I will give a condensed account of what's gotten done on this project since picking it up.
First order of business was taking it to Vicious Cycle to have Joe take a look at the thing. They've built lots of Ascot and other xr500 variant engines down there so it seemed like a good idea to have them take a look and just let me know if anything about the engine or it's implementation in the frame was screwy or broken. Joe gave it the thumbs up, said the mounts are good and it has a straight chain run so its off to a good start. He was even able to get it going with one of the carbs he had kicking around the shop. Only thing he warned about was that the bike really ought to have a cross member in the frame to attach the thumper engine's top two mounting points. So I had him weld that in.
After getting it home I've done mostly little stuff, before being distracted by the Portland riding season: - Checked and cleaned out the front brake. Not immediately necessary, but I've always been morbidly curious about that inboard brake disk setup. - Got wiring sorted out so electrical controls work. - Pulled apart, checked, and cleaned out the weird solenoid geared starter unit that Honda used on the FT500 instead of a starter clutch. - Added a Mikuni VM38 carb, per Joe's recommendation.
Now that the riding season is basically done in the Northwest I've been digging back into the project. The VTR250 throttle had to be spun more than 180 degrees to fully open the carb, so I swapped that out for a YZ-250 throttle and cable. I had to fiddle around with cable length, because the 90 degree bend cable fitting in the top of the carb took a little extra. The polyurethane cable casing was about the perfect length though. Its even got a little slack, so I can probably put some dirtbike handlebars on this thing, no problem.
Since I'm using a different throttle, I had to get rid of the stock right hand switch gear. I'll probably migrate the functionality of the killswitch and starter button to the high beam switch and horn button on the left handlebar, but for now we've just got a round switch thingie just hanging out around the fusebox.
And that's roughly where I'm at. Next thing will be to reopen the starter doohickey and double check that it's all right, since these motors have a tendency to break those. If that breaks I'm either spending $600 on used replacement parts, or I'm bump starting the bike. I don't wanna be bump starting this thing when I'm doing stuff like tuning carb. That's not a good time.
Oh yeah, the carb is way out of wack too, since I bought a standard VM38, it's got something like a #300 main jet in it. Once the starter motor is verified working it will be entertaining to see if it's able to run that rich.
