Yamaha TZR250 refresh

[SoCal250]

I bought my 3XV in Oct 2004, and shortly afterwards I decided it was a bike I was never going to sell.

After nearly 20 years I'm still learning about it, primarily because the manual is in Japanese and I haven't had the need to translate it because the bike has always been bullet-proof-reliable. It used to run like a watch and was always easy to start (usually 1-2 kicks). All it required was the usual regular maintenance and periodic carb cleaning because the tiny #15 pilots always seemed to plug up (which is partly attributable to the OEM vacuum petcock which does not have an 'Off' position). I have since replaced the petcock with a Suzuki unit so now I have a gravity-fed one with a positive off.

The only reason I'm having to go through all this now and experiencing issues with getting it running again is I made the mistake of letting is sit for many years.
And a couple problems I'm having now with the carbs are making tuning difficult: (1) the rear carb idle screw doesn't seem to be functioning properly. It's nearly all the way in (bottomed out) and has almost no affect on the slide height. And (2) I can't see the silver mark on the slide in the full-throttle sight window on the front carb. It almost appear as if the glass is clouded over so you can't see through it. So I attempted to sync max opening visually through the carb mouths.

[SoCal250]

Did some more work on it today. New UNI filter foam installed in both airboxes. Tried to sort out the idle issue but it won't even idle for me to verify air screw settings. I'm now using the OE spec which may not be correct for my bike. Still seems to have uneven exhaust pulses between the pipes so I know it needs tweaking. I plan to do some more on it in the next few days.
Above 3 or 4K it sounds great and rips! I took it for a quick blast around the neighborhood and succeeded in pissing off at least one guy in his front yard who gave me the "slow down" hand gesture.

[busa1300]

Kinda sounds like the issues I was having with mine. At idle it seemed like the one cylinder was firing once for every 4 times the other cylinder. Open up the throttle and it would wake up a little better. Come to the conclusion after I started to hear a very slight tick at times.... It needed a complete rebuild. Luckily I bought most everything I need before Covid forever destroyed the parts supply

[85RZwade]

"I took it for a quick blast around the neighborhood and succeeded in pissing off at least one guy in his front yard who gave me the "slow down" hand gesture."

Common mistake, Russ. He was actually expressing his admiration for you and your motorcycle. Poor sod; you should pity him.

[RDryan]

I got one of those gestures from some stranger standing out in front of a public walking path on my street, I waved as I ripped by. It was a really hot day and the fella looked  a little disoriented, I sure as heck wasn't going to stop.

So one year old thread, how's it going with the TZR?