Ninja Race Bike - 3

I have not done any updates to the Ninja Race bike project lately, but that stops today. In order to get  the hanging throttle problem fixed I turned to the forums. As any Motorbike enthusiast knows the forums can be a boon or a bane depending on the forum. For the little ninjas, Ninjette.org is the best place that I have found for solid information regarding these little rockets. After some extensive searching I found that the carbs are the crutch if these bikes are not regularly run. There was one name that everyone turned to for carb work and he rescued many a project from the wrecking yard with his carburetor wizardry. I contacted ducatiman through the forum and after a week (hyper fast work!) I had my carbs back and on the bike.

Here they are fresh after un-boxing. The work ducatiman did to get them up to speed was pretty extensive. He stripped them down and inspected every part. He replaced all of the o-rings and gaskets. He also replaced one cracked carb cap and one needle that had some strange wear patterns on it. All of the hardware was replaced with brand new stainless steel allen head hardware. Most importantly he soda blasted and ultrasonically cleaned every bit and piece. The carbs looked great, everything was clean and fresh and they looked like new. There was lithium grease on all the moving parts and you could really tell that ducatiman has found his niche and does a great job with what he does.

So there are no intermediate pictures from last nights garage session. Once I got the carbs out of the box it was a wrench fest to get the bike back together. Two and half hours later this is what I had. I still have a few hours of work to do to make the bike ready for the road before I can do a test ride. I need to finish up mounting the rear wheel with the brakes and chain set up. I need to bleed the front brakes and put the registration sticker on the plate. I also need to have a buddy put a second set of eyes on it to make sure I didn't miss anything and they take it out for a ride. That is on tonight's plan. My future plans will have me riding the bike around for a few weeks to do an extended shake out run before I break it down piece by piece to race prep the bike.

It feels good to get through the hump of the engine troubles and hear the bike run right. These little bikes rev to the sky and they sound great as you wing the tachometer through the range. I need to get used to the size and different power curve of the 250 versus my V-Strom 650. Thankfully with the holidays coming up there are lots of days off between now and January. I should have more updates coming in soon. Stay tuned!

Blue