[Veloandy]

Hello Everyone!

I’ve always wanted to wrench on and ride a Ninja 250 and now I have one!

I also have a 1977 Honda CB750 Super Sport, and a 1976 Honda Trail 90. Both are great, but I wanted a fun, cheap, high MPG bike that can keep up with traffic on arterial toads better than my Trail 90 and is less of a handful than my cb750. I’ve always been blown away by the Ninja 250’s fuel economy, insane redline, great handling, chap consumables, and general mechanical toughness.

So, I found mine. It’s a 2006 with 16k miles and was stolen from the P.O. about a year ago and recently recovered and returned to him after a police chase and minor crash. The bike was originally blue. The thief painted it green and then spray bombed it black; broke every lock on the bike; added a cheesy toggle switch to turn it on; and added a cheesy USB/cigarette lighter plug on top of the instruments that only fit when half the windscreen bolts are removed. The thief was a piece of work. He attached a plastic window cup holder to the front fairing with a drywall screw (wtf???). All of his electrical mods were done with wire nuts and blue wire stripped by human incisors. The shifter foot peg was broken in the crash and the belly pan was cracked in two.

So, I dragged it home, transferred the title in my name and got to work. I put on a new (used) shifter foot peg, new ignition switch, and new speedo cable. I pulled the fairings and glued the belly pan together with ABS cement and built up some missing fairing pieces with bits of ABS sheet, artistically stuck together with yet more cement.

I got it to run with a jump start, but it sounded really bad. I drained the filthy oil and cleaned the oil screen and it looked basically OK in there (just plastic grit from either the cam chain guides or clutch bushings and some barely visible bronze flakes that didn’t seem atypical for a bike whose oil is shared by the gearbox).

So I pulled the valve cover to check valve clearances and found a slack cam chain (from a jammed tensioner) and a broken rocker arm. I bought a rocker arm from a friendly member here and can’t wait to see what happens when I get it all back together!

I’m excited about getting it going again. I’m thinking of trying out putting on some really obnoxious vinyl wrap on the tank and fairings. I’m so excited that there is a forum like this that I can share the process with!