A couple years ago I bought a 2004 Ninja 250 for $250. It was non-running, had already sat for a number of years after the rider crashed, and had some rust and paint was failing everywhere. That being said, aside from a broken rearset, some scrapes, and one fairing broken it wasn't bad, especially for $250. Plus since the guy was moving, he gave me his helmet and my a sedici leather jacket with liner that fit me perfectly. When I went to check it out it turned over, the electrical worked with a jump, and I almost got it started. So I loaded it up and brought it home. Right off the bat, I cleaned and rebuilt the carbs, threw them on and started up and ran the engine just fine. Then it sat for another year until I started working on it again. I'm not far from finishing it now, and will have it done this month, but I wanted to show a bit of how it's progressed. I lost the pics from when I first bought it, but hope you enjoy seeing it progress all the same.
Cleaned and Rebuilt Carbs:
Aside from what I've already said, I tore the entire bike down to the frame, but left the wiring harness one. The frame's paint was still good, so I didn't touch it. At one point I considered turning it into a cafe racer, but finances and time got the better of that idea.
Tear down:
Starting with painting since it looked like ****, I wet sanded everything, and did my best to get stickers off that had sealed to the plastics and tank due to weathering and sitting untouched for so long.
Heavily wet sanded tank, ready to be painted hanging in DIY paint booth:
I've always wanted a purple bike like the old 90s FZR600s, but again I was on a tight budget. As such a trip to Walmart was in order. I went with Krylon's purple, and decided to stick with Krylon for all painting on this bike to be consistent and have the best results. After wet sanding, I sprayed Krylon white primer on all plastics and the tank, which set really well. Then I sprayed everything with purple, which looked really good. It was when I used Krylon's gloss clear coat that I ran into problems. First off, clear coat is a very different beast from paint, and as such requires different procedures and curing. However, Krylon being a cheap spray paint company, used the same exact directions on the clear coat can as the spray paint and primer. What happened is it would no go on at the same distance as the paint, and required me to get closer and spray quite liberally just for it to apply. As such, it was very difficult finding the right balance to apply but not drip. In addition, because of the condition of the paint and plastics from their time sitting, and the damage from it crashing meant there was contamination. This became very apparent when the clear coat hit the paint, and it immediately crackled. I had to wet sand, prime, paint, and attempt clear coating 3 times just to have it crackle again a little less got annoying and spendy. It also took at least an entire can of clear coat just to do one part, so eventually I just called it good and moved on. I'll practice more later when this bike is done. If the picture below you'll notice the front fairing missing, it'd been completely destroyed in the crash. As such I'm just putting on an aftermarket headlight and maybe even aftermarket cluster.
The purple painted parts prior to clear coating:
Once that was done, since the powder coat on the swing arm was pretty scratched up and worn, I decided to try and powder coat it, so I built a DIY sandblasting cabinet and bought plastic blasting media:
DIY Sandblasting cabinet:
After hours and hours of blasting it though, it still wasn't down to bare metal except in a few spots. I still had some metalic gunmetal Krylon dualbond paint left over from another project, and decided to try that out. I primed the swingarm with gray primer, and then sprayed it. It turned out amazing, and used less than one can of Krylon Dualbond. If anyone wants to rattlecan something, I highly suggest this about $5 a can Krylon paint. Having used $30+ custom colors from Industrial Finished, this stuff turned out almost as good. Plus it was almost impossible to get a drip or run. This is the end result:
Krylon Dualbond painted swingarm:
Since the pre-gen 250's have some extra metal parts for mounting the brake caliper, I also sandblasted the brake mounting arm down to bare metal, and powder coated it matte black with powder coat just from Harbor Freight. It also turned out awesome, and I'm excited to do more powder coating in the future!
Powder coated brake caliper mounting arm:
Once all the parts I wanted repainted and powder coated were done, I cleaned the entire bike, and overhauled the front end, re-greasing the steering stem bearings, inspected the forks, flushed and replaced the fork oil, and then put it all back together. Then I threw the engine back in, and in the process set all the valve clearances to the maximum for better low end to mid power, and to last longer. Having done the clearances on inline 4s, V4s, and the 08-12 250s, I can say this was easier than shimming. It still was time intensive, but definitely easier.
Front end rebuilt, engine in, valve clearances done:
That's where I'm at at this point, still working on it. Next is to set up the handlebars and controls, I'm putting clip ons on instead of the stock handlebars. I'll post more on this as it goes, and try to remember to post a picture of how bad the plastics were prior to repainting them, as well as the crackling that happened.