How Did I Mess Up My Restored Honda XR!?

Last year, we did a series called Bike in a Box. Hey look, Dan, it's bike in a box. It's a bike, okay. And it was a 1986 XR250R, and here it is. This bike came to us off a marketplace and it was literally just in pieces and in boxes and in five gallon buckets. We threw the mustard at it. We got new tires, front and rear, race tech suspension, all new plastic, new decals, new handlebars, powder coated frame, dolled up triples, new levers, new seat cover, new toolbox, new chain, new sprockets, new shifter, Cerakoted some engine pieces, race tech shock in the rear. We actually sent the forks and the shock out to race tech and they did all of it for us. We have the Al Baker's XR only super trap exhaust, all new bearings, all new motor, it's dialed. Got it all back together and it fired up on the first kick, I think. Let's replay that, replay that footage. Or one, yeah, fired up on the first kick. And then I did something. I pulled in the clutch, I kicked it down in the gear, and when I let out the clutch, nothing. Now that it's in gear, I can pull the clutch and do whatever and it is not working. So I did like any other frustrated person would do and I parked it in the corner of the shop for the last seven months, no. How many months? 11 months, it's been almost a year. And we spent all the time and money getting this bike ready to go to just park it because I screwed something up. Anyway, long story short, today we're gonna figure out what I screwed up on the 86 XR250 bike in a box. Where do we start? Let's start at the beginning, okay. So we're in neutral, I'm just gonna click it up in a second, we're in second. Locked up, pull in the clutch, nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Let's go up into some higher gears. The bike goes through the gears fine, but it is not disengaging the clutch. We have free play in our lever, so it's not that. I think if I take, let me take my adjustable here. What I'm gonna do is take this clutch arm and I'm gonna just manually move that all the way. And that's not changing anything either. So I got a draining oil, I gotta remove the foot peg, I gotta remove the brake lever, pull the kick starter, clutch cable, skid plate, bash guard, whatever you wanna call it there. Couple oil lines, I'll probably, I don't know if I'll remove the filter or not. Pull this cover off and then we can see what's going on in behind there to see if we can get it fixed up so that this bike will work. I like that plan. I'm gonna put it back into neutral and then I'm gonna remove our stand, get that out of our way. I think first, thing first, I'm gonna pull this skid plate off. Make sure you mix it up with your WR parts. Yeah, I know, right? And your airplane engine. It's a crazy web we weave. Kicker needs some attention. I think I just jammed aluminum foil in there in the one day to see if I could get it to grip better. We're gonna pretend we didn't see that. I completely forgot you did that. I'm gonna figure out what I screwed up here on the clutch. Did you ever, did you ever tell me you did that? I don't know, I probably didn't. I hide things like that. Kept that a secret from everybody. What other secrets are you hiding? A lot. In this XR? Quite a few. Some people have skeletons in their closet. Craig has skeletons in his Honda dirt bikes. Pop that out. That pin's pretty waffled. Apparently I replaced every part on this bike except that brake pin. Next, pop off the foot peg. Next is drain the oil. Bless you. God bless you. I'm allergic to making mistakes is what it is. You're done? I think so. You're done making mistakes? I don't know about all that. Okay, where are we here? We're gonna let that oil drain. Put some tools over here. Okay, we're gonna pop that clutch cable off here quick. Have another clutch cable laying around for this bike, I believe. Maybe this wasn't the right one. I don't remember. I don't know why there would have been safety wire on there. Those adjusters didn't look quite right. Okay, now this line here should just pop loose like that. We got a fresh O-ring in there. Gonna have a fresh O-ring in there as well. Stuff's just dripping all over the place. Gonna need a bigger drip pan. Okay, and then that looks like 12 on this one. And man, my eyes are going. So we'll loosen that. I thought your eyes were watering up because of all the mistakes you were making. Your allergies are flaring up. Telling you, I really did messed up there. Craig, I think you're really overplaying the mistake angle of this, you know? You're really like, everything about this is a mistake. Getting up this morning going to work was a mistake. It's not that bad. I just screwed this thing up. Like, man, how frustrating. I had an Italian grinder sub for lunch. That was a mistake. Actually might've been the best thing I did all day. Oh yeah, was it good? Yeah, it wasn't bad. Not good. Okay, I'm gonna pop this oil, this side of that oil line off as well. And then that should let it move along with the cover so I can pull it out from the exhaust. I don't want to take off the whole exhaust. I gotta get a Racetech sticker put on that reservoir. We gave away all our Racetech stickers. I did. To all our fans. Everybody's buying stuff. I buy a lot of stuff from Racetech, so I'm sure I can get more stickers. I always like to start on my top left. I just always start at the same one over time, lay them in order. This one here, if I remember, is a little wonky. I do have another one of these side covers, actually. It's at the weld shop. I told him it wasn't a hurry because this one here would work. But this one here, actually, I had to get welded as well. These covers are getting harder and harder to find. We'll know better once we have this all apart. Something behind the oil filter, is there? Guess we gotta look. I didn't think so. There's oil. There's oil behind there. That's good. Oil behind that air filter. There's the stuff that you want behind the oil filter. What do you see, Greg? Oh, right. Let's see if we can figure this out. Oh, there's an O-ring. I'm gonna pop the O-ring off of there because that goes onto here. I don't want to goof that up. There's our shim. That's gonna ride on this. This is our decompression. There should be a cable that runs from here up to here so that when you kick through the stroke, this trips this thing here. It opens up the cam, a hair, as you kick, and it's a decompression. However, our issue is here in the clutch. And what did we screw up here in the clutch? What did I screw up there? Okay, so here's the next step of this troubleshooting process. Either A, go to your manual, or B, maybe you can get through by looking at a parts diagram. I'm gonna wash my hands quick, and let's do that and see if we can figure this out quick. Parts diagram, check. Okay, so I have the parts breakdown pulled up here, and everything's looking right. This piece, this number 10, that's only on 87 and older models. So everything looks right up to this point. So I got these bolts loose. We're gonna pull this piece. The way this should work is this plate should push on these fingers right here, and that should be disengaging the clutch. So we have our clutch arm, and then that moves this piece here up and down. See that, in and out? That pushes on this, rides on this bearing. This is here, this is bolted on to here, and then this is getting pushed by this clutch arm, and that should be pushing the inner hub, the basket, away from this pressure plate. This is a little different than some other clutches. Normally, when you're pushing, you're moving the pressure plate, you're coming from this side, pushing the pressure plate out. This one here is coming from this side, so we're pushing the hub or the basket in. So, next, I guess we just go until we figure out where we screwed up, right? Those should move like that. Why isn't that one moving as far in? See, I'm getting good movement out of this side, and that is allowing my plates here to separate, so that would be disengaging the clutch, but I'm not getting movement out of these. Those should be moving in a little bit like this one. See that? But I don't have it here. So something in behind there is goofed up. Gonna knock this loose, and we're just gonna pull that whole deal, see what we find. And then we should have that washer, and this should all pull out. See what we got here. Oh my word, look, there it is. Found it. Where? Right there. What am I looking at? That washer. Oh. See that washer? It's sticking in here, that right there? Mm-hmm. That should not be there. Oh, it shouldn't be there. Because that was hitting on here. Oh. It was hitting. Oh, okay. Oh, oh yeah. Okay, now that looks obviously bad. Okay, let's clean this stuff up so we don't have any shavings anywhere. So that was together, and you were riding it around with that washer, just loose, spinning in there? Well, because I kicked it in the second gear. As long as you go straight to second. Well, no. Go. I kicked it in the second gear and doggy paddled my way. I cheated is what I did, Dan. I cheated. Now here, I want to see where this washer belongs. And they're saying that washer goes there. Okay, let's see if we can piece this together. I just have to get these two gears lined up with this gear and this gear. There we go. Now that's in all the way. And then they're saying this is going to go there. Okay, now, see, now we're loose. Now everything moves the same. Our clutch plates are disengaged. That is all great. Now we're going to take our springs, because now what our springs are going to do is we tighten up these bolts. That's going to take up the slack so that when we're not on the clutch, pushing that inner hub away or in, it's going to keep our clutch plates tight so our clutch will be engaged and we can go down the trail with a smile on our face. Man, can you believe that this bike has been sitting here for a year just because a washer slipped out of place? I kind of can. Okay, yeah. You don't know it's obvious until you start taking it apart. Yeah, I mean, you just don't know what's wrong with it until you find out what's wrong with it. Okay, so now those are tight. So everything is now locked up. Sweet. We have a shim here that needs to go on there. Let's put this thing back together again. Just like Humpty Dumpty. You just dripped it all over your leg. These are my good pants. True Work doesn't know this. For the last two years, I've only had, did I talk about this before? I've only had two pairs of black pants and two work shirts. Oh, did I just get oil on? Dang it, I wanted to wear this this weekend. And for the last two years, I've only been wearing two pairs of these black pants and two work shirts because I wanted to see how they held up and they've been holding up great. Now, after two years of almost everyday use, I am ready for some new ones. However, I got to be honest, that is super impressive. Good work. True Work. And you can just push oil right off of you and the pants are good. Kind of did. Yeah, because they're hydrophobic. Hydroscopic. Hydroscopic? That has to do with the water on them. Hydro-something, so they- Brake oil, brake fluid is hydroscopic. Keep the water- Sucks in oil, sucks in water. Well, I was talking about how you can, they stay dry. The pants stay dry. So long as you don't wet them, your pants will stay dry. Let's unscrew this up. This is snugging and then you're gonna come back through in a star pattern, kind of cinch these up. Right now, I'm just taking up the slack in them. Final snug. All right. Let's throw this oil filter back on. Let the oil hold that, or a little grease to hold that in place. And then the filter. Filtrate. Man, guys, this just goes to show like, I did, I got frustrated with this and I'm like, man, I screwed something up. Like, what in the world did I screw up? And I spent so much time and energy getting this bike to where it was that I just got like so disheartened when it didn't work. Okay. Oil line. We need to do this. The long one goes over on the other side. This short one's gonna come up here. And the only reason, like I said, I pulled these is because I was being lazy and I didn't want to pull the exhaust off. So I had to pull this whole Y pipe off. Okay. Before we go full gorilla on that one, I'm gonna throw this one back on. My crush washer's still there. Yep. That's not the way we're doing it right now. But that's not the way we're gonna do it. The way I do it. You don't always have to do it the best way. You just have to do it the way. You just have to do it A way. That's right. A way that gets you there. That just got us there. Let's see what we got for adjustment up here. Let's see if we can get any more. I'm trying to get the clutch adjusted out here. This cable is a little long. Some of that could do with, I don't know if the bracket here's tweaked a little. Over the years, the cable just changed a little. Maybe I bought the wrong cable, clutch, lever, and perch. How far down can I take this? It was like up on the lever. Okay. A little more free play than I would like, but let's see if we solved our issue. Dan. Craig. Time to clean off the workbench. Dan, you know what time it is? You just told me. Okay, time to clean off the workbench. So we can get the, we're not ready to run it yet, but I want to get it up in the air and see if that did it. Boy, I started this process with like four tools out of the toolbox. That escalated quickly. As it does. Okay, let's get it in the gear. Pulling this clutch. Hey, we fixed it, I think. There it is. Let go of the clutch. Pulling the clutch. Let go of the clutch. Do you think we're going to have to clean the carburetor since it's been sitting for a year? I hope not. Yeah, me too. Is that gunk? What is in there? That looks a little sus. Uh-oh. The colors. No, that's just. Yeah, we're going to try it. That's just break and goop. It'll be fine. Yeah. So I need to get this bike cleaned up a little bit. I want to get all the oil back off. We're going to throw some fresh gas in. We're going to put that back on. Oil, fresh gas. We're going to get this thing off the table and make sure we got it fixed. I'm pretty pumped. By riding it around without doggy paddling it? Yeah. You know, it just goes to show guys, we all screw up. We just got to roll with it when we do. I guess by right, I shouldn't have let this thing sit as long as I did. I should have just pulled it in and did it and done it. Why is the throttle stuck? The throttle's stuck? Uh-oh. Did you make a new problem? I didn't think so, but. Just pull on it harder. Here we are. Why would the throttle be stuck? It was just working. Sometimes it'll be that way. I am not sure I understand. You fix one problem, you make a new one. But it was working. Just think, Craig, you have to fix something else now. Just screw it right now, now. What the Harry? Throttle cables are running this side. Do they contact the clutch cable at all? No. So how would messing around with any of that stuff affect this? Riddle me that, somebody. Riddle me that. Well, good news is I think we got the major problem figured out. Bad news is we just have another problem to figure out, which makes no sense because that was working. So confused at the moment. Sounds like all good news to me. You got another problem to figure out. That's right. Okay, well, we'll see you guys in the morning. All right, we're going to have to do some sort of fancy edit here because this was actually a week has transpired since I looked at this bike. But the throttle is still stuck. That means we got to pull the carb off. I tried getting in there and moving the butterfly and stuff by hand. It's stuck. I don't know what's going on. So all of that said, yeah, I guess I got to pull the carburetor. That's what happens when you leave a project sit too long. You got to do the work twice. I'm such an idiot. Loosen that clamp. Loosen air box clamp. I guess we'll just take throttle cable off there right away too, because it's going to have to come off. Let's see here. Loosen this one. How long has this bike been sitting? Because that fuel hose looks awful. Now, you're going to come off this side, huh? Trying to do this with disassembling the least amount of the bike as possible if you haven't noticed. Oh, before I get too messy, put my apron on. There. I don't got my shirt. The pants are dirty. That would have saved my sweatshirt if I would have only. Here's a dead safety wire of the choke cable together. Oh, what? After all that, am I going to have to pull that off again? Ah, blasted. After all that work getting the clutch cover or the clutch cable on, we got to take it back off, right? I guess I mean it as well. Trying to fight this thing out of there just may not be fun. Am I right? Nope, that attitude. That's right. Definitely not how I would teach somebody to do it. Yeah. Nuts it. I'm going to have this all screwed up till I'm done. You watch. Don't watch. Don't watch me screw this up. There we go. My word. Locked up tight, I tell you. Let me see. This is an actual choke because now we're choking off air. This would be the accelerator pump. This is tied to our throttle shaft. Throttle shift. We have our slide in here. There's a linkage here that operates the slide but this will come, pull front, pushing this little flap here down onto this rod that pushes down onto this little diaphragm pump here and squirts a bit of fuel up through here into the airstream. Okay. Well, let's, looks like we're cleaning the carburetor because I left this thing sit too long. Well, where do we want to start? Let's start at the top since that's the part that's not working. That slide just got gunked up. It's not liking that. All right, let's take the bottom off now because we know that's going to need to be cleaned. Trying to do this without having the gas running all the way to my elbows and still sit down. That's gross. Let me get rid of this. Man, it don't take long, huh? I can't believe the damage that was done just by sitting for a year. That is nuts. Half, one and a half, two and a quarter. Now we got to get this slide here to move. If you want things to move, hit them with some PB Blaster. That's what I always say. Yeah, we'll just let that goodness soak in. Soak in goodness. There we go. Just had to use a little. Now we got it. Look at that. Didn't take much. Now that's working good. Okay, I'm liking that. Just got to make sure the rest of the carb body's clean now because this is scuzzy. I guess we'll just bake it for a bit. Just kind of work at getting some of those big chunks loose. Okay, and then the accelerator pump. We'll pull the accelerator pump off the float bowl. What I like to do with the jets and things sometimes is put them in a small container with gas, sealable, and then just put all of that inside the ultrasonic cleaner. It's a thing. I'll go let these bake for a bit. And then we wash our hands. Mixture screw, lightly seated. Turn into lightly seated. I counted two and a quarter turns. I'm going to put it at two turns. So half, one, one and a half, two. Now we need main jet. This thing here goes somehow. Shoot, I should have paid more attention. How'd that go, Dan? Do you remember? Wait, did I see you take this apart? Somebody should have been watching what I was doing for crying out loud. I can't be left alone and just do this stuff by myself. Ah, blasted. Okay, well, hold on. Let's put this on first because then I can forget that I don't know how that goes on. Okay. Blasted. So look at the witness marks on there. It kind of lines up like that. Where are you going? Where's your happy home? There we go. You got it? Yeah. I knew what I was doing the whole time. Gotcha. Nice, that was a really good joke, Craig. That was TV drama right there. I learned that from the Discovery Channel. So here's what we're going to do. Since this carburetor isn't super fun to take in and out of this bike, we're just going to set that there. And then I'm going to take the IV bottle. I'm going to hook up some gas and we're going to make sure that needle and seat are actually sealing and it's not going to leak gas. Hold on. Be right back. Told you I'd be right back. Three units of IV stat. Let's put a little more gas in there. Oh yeah. Since I put gas in this old XR, we had moved shops and both gas stations in either direction from here have ethanol free. So hopefully we won't have this problem. Oh gee, what the? Craig, that was not. There it went. See that? That was not ideal. That's all right. We'll have this. Put that back up where it belongs. Okay. We're shooting gas towards this thing. So far, so good. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. So far, so good. Is there any gas in this tank? Let's see if there's gas in here. If there is, we'll get this out before we, oh, that means the petcock could be all gooey. Oh no, it's empty. Okay. We'll put some fresh stuff in here shortly. Oh, we need to put oil in the bike. Let's do that. That's gonna be a thing. Did I tighten the drain bolt and stuff? I don't remember what we did. That looks like the drain bolt size. Let's see. I did not. So I need to find a crush washer. Always check, make sure your old crush washer's not stuck to your bolt or stuck to your engine case. Friends don't let friends stack crush washers. How much oil does this thing hold, Dan? Do you have any idea? Can't say that it'd do. About one and a half quarts. Are we leaking gas over there yet? Ooh, I'm not seeing anything. Tis a good sign. All right, Dan, let's boogie on down to Brown Street and get this thing done. Let's boogie on down to Brown Street. Probably gonna want a little Lock-Em-A-Tight on there so our pegs don't fall off. Would you agree? Yeah, I guess. It's gonna feel really good to have this bike going again. Okay, now we need a cotter pin to put in that small pin that I just put in, and we gotta show that on the video or else people will think, well, we didn't put a cotter pin in. I think I should just stop recording right now while we put the cotter pin in. That would be awful. I didn't see you change the oil. You must not have changed the oil. I didn't see you screw the left ding wing bolt nut in. You must not have done it. We know all about the ding wing bolts. We know how crucial they are. It's a catch-22 sometimes because even though we do know how crucial some things are, we're still like, eh, eh. There's a level of crucialness. Dubious matters. Can crucial say. Man who live in glass house gets stressed in basement. Man who stand on toilet is highly hot. Boy, that thing should go right in there. Okay, well, that cotter pin ain't ever coming out. Okay, so far so good. Okay, so now we fixed the clutch because that washer was in behind there. Screwed that up when I was putting it together. Cleaned the carburetor again because I parked the bike in the corner for a year. You know, if I would've just pulled it apart right away, I could've, we could've been riding this bike all year. All right, now let's figure this Kickstarter out. We kind of just waylaid this thing on there to make do for the video. Let's see if we can make it better. Not sure how yet, but let's see if we can. Man, the splines are really worn on this kicker. All right, let me see here. This is gonna go this way. Weep, weep, weep, weep. Okay, we'll tuck this. I don't know, what do you say? Right about there somewhere, huh? Yeah, I have a feeling this kicker is gonna take a little attention. All those teeth. Yeah, so what's going on here? I don't know if you can see it or not, but all the teeth right down here along this bottom section where it's split, those are just gone, man. They're just wasted. So you see like ridges around here and then it just gets smooth and then ridges start again. Okay, so all that's on. Got our brake. Our brake is not hitting the kicker. Our kicker's not really hitting too much there. It's scraping on that one bolt a bit. Not a big deal. Okay, nothing's leaking, so we should be good here. Wait, now is it leaking? Is it just because the float's full? Well, it didn't leak at all sitting there, correct? We all agree? We all saw that, right? Now it started dripping until you picked it up. There, it's running out. Coming out of the drain. Shut that off and it stops. Okay, cool. Close that. Catch what drips out. Gonna drain it. All right, Dan, back to where we were a little while ago. Now the piece that holds this choke cable on the carburetor is broken. So if I remember correctly, that's what the safety wire was for. Get some heat into this intake boot and it'll make it more pliable. Just help maneuver it a little more. Okay, sweet. That's in. Oh, now we gotta get this here in. Is it in properly? Well, you know, it's in, Dan. It should be proper. We are proper proper. I know it should be. Is it? Everything we do is almost proper. What was I doing here? Zip, zap, zoom. Next is we go to the other side and do throttle cables. Okay, this one with the yellow marking should be the top cable, right? That's my pull and that's my push. This is gonna be my bottom cable. Yeah, this is gonna be fun. All right, now, you get this one now. Same thing. Cool. Let's tighten these things up. All right, now let's see what we got for throttle action. Whap, whap. That's what we want. Let's adjust any of that excess free play out now. Up here, since we have the bottom side good. Everything's looking pretty good. Okay. Reverse order. Can you guys think? I guess I need to order a seat rubber here so I don't have to zip tie that. Now it gets a zip tie. Okay, that's all that. Next, let's do the seat. Seat bolts. Okay. Now we need fuel line. Can we just reuse this stuff? Just a little, what's a little algae amongst friends, right? Good enough. Let's put this side on first. Okay, then this side. Awesome sauce. Got one more thing to do here yet. Oh yeah, we got two more things to do here yet. Clutch cable. Hang guard. How about meow? Okay, clutch works. So all of that was to fix all of that. Okay, now. All right. Ken, you know what time it is? Feeling good about that? Yeah. You feel good about that? Yes, sir. Hair more free play than I like, but it's gonna run. You know what time it is? Time to do some stuff and things. Time to clean off the work bed. All right. Okay. Oh. What? You gotta put the skid plate on. Okay, now. Now? I think it's time. Gur, gur, gur, gur. Should be enough for what we're planning. Honda XR. Take dos. Well, if I remember correctly from the first video, it started in one or two, three. One, one kick, three kicks. It was one or the other, which was pretty impressive. I don't know. How many kicks? Four is my favorite number. I'm gonna go four. Say your guess. Oh. Three. I think it's six. Now, the real test. Clutch in. Oh, yeah. It's working. This is what it should have done the first time. Oh. Wow. That is what this bike was supposed to do last year, and it finally did it. Well, this is a great example, guys. Oh, hold on. Let me take my helmet off. I gotta unstrap it before I take it off. This is a great example, guys. If you screw up, man, just address it right away. Don't let it frustrate you. Don't let it get it down. I could've saved myself a whole lot of work if I would've just done it right away, but things happen. People make mistakes. It's all part of it, so find yourselves an old bike. Start wrenching. Start learning and having fun. Thanks for joining us this Saturday morning. Do the like and subscribe thing. See you later. Have a great weekend.