I had been putting off dealing with the forks, but they became more and more critical in the quest of getting the bike back on its wheels. Getting the sliders off was a piece of (oily) cake but the spring retaining plugs were a different matter. Mr. Haynes says 'press down on the plug with a screwdriver and prise out the circlip'. Easy! Despite my considerable weight, I could not muster enough force to compress the spring sufficiently to get the clip out.

In desperation, I mounted the tube in my old lathe and used that as a spring compressor. Unfortunately, the ends of the tubes were burred so that the plugs would not release, even with the circlip out. I had to put the clips back in and dress the bore of the fork tube with a half-round file to get the plugs out. Eventually, the plugs came out to reveal an old car wheel nut used to jack up the pre-load
on each spring. Neat trick!

On closer inspection, the pitted fork tubes were also found to be bent. If you haven't got a flat surface to roll them on, just roll them around each other. I agonised over buying a new pair, but the cost at £53 + VAT per leg was a bit steep for my liking. Consequently, they were boxed up and sent of to 'Hard Chrome Plating & Grinding' in Newark who straighten the tubes before grinding back to good metal. They then hard chrome plate them and re-grind back to original diameter. The cost, for a pair of tubes, was £97.53 including VAT and postage.

I can't remember who's idea it was, but I ended up carting sundry bits of the 'project' along to Stafford to appear on Mechanics' prize-winning stand at the Classic Bike Show. As usual, the venue was packed, but it is getting a little samey now. One or two bargains were snapped up in the jumble, but, in my opinion, 'special show price' means 'we've slapped on a quid or two to help pay for the stand'! I was looking for some stainless fasteners, but the best prices I could find were 50% to 100% up on prices I am used to paying. The money stayed in my pocket.

My best buy was a piece of Yamaha history in the form of a 1965 tuning and development guide, with articles written by none other than Yamaha's Chief Design Engineer, Masayasu Nakamura. I also discovered that wheel building charges are, at least, £15 +VAT per wheel. This is rather more than I alluded to in my wheel building article. Doing a pair of wheels yourself could easily save you £35, particularly important when a pair of rim & spoke kits from David Silver costs only £80.

Back at home, I set to work with the RD250's wheels. I find it difficult to imagine an uglier design than the 'italic' pattern that Yamaha adopted for these bikes, but they have certainly stood up to the weather rather better than the rest of the machine. The rear wheel responded to a good scrub with Fairy liquid, but the brake-dust ingrained front one needed rather more effort to smarten it up. Searching through the kitchen cupboards, I discovered that Jif cream made a good job of shifting the caked-on brake dust. A good deal of elbow grease was required to achieve the desired result. A final application of T-Cut had both wheels looking quite 

As I was about to relax and watch Helen Shapiro on This is Your Life the telephone rang. It was Julian Pugsley of the Well 'aRD club offering assistance with my project. Julian is a mine of information on RD's and gave me some valuable gen on crank rebuilding, and lots of other things I hadn't even thought of. Thanks Julian.

After a couple of weeks a pair of fork tubes arrived from Newark. They bore little resemblance to the bent and pitted ones which I sent away. HCP&G have done a brilliant job for around 80% of the cost of a new pair. I would hope that the finish is rather more durable than the originals. We'll see...

Having sent the lower legs off for bead blasting and a coat of black stove enamel, I discovered that they are usually polished and lacquered. My son, Robert has told me that the 250LC must be finished in black, so I will leave them as they are. I've convinced myself that they look out of place with a silver finish! The forks went back together easily and I was able to get the engine mounted into the frame and prop each end up with a wheel. Now it's mobile and beginning to look like a bike again, but there's still quite a lot of work to do. Hopefully, I will be able to get some of the paintwork sorted for next time.

Graham Curtis 8th December 2002

Thanks to the following suppliers who helped with the project

Fork Refurbishing.
Hard Chrome Plating & Grinding
01623 862314

Mick Bull Motorcycles
Unit 2,
36 Canal Street
Derby DE1 2RJ
Tel 01332 367470

Derby Plating Services Ltd
148 Abbey Street
Derby
DE22 3SS
Tel 01332 382408

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