I was lucky enough to have been virtually given the remains of 2 RD250’s (Well enough parts to make about one and a half) and I’d been wanting to do some more RD250 racing development work. So what’s the first thought that pops into my mind? Low Budget RD250 TZ Replica Racer!

After 39 years there was quite a little rust on the RD250’s frame so the first thing to do was strip it down and paint the frame. A good friend of mine got the frame sandblasted for me. I was a bit nervous because I’d had a bad experience getting a frame sandblasted before but this guy was wonderful it looked like it had been beadblasted, beautiful! I removed all the tabs and brackets I knew I wasn’t going to use sprayed her with a coat of paint and started the assembly.

I had two front ends, one drum brake and one disc, I chose the disc brake front end, it’s just no fun going fast if you can’t stop too right? It turns out the triple trees don’t interchange because of a slight difference in width but the fork inner tubes did thank goodness because one of the inner tubes on the disc brake front end needed to be swapped out.

I stumbled across a cool seat that fit the project perfectly on craigslist and to at least give the bike a TZ style fuel tank I sourced an RD400 coffin style tank from my old friend garrett Amner. The bars for right now are an old set of drag bars but hey my first bike had a set of drag bars before I could afford a set of clip-ons.

Now to make tank and seat mounting brackets then

On too the engine…