1977 Suzuki TS250 R Need Ideas!

So I got me a barn find 1977 Suzuki TS250 R, Looks like it need an engine bebuild. I'm up for what ever .. I could even go electric ... I'd like to get some ideas or thoughts on which direction to take this little Suzie. I'm more interested in a franken/rat/street fighter, the final will have to serve as a short hop street commute for the days when I dont want to heat up the cafe' 78 goldwing. So ..anyone got any observations or ideas ..what would YOU do with one of these little smokers?

You should have no problem getting piston and rings for that baby.

Piston + rings + base gasket + head gasket + rebore = rebuilt engine.
Piston clearance should be 0.0026" on a rebore. I did one at 0.0025 and had no trouble with seizing.

Have a machine shop chuck the head in a lathe, take 50 thousands from the head and reshape the squish area to match the crown of the piston. Raise the exhaust port 1 mm. Trim the intake side of the piston skirt 1 mm. Re-jet.

Take the muffler and split it open. Gut it and weld it back together. Shorten the head pipe 10 mm and add a 1" stinger about 6" long, or better yet, a 1" fiberglass packed silencer. That will give you a good expansion chamber. No joke, the mufflers on those babies are shaped like an expansion chamber and they work great.

If you split the cases, stuff the crank balance holes with cork, sealed with silicone. Match the transfer ports in the cases to the ports in the jug. Might be a good idea to split the cases to check out the main bearings. They were pretty long lived, but when they sit around for a long time, they can get rusty.

My first real motorcycle was a TS250, a little earlier than that. A '71 if I recall correctly.

Opinions are like a$$es, we all have one. Mine just happens to be different. Forget about gutting pipes and filing pistons or stuffing cranks. All a waste of time IMHO.

They are cool little fun bikes. Not a ton of power, but enough to have fun with.

Focus on getting it to run well and reliably. Bore and hone with new piston is a good idea and check the crank. New rods are probably available - I didn't check. Matching transfers makes almost zero difference on any motor we tried it on and stuffing cranks is old school. Shortening the piston makes the motor more peaky (less bottom end) but adds little at the top end.

Just rebuild the motor stock and clean and nice and clean up the electrical connections. Fit decent tires and check the suspension and brakes and enjoy it.

Get a jug and head and carb and pipe off tm250 put a nice piston in it your done or you could reinvent the wheel ^^

Yeah, Brad, that would work if you could find those parts for a decent price.
Suzuki used to sell those parts as a "hop-up kit." Still had a pretty decent powerband, too.

Ebay is showing a few of every thing. Holy shit there is a factory race chamber with a pile of bids at 19 hundred bucks. That is the problem with vintage suzuki dirt bikes they may as well be nortons or ducks, rich old men with deep pockets collect the shit outta them. I had a early ts250 that got traded to von and i think troy has it now. It was all day kool, but i dont miss it. parts just cost to much. That why my 250 is a dt now haha

Those factory race chambers were made out of titanium. That's from back in the day when Joel Robert held the World Championship in motocross on a Suzuki 250.

Suzuki dealers used to have "hop-up specs" for most of their motorcycles. I used to spend hours studying those factory hop-up specs when I worked in a Suzuki shop. I wish I had those documents now. They even had factory expansion chamber designs and porting specs for the Water Buffalo.

I have seen those "race specs" for GT750s and they were not very good. People thought they were close to TR750/XR11 specs and they were not in the same county. People are making way more power than XR11's with modern port technology.

The bulletins were a good place to start for a mildly tuned motor though.

Still working on this?