Hey guys, I have been thinking for a while about doing an SR tracker, and there are loads of beautiful ones on this board so I figured I would sign up and see if I can tap into the experience here.
I currently only have a CBT, so can only ride a 125, but I'm thinking that it would be a bit of a shame to spend lots of time and effort doing up an old SR 125 because I would probably get bored of it very quickly. An SR 250 would be much less boring, so one idea I had was to buy both a 125 and a 250. I could put the 125 engine in the 250 frame, work on making that bike pretty, and then when I pass my full licence I could simply swap in the larger engine. I could then put the 125 back together and sell it.
Two things - legally, how would this work? If I had two clean bikes I could swap the number plates to match the engine. When i went about insuring it, how would that work? What makes a bike a bike one bike and not another? I wouldn't be lying about the engine size, which is the important thing surely? I'm not keen on doing anything illegal, even if it's unlikely to be found out.
Secondly, how easy would it be to swap the engines? From what I can see from pictures they both have the same attaching system at the front, and slightly different at the back. I think I would have to make some sort of custom bracket out of sheet metal to marry the smaller engine to the engine mounting points on the back of the frame, but that should be possible, right? I might get lucky and find it simply fits straight in, because I have seen quite a few bikes on the internet that claim to be based on SR125s, but that clearly have SR250 frames, e.g. Cafe Racer Dreams' Little Baby
http://crdmotorcycles.com/el-garaje/moto/crd56-yamaha-sr-125/
The giveaway is the rear triangle of the frame. The SR125 has a single, thick stem that goes up from the back of the engine to the spine of the frame, whereas the SR250 has two bars that go from the outside and marry in the middle, like in this bike. At first I thought they had welded the new frame arms on, but I have seen lots of other SR125s with this exact same thing too, which makes me thing that this is not a custom welded frame.
Anyway, what do you think?
I currently only have a CBT, so can only ride a 125, but I'm thinking that it would be a bit of a shame to spend lots of time and effort doing up an old SR 125 because I would probably get bored of it very quickly. An SR 250 would be much less boring, so one idea I had was to buy both a 125 and a 250. I could put the 125 engine in the 250 frame, work on making that bike pretty, and then when I pass my full licence I could simply swap in the larger engine. I could then put the 125 back together and sell it.
Two things - legally, how would this work? If I had two clean bikes I could swap the number plates to match the engine. When i went about insuring it, how would that work? What makes a bike a bike one bike and not another? I wouldn't be lying about the engine size, which is the important thing surely? I'm not keen on doing anything illegal, even if it's unlikely to be found out.
Secondly, how easy would it be to swap the engines? From what I can see from pictures they both have the same attaching system at the front, and slightly different at the back. I think I would have to make some sort of custom bracket out of sheet metal to marry the smaller engine to the engine mounting points on the back of the frame, but that should be possible, right? I might get lucky and find it simply fits straight in, because I have seen quite a few bikes on the internet that claim to be based on SR125s, but that clearly have SR250 frames, e.g. Cafe Racer Dreams' Little Baby
http://crdmotorcycles.com/el-garaje/moto/crd56-yamaha-sr-125/
The giveaway is the rear triangle of the frame. The SR125 has a single, thick stem that goes up from the back of the engine to the spine of the frame, whereas the SR250 has two bars that go from the outside and marry in the middle, like in this bike. At first I thought they had welded the new frame arms on, but I have seen lots of other SR125s with this exact same thing too, which makes me thing that this is not a custom welded frame.
Anyway, what do you think?
