How to adapt Koni Dial-A-Rides to fit your CB250

The Hagons on the CB250 are a bit tired (knackered), with one leaking a lot but the other just about holding on. It's still quite controlled but it is sagging at the back, and high speed cornering is becoming a bit wallowy. So I bought myself some used Konis..

A leaky Hagon, a mere 5 years old and ~35K miles-ish. Rubbish for the amount they are trying to charge nowadays, in my opinion.

A new (to me) Koni Dial-A-Ride 7610-1282SP5. A pair of these from Ikon are about £320, I got these for £57.50. Unfortunately, they don't fit straight on - I had to buy some narrower rubber bushes, and some sleeves to make the eye holes smaller. These bits were an eye-watering £59.48 but hey, it's still a pair of Konis for under £120 - cheaper than new Hagons, and got to be better.

With a vice and a couple of sockets, press the old rubber out:

And with some soft jaws press the new rubber into place.

Use the two sockets to get the rubber near enough in the middle. Four hands are really required to make this job easy, but I managed it with half that. And bosh, on it goes!

Much merriment took place with the other side, the sleeve for the lower fitting wasn't drilled big enough so it had to be opened out. Cue much drilling, filing, drilling, filing, dremelling and then aggressive dremelling before it would fit. It was then slightly oval from being in the vice, so had to be viced into its new home in the lower rubber. Ugh. Anyway, it was eventually done!

I then took the Konis off again and fitted my new rubbers to the tops as well, as I couldn't stand doing half a job. They then fitted correctly, so it was time for a test!

Immediate impressions were very good, they are just the right side of hard and the way they have jacked the rear up so far has transformed the handling (and nearly stopped the stands from working..), it goes to show just how tired and saggy those Hagons have become. Unfortunately it seems the left one is also leaking a lot, despite the seller reckoning they're fine. I'm in too deep to just send them back, and they fit so damn well.. Ahh bugger. Wonder how much a rebuild is..