Z250SL breakdown in the rain

"Get a new bike" they said. "It'll be more reliable" they said. "It won't break down, you'll be able to trust it" they said.

On the 29th of March, 6 months into my ownership of a brand spanking new (basically) Z250SL on a 66 plate with a mere 7K miles under its little wheels, right when I thought to myself "hey this is doing alright, this is probably the heaviest rain I've ridden it in and it hasn't even spluttered" I broke down, the rear sliding round a polished and diesel covered junction due to the engine braking, a mile from home with total electrical failure. Ha. Funny. The CB250 never did that even with 93K up..

I pushed it along the road to the entrance to a farm, and stared at it. Then wiggled the key a lot. Life briefly flickered, but not much of it. More wiggling and staring. It seems to be the ignition switch but there's something not quite right about it, it feels like the flickers are more to do with me wobbling the bike rather than directly wiggling the key. As I start to strip off my waterproof onesie to get to my phone to call for assistance I try one last time, and the bugger turns on and stays home. It starts and keeps running. I hurriedly re-dress and, thankfully, I make it home.

At home I still can't figure it. Sometimes there is life, sometimes nothing, but once it does turn on I can turn it off and on again as much as I like and it works every time. I fill the ignition barrel with 3-in-1 spray but it makes no difference. I leave it, out in yet more rain.. Thank goodness it's Friday.

The next day I come back and there is no life at all. No amount of wiggling or spraying can coax it into turning on. Time to investigate. The wiring from the ignition switch runs down to this connector block:

As I keep working the switch like some rabid youth I notice yellow light flickering in the block. Problem found then. A slightest tug on the wire doing the fireworks and..

I've never seen so much corrosion in wiring. Is this the special Kawasaki build quality that people used to joke about back in the eighties? Some wrestling with the wiring allows me to pull the block out..

Time to retrieve the spade connector that is still inside the block. Nurse get my tools, stat!

A bit (okay a lot) of wiggling finally frees the offending article.

I strip the wire back only to find the green rot goes far inside. I chop another bit off, but it's only marginally better. I can't lop any more off otherwise it won't want to go into the block, so bugger it! I try my best to bend the spade back into a useful shape but there's no way it'll crimp the wire a second time. Bugger it even more, where's my 60w soldering iron and proper lead solder..

With only a little bit of burning (a ball of solder even ran right into the gap under my fingernail, sob!) I ended up with this:

After crimping it flat a bit more, and stripping some of the melted insulation off, it finally went back into the connector but I have no idea how secure it is. This led to a bike that actually turned on, success!

What a horrible bodge though. A better fix would be to strip the wire back until it wasn't full of verdigris, splice a bit more wire on to the end and perhaps connect it all with a bullet connector or something. But this will do for now, it was freezing cold and wet at the time! In time I think I will fill all the connectors with ACF50 or similar to try and stop this from happening elsewhere/all over.

This Kawasaki build quality is morbidly fascinating though, I've never seen anything quite like it. Can Chinese bikes really be so much worse? They're a lot simpler for a start..

Z250SL chain and front sprocket replacement

Here we have an original fitment RK KRO520 O ring chain, knackered after 4500 miles. The previous owner (up to 3200 miles) never sprayed or tensioned it, but to me this is still a very disappointing lifespan. As you can see, the adjusters are way back - this is stretched, I'm not replacing it for fun (as if!). It was actually starting to stretch at such an alarming rate that breakage was threatened, I had to have a cup of tea and lazily spring into action..

Bring on the special tools!

Grindy grindy..

Bit more, show it who's boss.. Ping, off comes the (burning hot!) plate.

I expected the chain to be bendier than it was, given how much it had stretched. The sprocket is whizzed off with an electric rattle gun, a great piece of kit.

The front sprocket was also quite hooked, again very disappointing for OE at 4500 miles!

Thankfully Kawasaki had the sense to fit a large rear sprocket with loads of teeth, so that still looks brand new. On goes a new front sprocket, a Techcorps 151214 that is actually meant for an Estrella and has a slightly wrong offset but everyone is selling them as fitting 250SLs and 300s, and a JT Z3 520 chain because I've seen precisely zero reports on how good they are.

The torque spec for the front sprocket nut on the the old (post 2008) Ninja 250 is 127Nm with the lot covered in a moly oil, oil and moly grease in a ratio of 10:1. I didn't bother with that, the threads weren't that clean anyway. I got up to about 90Nm and gave up, the bent washer will surely hold it in place just fine. And yes the bike is leant against a car, it deserves it for not having a centre stand.

At the time of writing the bike has done a further 2900 miles and the JT Z3 chain, despite rusting almost straight away in the extra salty conditions of the winter of 2017/18, has been quite the delight. Mine was £45 off ebay and I would put it in the same league as a midrange DID, and far ahead of the RK it replaced. The side plates are also reassuringly thick, it is a world away from the old, cheap and flimsy JT chain that adorns the CBX250. They have really put a lot of effort into this new Z3 range. The Techcorps sprocket, on the other hand, is not doing very well with quite pronounced hooking already. With this setup, occasionally slathered in gear oil, I need to tighten the chain every 800 miles or so which can be extended to ~1200 if needed. This is likely mostly down to the sprocket wearing, but also a comment of how snatchy the 250SL is, how rubbish the gearbox is and possibly how heavy it is on chains and sprockets - certainly the thumpers of old were known to chew through chains, and they weren't running anything like 11.3:1 compression ratios!

I've gone right off RK chains though. Have you seen the price..??

Triple QX 10w40 semi synthetic oil - it works!

Triple QX are the own brand of Euro Car Parts, a place that often has big discounts available - 40% is not unheard of. I actually did better than this, finding a 5L bottle of the 10w40 Semi for a mere £5 at a car show - irresistible. At 2800 miles since the last oil change the Kawasaki had a gearbox akin to a cement mixer so the 7200 mile schedule suggested in the owner's manual was ignored and this happened:

There's one way to find out if it's okay with wet clutches..

Happily zero clutch slip was observed, with an improved gearbox feel although the oil goes too thin (and the 'box goes crunchy) if the bike is sat idling for more than ~20 seconds. It's okay again once the motor gets to cool down again. The bike hasn't touched the level either so it can't be that thin, although perhaps Kawasaki actually got some aspects of this bike correct.

No doubt there's sod all ZDDP in it, which won't help the cams on flat tappets or the gearbox but at £1 a litre I'll just change it every 1500-2000 miles, that must be better than waiting 7200 miles. By the way, the old oil was water thin and full of carbon, which will have been scoring up the deep groove ball bearings that Kawasaki have chosen to use as mains. Pillocks.

Scrimp on!

National Motorcycle Museum Open Day 4/11/17

Once a year the National Motorcycle Museum, based in Solihull next to the NEC, has an open day where tight wads like myself can get in for free to have a nose about. I'd heard it was good, worth the £10 admission even, but it exceeded any expectations by quite some margin.

I'd only just arrived at the car park and here are a couple of Norton Commander Rotaries, a promising start...

And a Harris Matchless G80. I've wanted one of these for ages. First time I've seen one in the flesh, want one even more now. Even better the guy was about to leave, so I got to hear it running - it sounded superb. Do want.

I might have taken some covert footage as this was leaving a little later, bask in the glory here.

Yamaha Zeal, 250cc inline 4. Nice YSP stickers.

A lovely Le Mans.

Eventually I made it inside the museum. You know you're on to a good thing when you're reaching over the Manx Norton to get a picture of the amazing bike behind it - in this instance a "Silk" 660cc 2 stroke twin.

Land speed record thingies and special one-offs awaited a bit further on.

I don't often suffer from bike blindness but there are just so many bikes here that they all started to look the same. There are 5 halls like this, it's immense.

The brown thins is a Wulf. Nope, me neither..

This was built by a Rolls Royce engineer called Fred Marsh (I think). Sounded ridiculously good.

Race bikes and a couple of special road bikes were being fired up in the courtyard in the middle. Nice to see. This event seems to be heavily connected to the Brackley Festival Of Motorcycling, I might have to go to that next year.

A Z250SL, star of the show! Yeah right.. One and a half months on and I still hadn't bonded with it. Yuck.

So, in conclusion, the National Motorcycle Museum is an amazing place and it actually is worth paying the £10 to get in. But if they're having an open day then it's even better! Though Steve Parrish was there, rabbiting on doing some awful couples-questions game..