RZR Revival?

[Ducked]

@redwagon

[quote=“nazmikarakoc”]A little out of topic but is it cheap to buy a used RZR? 25-30k ?

I think Ducked would be very happy to sell you one for that price. [/quote]

Or two (or perhaps one and a half). But mine don’ look QUITE as shiny as the one pictured below. There was one on Yahoo.tw a week or two ago when I was looking for a clutch ring set. That looked pretty much like the one below, in black for, I think, 37k, so that might be about the “going rate” for “concourse condition”

I paid, IIRC, 13K for a dogruff RZX about 2 years ago, which was probably a bit much if it’d been legal. Turned out it had been converted from an RZR so the reg couldn’t be transferred, so definately too much. This is the engine I’m currently fiddling with.

I recently bought a second RZR in much better overall condition for 5k, but it had leaky forks and a hole in the petrol tank so was to some extent a pig in a poke. Add 2K for a pattern-part fuel tank (unfortunately with flacky paint inside) is still, I think, reasonable, though not exactly a “turn-key” proposition

There was an RZR/X (can’t remember which, I think X) on tealit recently for about 10k (don’t remember the exact price either, sorry) which looked quite shiny in the photo, so I’d guess you could reckon on 12K-ish upward for a runner.

My impression is they are getting cheaper as they get scarcer, probably because people are becoming aware that they may be non-maintainable.

[MJB]

I sold mine for 10k in this condition

…I don’t agree that they are getting cheaper, in fact, the price seems to be going up. You don’t see many on the road these days, which is why I’m enjoying the hell out of blasting the little two stroke to work about twice a week. llary was kind enough to return the bike home to me.

The bike still runs perfectly, and I managed to run it up to 135kph today on the way to work…I only wish I could source the stock pipe for it, as a daily rider wringing it up to 8k before even hitting the super narrow power band gets old after a while.

Edithglow, I am really sorry this bike has cost you so much grief…

[Ducked]

[quote=“MJB”]I sold mine for 10k in this condition

…I don’t agree that they are getting cheaper, in fact, the price seems to be going up. You don’t see many on the road these days, which is why I’m enjoying the hell out of blasting the little two stroke to work about twice a week. llary was kind enough to return the bike home to me.

The bike still runs perfectly, and I managed to run it up to 135kph today on the way to work…I only wish I could source the stock pipe for it, as a daily rider wringing it up to 8k before even hitting the super narrow power band gets old after a while.

Edithglow, I am really sorry this bike has cost you so much grief…[/quote]

Well, I suspect yours was an atypically good deal for the purchaser. You could well be right about the price trend, though. My impression was only that and not based on careful monitoring of the market.

Re grief, well, some of that’s my own fault. Takes me a long time to get round to things. The main irritants been the thefts, which I guess wouldn’t have happened if I lived somewhere more secure.

Its also true that I don’t have the skill/experience/courage to get the full benefit from these machines, but I spent some time in the (standard pipe AFAIK) power band last week and was impressed by the acceleration, though I didn’t go much above 100k.

Then the clutch started slipping and I had to limp home. COULD just need adjusted, but the friction and metal rings both looked pretty worn to my inexperienced eye so I guess replacement is required.

I assume the “spare” bottom end you mentioned a while back isn’t available?

[Ducked]

[quote=“redwagon”]The oil seal that separates the crankcase from the primary drive case is leaking… …With a new seal in place you should be able to tune the carb properly and it will stop drinking the gear oil.
The seal is a standard size btw so even if Yamaha don’t have them (I’m sure they will) you will get one from an industrial seal supplier. A plain old NBR seal will be fine, get a Viton seal if they have them.

2T is not a great substitute for gear oil btw. You would have to change it very often as the action of the gear faces sliding over each other shears the long chain molecules very quickly, reducing viscosity.[/quote]

Thanks for the info. Encouraging that I wont have to split the case, since I don’t really want to do that unless I have gearbox bits available.

I’m not using gear oil but 40W motor oil, as recommended by Honda for the NSR for summer temperatures. Gear oil might get drunk more slowly but might smoke more. I’ll try some, since the amount of metal filings suggest the gears/bearings are already quite worn and I want to minimise further wear. I’d thought you’d said that gear oil would be too sticky for the clutch, but maybe that was hypoid/EP gear oil, not “straight” (?) gear oil, though I’m not confident that the Taiwanese packaging consistently distinguishes them.

I can get small quantities of 80/140W gear oil. That seems rather a high viscosity, but I could cut it a bit with the 40W motor oil. (I dont know if its possible to calculate the viscosity of the resultant mix but I know its not a simple proportion, skewing a lot towards the viscosity of the lower viscosity component.)

I was thinking of adding 2T (why is it “T” and not “S” anyway?) as a short term expedient only. If it continues to drink oil as fast as it has been then changing the oil wont be an issue, keeping it topped up will mean its almost continuosly renewed.

However, the oil consumption seems erratic. One days run with frequent stops, probably less than 70k total, and there was no oil in the sight glass. Another (faster) but shorter half-days run, maybe 50K, and it had only dropped a few mm.

I have to do something about the clutch slipping before I ride it any more, so if I can source the seal I’ll do that at the same time, otherwise I’ll monitor it for a bit to see what the consumption pattern is.

[redwagon]

Ah yes, I meant motor oil… but in the gearbox.

[Ducked]

[quote=“rk1951”][quote=“marboulette”]
And that bottle that looks like coolant on the side of the bike is just something the weirdo owner put there for looks. The bike isn’t fitted with a water cooling system. Just the bottle. [/quote]

Yeah, that is just a little bottle to carry 2-stroke oil, and help measure it when adding it into the gas tank. His stock oil pump must be disconnected. I would assume once the oil pump breaks on those RZR’s you can’t find a replacement. Same as the NSR’s. That is what most guys riding old 2-strokes like myself have to carry around on their bikes. Nice RZR!![/quote]

Saw one on an SR150 this morning which puzzled me initially. The spout was plumbed in to the intake tract, with an inlet pipe going below the surface of the liquid in the bottle. Looked like it was rigged to suck water vapour / mist into the engine, which the owner, who turned up wanting to know why I was poking around his bike, confirmed, though he didn’t seem to know why. “Just for looking” (i.e. the bubbles are “cool” ). I’m familiar with the idea but he’s probably correct that this kind of rig doesnt do very much, since you probably want the water transfer to increase with throttle opening, and this would be the other way around.

OTOH it might reduce overheating when stationary in traffic, which an air-cooled engine might be especially vulnerable to.

Don’t think I’ll try it on the RZR though. Might compromise the already marginal lubrication.

[Ducked]

Finally got round to ordering clutch plates, (320NT) from a friendly local English speaking mechanic. At least he’s friendly so far, but I havn’t given him any work, and he looked so pissed when told I intended to install the plates myself I forgot to ask about the oil seal. I have to order through the mechanic because I havn’t so far found the Tainan Yamaha parts supplier.

These are the friction plates, the bare metal plates are apparently not available new. Clutch springs are available, and (unless they are “racing springs”-I assume these are stiffer, requiring more lever effort but less likely to slip?) are apparently fairly cheap. In the absence of any specs I don’t know the status of my existing springs.

Can I check them, or should I just go ahead and get new ones?

Would “racing springs” be better? (I’m confident I will never, ever, be racing. )

[Stian]

RZR is a 4-stroke twin? If so I think I know about a scraped one that can be a doonor.

[rk1951]

@Stian

RZR is a 4-stroke twin? If so I think I know about a scraped one that can be a doonor.

RZR is a 2-stroke single. I think you are thinking of a Yamaha FZ or FZR.

I am looking for a donor FZ, FZR. Send me an IM.

[Ducked]

@rk1951

[quote=“Stian”]RZR is a 4-stroke twin? If so I think I know about a scraped one that can be a doonor.

RZR is a 2-stroke single. I think you are thinking of a Yamaha FZ or FZR.

I am looking for a donor FZ, FZR. Send me an IM.[/quote]

Well, if I can bring a scrap FZR into someone’s life my post has not been wasted.

Opened the clutch up and the friction rings didn’t actually look so bad (though I’m certainly no expert) now I could compare them to the new ones, so I just adjusted the pushrod to reduce the free play a bit and put it back together.

Seemed to be OK on a very short test run, but it was smoking so much I didn’t dare ride it very far in the city in daylight. Havn’t sourced an oil seal because the mechanic wanted to see the original before he’d order it, and I didn’t want to try and take it out until I had a replacement. Catch 22.

I’ll have to try Yamaha direct.

Metal Ring

Friction Ring

The oil was very black. Some of that could be clutch friction material, since its been slipping, but from the response to a magnet a lot of its metal. Given the low miles, and that this is the fourth flush/oil change since I “revived” it, this suggests bad wear somewhere in the gearbox.

And finally, a confession. I’ve been refilling it to the sight glass mark. The casing says it should take 600cc, but I noticed it only takes about 300cc to get it to the mark, so I guess I’ve been initially underfilling it a lot, which may partly account for the wear and the apparently erratic oil consumption.

[Ducked]

Was out for a run at the weekend. On startup it smokes appallingly now (havn’t done anything about the seal yet, which is probably the cause, since if possible I want to get it inspected first and then swap out the engine) but the smoke seems to tail off quite quickly once I get moving.

Coming back to the bike after maybe a 3/4-hour walk on the beach there was no visible oil in the sight glass, so maybe it stopped smoking because it had BURNT ALL THE GEARBOX OIL!!!

Long way to the nearest auto oil emporium. Local 7-11 had sunflower oil which I was very tempted to use, but I decided not to risk coking-up the engine, though it would probably have been OK short term. Tediously pipetted some 2-stroke oil from the tank using a drinking straw, another automative application (That ygolen is sucking-off his motorcycle!) skooshed it in the gearbox, and limped home.

I suspect it smokes especially at rest because the throttle is closed so the vacuum is highest, plus the gearbox was initially a bit over the mark, and it was cold.

I might revert to premix and run the oil pump output into the gearbox, though fixing the seal is a sounder plan long term.

[Ducked]

Someone broke off my light switch. The white bit in the picture is the fracture face of the switch tab, the other end of which is a tennon that goes inside the switch button (which is similar to, but perhaps smaller than, the remaining one on the right.) where its secured by a very tiny grub screw. I found the loose button.

Switches are probably unobtainable and my other one was knicked, so I’ll probably have to try and fix it, though it’ll be a Swiss Watchmakerish job and I’m not optimistic. This is for inspection, so at least a repair wouldn’t necessarily HAVE to last.

Any thoughts/suggestions? I’m thinking epoxy or superglue, but I’m not sure which is least unlikely to work.

It MIGHT be possible to drill the fracture face for a tiny srew to act as a joint dowel, put I don’t know how much depth of plastic is behind the fracture face.

[urodacus]

switch blocks of that design are probably a dime a dozen, and generic across the entire Yamaha range. Try a wreckers yard, where you might be able to find something else that fits.

[Ducked]

I’ll have a close look at the next SR150 I see, probably the best bet for commonality. There are usually a few dead Jogs lying around as well, which might be worth a look.

I know of a few scrapyards around Tainan and Kaoshiung but I’ve never noticed any bikes in them, only cars, though I suppose a few dead bikes in a big yard would be easy to miss.

Are bike breakers specialist here or do dead bikes usually just go to general vehicle scrappies?

Can anyone give directions for a potentially useful scrappy in the Tainan/Kaoshiung area?

[urodacus]

Alternatively, you could drill a tiny hole into the remaining piece and screw some kind of thumb-tab onto it. You could probably even do that without taking the switch block off the bike.

[Ducked]

@urodacus

Alternatively, you could drill a tiny hole into the remaining piece and screw some kind of thumb-tab onto it. You could probably even do that without taking the switch block off the bike.

I do mention that possibility above, though I think it’ll be tricky. There isn’t much material to play with, and the hand-eye thing’ll be a challenge. I’ll have a scrounge around for suitable screws. I guess a tiny self tapper would be favorite.

[Ducked]

Going shopping for a crankshaft oil seal later. I’d like to have one or two on hand before I remove the old one, which means I can’t use it as a “sample”.

Bit of a Catch 22

If I go to Yamaha and use the SR150 Parts List (Part 24) below as an example, AND show them a picture of an RZR, while repeating RZR continuously, what are the chances I’ll get the correct RZR part?

It seems possible this parts list might be a useful general supplement to the “Chinese motorcycle terms” thread, as long as one can make it clear that one is not specifically after an SR150 part (unless one is, of course).

I posted its location a while ago, and of course I have a copy if anyone wants one.

Prices on there seem quite low but they may be trade-only, and/or out of date.

[redwagon]

The seal shown in that drawing is for the counterbalance shaft. The RZX also has a balance shaft, but it has a different seal from the crank. I think you will make more confusion than you want.
It’s easy. Strip the alternator or drive pinion off, whichever side you are doing. The seal dimensions are there on the seal itself in a series of three numbers, 45 25 8, or something like that. 45 being the outside diameter in mm, 25 the diameter of the shaft it fits, 8 being the width. These are off-the-shelf standard size seals you can get from any industrial supplier. You don’t need a motorcycle shop for this.
I wish I could tell you the dimensions but I have forgotten. I used to have these memorized I changed so many.

Time… sigh

BTW, you really want to use a puller for the alternator rotor. The primary drive pinion doesn’t need one. A pair of stout tire levers and some blocks of wood to protect the case will do the job.

[Ducked]

[quote=“redwagon”]The seal shown in that drawing is for the counterbalance shaft. The RZX also has a balance shaft, but it has a different seal from the crank. I think you will make more confusion than you want.
It’s easy. Strip the alternator or drive pinion off, whichever side you are doing. The seal dimensions are there on the seal itself in a series of three numbers, 45 25 8, or something like that. 45 being the outside diameter in mm, 25 the diameter of the shaft it fits, 8 being the width. These are off-the-shelf standard size seals you can get from any industrial supplier. You don’t need a motorcycle shop for this.
I wish I could tell you the dimensions but I have forgotten. I used to have these memorized I changed so many.

Time… sigh

BTW, you really want to use a puller for the alternator rotor. The primary drive pinion doesn’t need one. A pair of stout tire levers and some blocks of wood to protect the case will do the job.[/quote]

Thanks for the correction. Should have realised it wasn’t right.

I looked all through that partsbook and that was the closest to a crank seal I could find, so I guess its not so useful after all.

Maybe the seal is part of the “Crank Kit” (part number 2 in the above figure) which they don’t seem to sell as components.

Edit: Ah. That partlist is for the SR150, I was just using it as a guide/help when attempting to communicate with the Yamaha parts people.(since I don’t have the RZR one) Its a 4-stroke, so I suppose it doesn’t need a crankshaft seal.

I’ve got a two-arm puller somewhere which might fit. If not I don’t mind buying one. End-of-term marking marathon looms though so it’ll be a while before I get back to it.

I used to buy bearings and suchlike from general industrial suppliers in the UK and saved a bundle compared to autoparts places. OTOH motorcycle places here have the advantage that they have labels (eg “Yamaha”) that I can read.

[urodacus]

if you;re in Taipei, there are several bearing shops along Cheng De Road near Yuanshan station. just south of the intersection leading to the BoiAn Confucius temple (and across the road, i believe)