An Indeterminate Number of DRZs

Ian has been telling me that I should take some bikes out of his shed for years.  Today I did:

So that's at least two of them, but wait there's more!

Parts, lots of them.  The black bike is closer to running so shortly after arriving home it looked like this:

Followed by:

The fuel smells evil and the oil smells fuelly, I have already ordered a few parts and found others in the included bins.

So, a quick breakdown of my newly acquired collection of >2 but <3 Suzuki DRZ400s as far as I can tell:

The black bike:
-Sitting for a few years
-Almost definitely has a title
-Sweet Yoshi exhaust
-Some suspension work
-Hacky light wiring
-Non-rusty tank
-Looks like it was ridden by me already

The yellow bike:
-Sitting for a few more years than the other one
-Hopefully has a title
-Stock everything
-VERY rusty tank
-Appears to have had an easier life than the other one

The parts:
-At least one complete suspension
-One set of wheels
-A complete rear subframe
-Several service manuals
-3(!) sets of bodywork
-Many exhausts
-Many assorted brackets

Anybody need DRZ parts?

Oh.. and there's another seat that I kept in the house since foam + shed + stuffed into some dark space = usually not good things.

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

The foam air filter on the yellow bike appears to have had some of those not good things occur, but the seats are surprisingly mostly OK.  I'll totally take that other one whenever we meet up for title transfers, though.

Hey Ian, if you have any old German cars sitting in your shed that you also want gone, let me know ;)

Got any spare engines/a titleless bike? 

My go kart needs more engine

In reply to Nesegleh :

All of the smallish engines I have are in bikes- I've got a spare 13b if you want to get really crazy though!

Unfortunately I don't think many (if any) of those parts would fit on a DR250, otherwise I may be interested.

This is cool!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to Nesegleh :

All of the smallish engines I have are in bikes- I've got a spare 13b if you want to get really crazy though!

Haha I think I'll pass...... For now

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

The foam air filter on the yellow bike appears to have had some of those not good things occur, but the seats are surprisingly mostly OK.  I'll totally take that other one whenever we meet up for title transfers, though.

When I bought that bike, the garage we pulled it out of was home to a number of small 4-legged creatures.  I vacuumed a nest out of the battery compartment.

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Hey Ian, if you have any old German cars sitting in your shed that you also want gone, let me know ;)

I wish my shed was that large...

There are a couple of VW wagons...

The only BMW part I still have is a front license plate filler strip from the E30 that never made it on to mine when I had it since the back of the bumper wasn't easily accessible.

If you lived closer to me I'd take one of those DRZ's.

In reply to docwyte :

We'll see, I may be keeping both- one for me, and one for Sara if she decides she wants to replace her NX250.

As a guy who had a small fleet of drz, I love these stupid things. 

Installing parts as they arrive- spark plug got here first:

Old plug looks like it ran rich (or just cold started without warning up?) but was otherwise ok:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

The black bike:
-Almost definitely has a title

The yellow bike:
-Hopefully has a title

Very cool - looking forward to watching this thread.  Worse comes to worse, Vermont title hack should get both of 'em on the road.

Rotaryracer said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

The black bike:
-Almost definitely has a title

The yellow bike:
-Hopefully has a title

Very cool - looking forward to watching this thread.  Worse comes to worse, Vermont title hack should get both of 'em on the road.

Yellow bike has a title... but it is titled in NYS.  And was lost by the owner I bought it from... who I paid in good faith and thought wouldn't berk me since I've known her for 20 years... but 5 years after paying her for the bike...  

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to docwyte :

We'll see, I may be keeping both- one for me, and one for Sara if she decides she wants to replace her NX250.

The first bike I learned to ride on was an NX250.  I think that was 16 or 17 years ago now.  People barely knew what it was when I owned it and I'm glad to know another one is still kicking!

This one has been up Pike's Peak and has been a great first bike for Sara:

She loves it, it's reliable, and has never averaged less than 70mpg no matter what we do with it- I'm a little worried about parts availability though, since the little watercooled single is only shared with a couple of equally rare overseas models.  At some point we may retire it from serious off-road use as a result, although so far I've been able to buy everything required to keep it going on eBay.

Did an oil change- the oil that came out was pretty clean but also had a decent amount of stale gas in it, no surprise really.  Also oiled and installed a new air filter that came with it:

Next was a cheap battery:

Things light up!

It cranks over and sounds like it has decent compression.  This means that the next step is carburetor rebuild, which is not my favorite but I'm sure I've done worse ones.

Looks a little crusty:

The float valve was all boogery, that explains the fuel in the engine:

Cleaned rest of carb, put bike back together, ish:

Ran it, video uploading now, seems pretty happy but the stupid vacuum petcock immediately started leaking so I shut it down after it warmed up a bit:

Drained the tank and ordered a manual petcock to replace it:

Ugh vacuum petcocks! I didn't know those existed until I got a KLR 650 with a CV carb. I was trying to drain the gas for the first time and was like, LOL wut

In reply to GCrites80s :

Let's make the thing that delivers the fuel a lot more complicated just so that people don't have to remember to turn the fuel on when they start the bike- brilliant!

The upside to them failing so consistently is the prevalence of cheap replacements.

Picture contains cocks:

Swapped that, bolted everything back together, rode it:

Rides great!  Needs some adjustments and a license plate, and has a little cam chain noise that is probably fine if it doesn't get louder.  Woohoo!