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Sapporo Speed Shop's 78 Suzuki GT250 X7


Sapporo Speed Shop

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Hi im new here,

I have this Suzuki GT250 X7 ive been working on, its gone through compliance etc and is on the road as a rolling project at the moment but i will bring you up to speed on where its at.

So, bought out of the Buy Sell for a few hundy, the guy was dead set it wasnt seized but it was locked solid! If anything i thought I could wreck it out worst case scenario.

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Got it home whipped the top end off and found that the left big end had gone and the remains of the bearing were jammed under the conrod. Before i got too much further i tried to find the cause, turns out the delivery from the oil pump was blocked.... to the left cylinder.

The Cases, Barrels and head were all in fairly good condition considering, so made the call to rebuild the sucker!

I think one of suzukis selling points was the 4 person seat on the X7, the pipes are not original but ill get to that later.

ounecqle.1gm.jpg

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So i sourced a whole lot of genuine parts for the crank, bearings and seals from a website in England and conrods and crank pins from Elliot at Avon City Suzuki, sent that off to HPE in town to strip and rebuild for me, as it is a press fit crankshaft i thought its best I leave it to them. While it was there they took it to next oversize and cleaned up some slight damage to to the head from the bits of bearing. 

The gearbox shafts and gears all seemed OK so I left them. I had semi polished the cases while i was waiting on parts, they came up good but once it was all back in the frame most of it is hidden anyway. 

Unfortunately I didnt take a great deal of photos of the engine assembly so dont have a lot to show. Here is the gearbox in the lower case.

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The cases back together waiting on Barrels

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The engine more or less complete, Head and Barrels painted.

naogl0uu.13m.jpg

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At this point the Engine was in the frame ready to run, except it wouldnt! I knew i had some sort of electrical fault and with the help of an old wise Englishman discovered that my Coil and CDI were both on the way out. So jumped on Ebay and found an after market replacement for both out of England. While waiting i got stuck in to the pipes.

As i said earlier they are not original, they are actually off the next model after this bike, the RG250, (although in Japan the X7 was actually the first RG250e). 

They had been mounted rough and were hitting parts of the frame and were quite badly dented, so I cut all the cones apart, removed the gauze baffle from inside the chamber that was stuffed anyway, fixed all the dents and welded all the cones back together, at the same time rolling them under the frame a bit more out the way, and welded a temporary stinger on while i sorted out some mufflers. 

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I know im going to get the 2 stroke professors telling me i shouldnt be using these pipes, but after doing some research, these are pretty dam close to what i would make from scratch anyway. So im using them!

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After fitting the new CDI and Coil, it was time to run it, it was keen to fire but wouldnt quite get there on its own, me and a mate tried a trick he learned off Van Beek and got a big electric drill and cranked her up to some good rpm's, once it got the oil i used for the assembly spread out it fired up no worries, it was insanely loud with those stingers on so I made these mufflers for it, has a nice ring but ive been instructed already by z181200 to make it louder.

They are just mild steel at this stage, removable can to replace the packing.

yxv3gi3o.rao.jpg

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This photo is back a step, before the mufflers and just before compliance. I got sick of working on the bike on its side stand so made this bench for it to live on out of stuff from the scrap bin at work. The lift stand under the bench is good also but the bike would have to sit on the expansion chambers so it doesnt get used on the GT. As you can see here i was starting to think about what direction the seat would go, I will put some photos up tomorrow of the new seat and want went into making it. Cheers for the messages too.

tnglqraa.bm2.jpg

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So I decided the seat had to be straight, square and flat, I didnt think a round cafe style seat would look that good due to the straight lines of the wheels and side covers etc, I guess this bike was bordering on the era of when things started having sweet graphics instead of badges, and mags instead of spokes. And I also wanted it to work off the original hinges and seat lock, Im still running the stock premix tank so didnt want to be mucking around getting the seat off if i needed a top up.

The frame rails were perfect for my base, being long and straight,you can also just see the top of the plastic mudguard sticking up, it is a two piece thing so i took the back half off and kept the front half where it was to keep the electrics still covered. 

 

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I wanted the base to taper out from the tank, have a small straight section then taper back to the end of the seat, so basically just made 3 sections and tacked them up to make one base, i left it flat for a bit but then decided i wanted that small tail on the back, this will end up being a little stash box with tools in it that can be opened up from underneath when the seat is tilted up.The two little notches along the bottom are to clear the hinge bracket so it can tilt all the way over. I also made my own metal folder that i used to make this, I am a Fabricator by trade but no longer work as one as my job so I dont have the tools at my disposal anymore, pics of that later.

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Clearly i am no upholsterer but i threw that together just to get it done, long term i will probably get Lewis to do something. The seat wont be everyones cup of tea, some days its not even mine, but i kinda think a part or component sometimes has to take 3 directions before it finds the right one, so this most likely might get replaced by another one, but for now it works.

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My mocked up bars are also in that shot, i ended up using a bend i had made ages ago, but made them a bit lower than where they sit there, next post maybe.

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