Can anyone help identify what year my Lt-250 quad is especially the cylinder head? ( numbers on it or any differences in the motors ) it is around a 1987/1988. Thanks [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

 

I think I can tell you what year it is based on a combination of things. First of all, just to rule out 85 or 86, they had black nose pieces, had grey engines, no power valve, and only 5 speed trannies. The easiest distinction between 85 and 86 is that 85 had yellow hollow Suzuki letters on the seat and 86 had white hollow Suzuki letters on the seat. In 87, they changed to a T seat, the engine color was blue, they had power valves, and they had a larger intake than 88 - 92. For '87, the intake has only 5 bolts that mount it to the jug. One on top, one on each side, and two on the bottom. The 88's look nearly identical to the '87, except the intake is much smaller and it has 6 bolts mounting it to the jug - Two on top, one on each side, and two on the bottom. 89 through 92 have nearly identical motors to the 88. Here's the easiest way to tell each one apart (other than the decal design): The 89 front bumper was redesigned. It no longer had the rubber pad the wrapped around it. Instead, it has a much fatter pipe and it doesn't angle back quite as much as the earlier designs. In 90, it carries every change before it plus it has larger rear hub splines. It also has a black ring around the headlight instead of chrome. This may also be the first year they added the factory heel guards (not 100% sure on that one). In 91, they totally redesigned the rear suspension. It no longer has the suspension link bar that mounts to the frame and the rear shock angled back and down like most other quads. (It looks much more like the LT500 rear suspension). They also had to redesign the air box design to fit the new suspension. It now sits in front of the rear shock. In 92, there were no visible changes from 91 that I know of except to the decals.

Hope this helps.

 

just curious how you know its a quadracer? could be a fourstroke quadrunner!

you can tell what year a suzuki quad is by the vin. number. there will be a letter in it that detrmins the year. post the vin and i can tell you what year it is.

 

sblt500r, yea, I suppose he could be asking about the LT2504WD, LT250E, or the LT250EF quadrunner models. But I highly doubt it since he wants to know differences to the cylinder and there were no differences to the cylinders for these two models (at least not until the LT2504WD became a 300 king quad).

Anyway, hopefully my info is still helpful because even if he knew what year he had, it wouldn't help him know the differences to the cylinder if he's not familiar with the changes.

Beaubeau, if the vin decal is still on your frame, along with the VIN itself, it will also have the build date and the model #. To decode the model # (assuming its a quadracer), they are LT250RF - '85; LT250RG - '86; LT250RH - '87; LT250RJ - '88; LT250RK - '89; LT250RL - '90; LT250RM - '91; LT250RN - '92. This info is not on the VIN plate welded to the frame. It is only on the VIN decal.

If you don't have the VIN decal on your frame, I'm not 100% sure how to tell the year from the VIN itself which is welded to your frame. I know it can be done because dealers have looked it up for me before, I'm just not sure which character represents the year. The Suzuki VIN's all begin with JSAA and are then followed by varying letters and numbers. sblt500r, let me know how to look up the model year with only the VIN. I'd like to know for future reference. Is it the first letter after the JSAA? I don't have an example in front of me but I assume that letter could be the same as the last letter in the model # in which case I already know those codes. That would be cool.

 

yagerzzz, you can tell the year of any suzuki by the vin number. you don't need the sticker to still be intact just the vin on the frame. the 10th digit is a letter which coresponds to the year it was made.
F - 85,
g - 86,
h - 87,
j - 88,
k - 89,
l - 90,
m - 91,
n -92,
and so on till 99 then it changes over to 0 in 2000 then goes up to 5 for the year 2005. it also goes opposite that all the way down to 79 or 78 i'm not sure. but as far as i know you can't tell which year an engine is by the vin on the engine. if you or anyone knows i would like to know.

you can tell the differences between the 87 and 88 head of a quadracer by looking at the dome of the head. 87 has more of a cup shape than the 88 which has a bigger dome(more open area). the 87 has more of the inside of the dome for more compression. thats the best way i can explain it without just showing pictures.

 

Cool. Thanks for the info. One more thing to add, I think they skip the letter "O" in '93 and go straight to "P". I assume they skipped "I" and "O" because they can look like 1 and 0. I didn't know about the numbers after '99 because, unfortunately, all my stuff is from the 80's. LOL

As far as the year of the engine, I've never been able to figure that out either. I'm sure Suzuki Motor Corp has some sort of database of engine ID's that coorespond to model years and maybe even links them directly to a particular VIN, but I've never seen it.

Yea, I've seen the differences between the '87 and '88 heads. I owned an '88 for about 6 months (bought it just to fix it up and sell it.) I think there were some internal differences also like the shape of the piston ports.

 

your right about the 0 and they do use a L and a 1. heres a better list,

z-1979 j-1988 v-1997
a-1980 k-1989 w-1998
b-1981 l=1990 x-1999
c-1982 m-1991 y-2000
d-1983 n-1992 1-2001
e-1984 p-1993 2-2002
f-1985 r-1994 3-2003
g-1986 s-1995 4-2004
h-1987 t-1996 5-2005

i know the engines are all the same from 88-92, was just wondering if there was a way? i did call up my local dealer and they said there is no way?

the heads are different and the sleeve and ports are different too, because of the bigger intake.