thanks for the ideas,..will be trying out these ideas shortly!!

 

Wow, that was quite a read, glad I found this thread. My daughter and I recently acquired 2 '85 LT230s quads, one mostly complete, the other mostly junk, neither running. We, me and my 3 daughters, have been quad fanatics for the better part of a decade now, all four of us race in a local XC series. My middle girl is 13 now and wants to learn more about mechanicing. So I thought what better way than to resurrect a nice old Suzuki.

Working from the mostly complete one. We cleaned the carb, repacked the Cobra muffler, cleaned out the gas tank and draincock and tried to get her fired up, but it was a no go. The engine would roll over a little, but after kicking several times just got worse and worse. So we pulled the engine and took it apart. The rod bearings are bad, the cylinder is rusty and the valves are rusty and pitted. I have a guy in Pa that builds our race engines that can fix this one up nicely for us. The chassis is complete, but totally worn out. It will be a good classroom for my girl to put new parts on it and bring it back to something nice to ride.

Here are a few pics of what we have so far.

In the trailer just bringing them home.


After installing some old race tires I had.


Topend.


Bottom end.


Waiting on the dollars to have the machine work done.

 

Sounds like a fun project. Hopefully she'll learn a bit from it.


I've torn my 230 completely down for an overhaul. I found a spare set of lt250s engine cases since mine had a crack and I'm powdercoating them now.

 

2nd picture. Sorry but for some reason I can only attach one photo per post???

 

Never thought about power coating engine cases before, very nice. I was hoping to just get the years off of ours.

Seeing your cases reminds me of a question I need to ask. My oil capacity on the clutch cover states 1,400 ml, but many of the covers I've seen say 2,000 ml. What's the difference?

 

You have a very early engine. Scroll down towards the bottom of this page.
https://sites.google.com/site/suzuki...ult/specs-info

 

Oh and btw, these quads were good XC quads in the late 80s. Of course, the newer machines are much more powerful, but you have a nice piece of history that's relevant to the type of racing that you're doing.

 

Ok, thanks, I see now. That makes both of mine very early production engines. I wonder what they changed to add more oil? Are the covers the same dimensions? Is the sight glass in the same location? I guess I should run my oil level right to the top of the sight glass.

 

If all works out well with this build, it will become the full size racer for my 10 year old daughter. She will need a quad to race on the main track when she turns 13. No reason this couldn't be that quad. Should be able to make it handle well.

That's a ways off though, our immediate reality is getting it up and running so that we can work together on it to bring it back to life. I understand from reading this thread that there are problems to overcome with the swingarm mount. After we make this a nice rider, then I can address those types of things as the time gets closer to it needing to be made into a racer. I'm planning on doing a stock engine now and leaving the performance for the future.

 

J_mauld I just bought a 1989 lt250s it has low compression and came with no fenders,do you know what the standard size piston it comes with so I can get an idea of what the bore is.