GS(X)-250E Motarding.

Well, I cut it and took about 17mm of steel out and re joined it after cutting the paint back a couple of cm along the new welded portion. Although it is not as smooth a job a the earlier one, simply due to wanting to get it done tonight I opted not to use the grinder to finish it (and wake all my neighbours) in favour of just taking the burnt /melted paint and the scale/slag off with a wire brush and a bastard file for any noticeable major imperfections.

As expected the paint was damaged by the heat input from the welding, but the surprise was that some areas i thought would have suffered, didn't, and others i thought would be fine, were majorly affected.

Once it cooled down it got another coat of paint.

I have re-attached it to get an idea about just how much of a difference it has made, i think it's looking a lot better now. I'll do the "lean test" once it's all dried off and everything has been re-fitted again.


Had i the opportunity to do it again i would tack weld it while it is in the magnetic mount, let that cool and then try and do the weld continuously by rotating the peice so that i lay a single bead. Unfortunately tonight i did miss the gap a couple of times and weld onto uncut metal, making the weld bigger and uglier than it needed to be, but in reality that was only an extra 5mm of width at a couple of points, but I'll take the positive of it being extra metal for the weld to attach to over the fact it is uglier than it could be.

Aaah that makes sense! Congrats

Pity it'll have to go but at least you have time to finish her up and give her some exercise before selling

Well it comes down to the fact that my wife is pregnant and even though it is early days (due August) I have been told i can only eventually keep one bike. I will be honest in saying that is llkely that i'll be keeping my 900 and selling the plaything (this bike) as this one is a less viable form of day to day transport than my rf.
Although i will be a little sad to see it go once i do sell it, rising costs of 250 rego renewal make it harder to justify thhe little one, especially with how little it has ridden the past two years.

Aside from the possible dodgy length, that looks like it'll do the job nicely. And yes, I do see what you mean about the paint...

So why the possible sale? I thought she'd be a hoot to keep and ride...

Well I have given the sidestand a couple of coats of rust-kill paint and put it back on the bike. It's working fine, though now there is a possibility that it being a tiny bit too long as the bike is only now about 6-8 degrees from vertical when on the stand, as opposed to the 20+ it was on it originally. Despite this it is still quite manageable. I haven't decided if I'm going to bother putting the same effort into the centrestand however.





For the heck of it i put some of the rust-kill paint on the visible parts of the frame and although it is self-levelling, it is still slightly noticeable. I mean it's a bit iffy, but it is still an improvement on the worn and faded paint underneath the lick of paint it now has. For comparison's sake the only part of the frame i haven't touched up are the swingarm (that's just specs of sawdust on it) and the centre stand, so you can certainly tell the difference it has made.

I'll take her out for a spin & some pictures sometime soon, though i suspect I may have to sell her in the near future (likely after i have shaken all the bugs out).

Hmmmm... yeah I really don't want to tack anything to the frame at all, I'd really rather it clamped to the frame.

I also don't want to use engine mounting bolts as I expect it will have to be removed for oil and filter changes, and I don't want to make that process difficult.

The shaping of that plate looks pretty good and is similar to what I had in mind, but it's certainly interesting to see what's inside it.

The bit that's got me at the moment is the sump being lower than the frame rails, but that picture gives me some ideas how to overcome that now.

More food for thought in the back of the brain... I definitely have other things higher on the priority list though as well...

Not yet, though it is something I will have to get to soon. It's playing second fiddle to getting all this other stuff sorted out first though. On a positive side, I guess I'm now in a position where I can just tack some mounting tabs to the frame, which would be the optimal method, especially if i used some long mounting bolts or just bend up some aluminium to size (latter is better as it'd absorb impact away from the frame), which would simplify things quite a lot over the crappy mounting methods i had in mind.

Though to do that I will have to make sure i remove the battery & fuel tank first . Don't need to get this far, only to set it on fire somehow.

I found a pic of the kind of thing i was thinking of doing,

With the idea of using the 25x7x400mm offcut aluminium pieces as the mounting points.

Cool... see how I go if I destroy it or not first

BTW, have you thought any more about mounting your bash guard yet? That's one thing still sitting in the back of my mind I've yet to get to...

Sure thing, If/when you can get to that point we can work something out.

Let me know how you go, I don't go back to work until the second.

That's cool, this is probably a month away or more, need to source another grab rail and no budget til after the new year...

Let me know how you go, I don't go back to work until the second.

Thanks, It's honestly the mig that makes this a lot better, I'm just the schmuck holding the torch. If you are willing to put it together and tack weld the major components together and bring it down here, sure i can't see why not.

Oh cool! I was just bein' silly! Haha

I'll see how I go with it first, would really like to get a bit better at it so I can do it reasonably neatly... that's all providing I can do it like I think of course...

Thanks, It's honestly the mig that makes this a lot better, I'm just the schmuck holding the torch. If you are willing to put it together and tack weld the major components together and bring it down here, sure i can't see why not.

Nice work Mike! That oughta do the job for ya and looks like those welds aren't bad at all. Wish mine were that good

If my carry rack idea is doable fancy doing some extra welding?

It's a bit ugly, but that's mostly because I've welded, ground down to a mostly smooth finish to check my work and make sure there weren't any massive mistakes, and then ran another bead over the top to make sure.

I also put a piece of steel plate on the bottom of the sidestand as that was as old as the bike and had worn down considerably with 25+ years of (ab)use. The welding at the bottom of that is to plug the hole in the middle, the slight "bubble" of metal is going to be mostly ground flat though.

In the prep photo you can see the foot of the sidestand had curved up quite a lot with use, I tacked the foot down at both sides at the base and then used the pointy end on a welding hammer to beat the end of it down flat. I then put an ugly coat of bead on top of that I'm nowhere near proud of (that was due to me rushing to finish off for the day ), something I intend to fix tomorrow morning.


This is what I'm aiming for.


Nearly got it right on the first go, minor touching up to happen tomorrow.

All up it's not too bad for a first attempt at "making" something and the third time using my mig.