The Girls CRF150/230F’s

My Daughter Alanna’s CRF150/200

Actually its a CRF/XR/CR/TLR/Mugen/Ohlins trail bike!

A pretty neat combination of parts I had around that made it into a brand new rolling chassis. Its kind of cool how this project came together and its a real hoot to ride!

I had been watching the BBR motorsports website where they had these brand new complete rolling chassis for sale. A new 2005 CRF150F donated the engine and CDI box to one of their custom $8,000+ mini racers. The rest of the bike was sold off and included the complete chassis, carb, exhaust and a TITLE. I’ve know Larry Kuebler at BBR for many years, a deal was struck and the work began.

I knew the basic 150/230 engine was made off of the 200 motor, and the 200 motor was a 185 before that and its actually cloned off of the old SL100/125. Honda got their mileage off of this basic design! The 150/230 is now made in Brazil, man it really shows when you look close too. The 200 castings look like art work next to the 230’s gravel cast hunks.

It took a little work but the engine I had went in pretty easily. An adapter was machined for the C/S sprocket so it would line up perfectly to the rear sprocket and a little motor mount work was needed but not too bad at all. Let the rebuild begin!

THE ENGINE

-1987 TLR200 (street legal trials bike, XR200 variant) bottom end, it has closer 2-3 gear ratio, 6 speed, 150 watt charging system with the ignition timing pickup off of crank.

-XR200R cylinder, OEM Honda 198 cc 10.5:1 piston, XR200R head assy/cam, carburetor. (All worked over & upgraded of course)

-The whole engine was disassembled, cleaned, refinished and completely rebuilt including new valves, cam chain/sprockets, piston, clutch, kicker gears, bearings, seals etc.

-Countershaft adaptor machined for perfect chain alignment.

A load of work! Left, Mugen cartridge guts for a ‘87 CR250 were adapted to fit into the XR fork with gold valves. Stock XR phony components on the right

FRONT END & FORK

-41 MM KYB conventional cartridge fork, 2004 XR250R

-1987 Mugen CR250R damping rod kit refitted, 25 clicks rebound damping, tunable rebound and mid valve, air caps.

-Tunable base valves/check valves.

-Custom springs wound for shortened fork and rider weight.

-2004 XR250R lower clamp/stem, steering head bearing cup/spacer machined for longer stem length.

-Applied Racing top clamp, Pro Taper Bars, Billet kill button.

-CR250R Master cylinder and caliper, Galfer SS braided brake hose.

-XR headlight assembly.

Oh, the SHOCK of it all!

We bought 3 Non-current Ohlins shocks off of Evil-Bay that Ohlins USA were liquidating, they ended up only costing 60 to 70 bucks each! We figured just having the parts on hand was well worth it since most wear parts carry over to the current stuff. Hey an Ohlins spring will cost you twice that!

The donor shock was actually for a 1995 KTM SX125, the old ones with a proper linkage set up. Only the lower clevis and upper mount were correct and the reservoir ended up in a reasonable location. Now came the easy part, get everything else to fit correctly.

The reservoir and shock body were removed from the top cap and were machined to the proper length for the application, the circlip grooves were machined back in place. The valving was determined and the correct spring rate was calculated, a custom spring was ordered up.

As these changes were developing, the exact same (as stock) shock stroke and total length were duplicated. None of these items gets modified until you know for certain everything is going to fit up and work right. After about 15 hours of measuring, matching, machining and assembling, VIOLA! Da Sveedish shock she feets! Works better than imagined too. See, its really easy to do and I recommend you take on the task. Just don’t ask me how its done PLEASE.

Alanna rides her CRF200F XR CR TLR ‘O’

Hey Dad, a little less LSRD and 2mm more pre, maybe a touch more mid and its spot on!

My Daughter Alanna and Wife Linda on their CRF’s

Linda’s CRF230 re-work coming soon