Tag Archives: ex250

Installing Dunstall Replica Mufflers on an EX250 Ninja

Posted on by Motopsycho

When I last posted about my work on the Minimum Ninja, you saw a photo of a damaged and worn out aftermarket exhaust header. When my wife bought this as an abandoned bike from the back lot of a Kawasaki dealer for a c-note a few years ago, it had the Yoshi pipe on it, so I had to  buy a stock head pipe. If your Ninja has the stock mufflers you don’t have to do all of this work, just figure out where to cut them off, put the right adapters in the new muffler, make some brackets and go. Not being that fortunate I had to do a little more work, not a problem for me tinkering on a motorcycle is as much fun as riding one. I started with a piece of 1 1/4″ water pipe,way bigger than the exhaust pipe but a good enough match to the size of the flange around the pipe to be easy to weld.

1 1/4 inch water pipe nipple

So I stuck it in my handy dandy pipe bender and bent it to the desired angle. Please note that pipe benders like this will NOT bend thin wall tubing without crushing it, they are meant to bend schedule 40 steel pipe or very thick walled DOM tubing.

An inexpensive pipe bender

After bending and cutting it to the right length grind one down enough to slip into the new muffler. And absolutely grind away all of the galvanizing from the area to be welded. The fumes given of by burning galvanizing are very dangerous. Use all necessary precautions. I would have used black pipe but the hardware store was closed and Lowes did not carry it in this size.

home made muffler adapter

one is done and one more to go

Then I mocked it all up on the bike and tack welded the adapters to the head pipes.

Ninja Dunstall muffler adapter mockup

Mocked up for tack weld

After that I pulled everything back off and seal welded the pipes together, cleaned off the scale and shot the pipes with a coat of high heat paint

tack welding completed

tack welding completed

pipes seal welded & painted

pipes seal welded & painted

Then I wrapped the entire head pipe with header wrap and reinstalled everything.

Head pipe wrapped with 2" wide fiberglass wrap

Head pipe wrapped with 2″ wide fiberglass wrap

I did take the centerstand off, 😦 it just did not work with the new pipes. Besides now I have a motorcycle lift table when I need to work on it now.

Next time I’ll show you how I lined the fuel tank with tank Kreem. An oil & plug change how to is in the works too.

Peace Y’all

fiberglass header wrap

P.S. This thing sounds really good now and is not nearly as loud as it was.

Strip the Bodywork from a Ninja (93 EX250)

Posted on by Motopsycho

Here I’m just going to let you follow along as I remove the fairings, fuel tank, and exhaust system from my 93 Kawasaki 250 Ninja. Although the title of this blog is Life on Two Wheels, the truth of the matter is that for last year & over half of this year a true story of my life would have been called life in hotel rooms and rental cars. While I was away I still managed to squeeze in some bicycling time, and I did try on the occasional weekend to take my motorcycle out for a spin but unfortunately never far or often enough, and it has developed some problems related to long term storage anyway. A couple of months ago I started a new job, moved back home and now am ready to get back down to the business of serious recreational motorcycling again.

1993 Kawasaki Ninja EX250

’93 Ninja 250 Fresh out of the shop after restoration 4 years ago!

This bike still starts right up and once warmed up will zip from idle to redline with just a flick of the wrist, riding it at low speed or for a short distance no symptoms are discernible. If driven at highway speed for more than 3 or 4 miles it begins to spit and sputter and stops like it has run out of gas. So far I have done all of the easy and obvious things such as verify the gas cap & other fuel tank vents, made sure the fuel petcock was working, and that both the in tank and external fuel filters were clean. So now its time to pull the carbs back off and check everything out. Since I am tired of having to pull the exhaust system off every time I want to change the oil filter (and it got some holes in it now also), I am going to pull the Yoshimura 2 into 1 header and replace it with a pair of Emgo Dunstall replicas using some custom fabricated adapters welded to the end of some factory head pipes.

As you are following along please be aware that my cycle is not stock. It has a few aftermarket, modified or bespoke parts on it so even if you have the same make and model of motorcycle you may notice many substantial differences between mine and yours. Just remember modifications to your motorcycle are made at your own risk, some may be dangerous or illegal in some places, I am not a motorcycle engineer, nor do I play one on t.v. Use your best judgement,consult your doctor, shrink, & attorney, then get a permission slip from your mom before imitating any mods you see on this site, because I am only responsible for my own stupidity, not yours. Now that the disclaimers are out of the way , let’s get to work!

First pull the mirrors.

Ninja 250 mirror removal

Ninja 250 mirror removal

Unbolt the lower fairing I like to start with the front center bolt first.

Ninja 250 lower fairing remove bolt

Ninja 250 lower fairing remove bolt

Ninja 250 lower fairing removal

Additional screws indicated by arrows.

Time to get the upper fairing loose You will notice some very blotchy spots in the next photo. It is not paint damage. I discovered the hard way that if you are shall we say a larger boy, you should not take pictures of shiny very reflective surfaces while wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. The resulting images were distorted,and bizarrely pornographic looking, so I blotched them out.

There is an arrow pointing to some damage to the tank that is a direct result of the hygroscopic nature  of this damn corn syrup that the government is forcing into our gasoline. I’ll fix it, line the tank and paint it again.

Ninja 250 upper fairing screws

Ninja 250 upper fairing screws

Then unplug the turn signals.

Ninja250 turn signal wires

Ninja250 turn signal wires

You could have taken the seat off as the first step but I’m doing it now, just turn the key and pop it loose.

Ninja 250 seat lock

The side covers have one screw each at the bottom as shown here.

ninja 250 side cover screw

After removing this the side cover should snap off, pull it loose from the front first.

Here it is with the side covers off

Ninja 250 coolant overflow & electronics

Ready to remove the tank now!

Remove the bolts

Ninja EX250 gas tank bolts

Ninja EX250 fuel tank bolts

and then disconnect the fuel & vacuum lines from the petcock

Ninja EX250 gas valve

Ninja EX250 fuel petcock

Hey look! it is a naked Ninja, enjoy the view.

a live nude ninja 250

Now you know what a sportbike looks like with no clothes

I still have to loosen the radiator to remove the head pipes. The hoses can stay attached but all of the bolts indicated by the arrows have to be removed from both sides.

NInja 250 radiator & fairing brace

NInja 250 radiator & fairing brace

This will allow me to pull it forward to remove the exhaust system. It’s hard to see in this picture but after unbolting the flanges from the head remove the bolts attaching the pipes to the frame. This particular system is suspended from the drivers foot peg.

Yoshi pipe on Ninja 250

My soon to be former exhaust.

It is crazy but all of the preceding steps were necessary every time I wanted to change the oil filter, I loved the sound and performance of this system but due to the extra maintenance work and the damage it has suffered over the years (it was on the bike when my wife bought it for me) I decided to replace it.

Rusty pipe

Until next time,

Peace Y’all

Ninja 250 Riders Club June Website of the Month

Posted on by Motopsycho

Ninja 250 Riders Club

This is the best forum that I never joined. I wanted to & I still may if there is ever time to add another distraction to my life. Even so the Ninja 250 wiki was all the information that I needed to make the upgrades to my favorite little motorcycle, so that it hauls my big old butt around at reasonable speeds with superior handling. If you are even thinking of getting a Ninja 250 you should visit this page. Sure I would have had no problems restoring mine from the cheap hunk of junk it was to the beauty you see in the picture above, but it was nice to find that someone else had done all of the homework and sorted out the sensible modifications that can be done to these little gems.

Sorry Hyosung and CBR250 fans but the little Ninja is THE 250!