Maintenance & Technical > KX500 Aluminum Frame Conversion (AFC)

KX500/250 Journey....

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sintax:

I picked up a 99 KX500 off of my GF's buddy. The bike was way way sad and had been abused quite a bit over its lifetime. It spent most of its life sitting, which is normally great, except when its out in the AZ sun. Everything plastic or rubber was more of less shot on the bike. I figured I'd ride it for a season and redo the bike this summer. After taking it out on its first run I realized so clearly what i've been missing all these years, it was magic. Even though it was not the prettiest thing, it ran, and ran hard. Suspension was way out of wack and its obvious someone just cranked the clickers and really had no clue what was going on. But after kinda getting everything to a general setting it was not bad, for a big ol bike.

After getting discouraged with trying to find parts for this thing, and riding my buddies 02 KX250, i realized I would love to have my engine in his frame. So thats what I set out to do. Through Ebay i more or less picked up all the parts necessary to do my swap. I still have a few odds and ends to get but nothing too crazy. I'm gonna have a whole mess of extra parts left over, but I figured I could sell em or put them on an older KDX I have.

I'll be updating this as my journey unfolds.

Here are the starting pics.

This is the 500 halfway stripped down as of 8/3/08.




Here is the engine out as of tonight, 8/7/08




Tomorrow morning i'm dropping the engine and swingarm off at my buddies machine shop. Hes gonna eyeball it and see if he can do his worst and get that rear motor mount bored to 17mm and narrow up the swingarm and bushings.

I'm heading to CO on sunday for a motorcycle ride and wont be back till Aug 18th, hopefully some good news on the 19th :)

BDI:
The best thing to do is pull everything off the clutch side of the engine so that way you have a nice square machined surface to block the engine on in a drill press. Then you can drill the swing arm pivot hole sqare, at least that's how I did mine and it came out perfect.

sintax:
Guess I should update this thread.

So its taken a lot longer then I had hoped, but things are finally coming together.

Everything is pretty standard on my bike and i'll post up some more detailed pics if anyone would like any. I ended up using the 500 radiators, as well as coil mount. For the head stay I did a mount like Don's, a flat piece of plate, but instead of a piece of solid stock, i used a small piece of square tube, flipped on its side and welded a hex coupler on top of it. Then made some flat plates like the sock ones to go from the frame to the headstay. Its not that pretty, but its strong.

I dropped the bike off today at the shop thats gonna make up the pipe. Should have it back in 1.5 weeks if the man keeps his word. I'm excited to get back on it!

here is a pic...

jfabmotorsports.com:
Good looking bike. Would you put it on a scale. I would like to know how it stacks up to the AF. My KX500AF weighs 230 lbs wet...1/2 tank of fuel.  115 lbs front and 115 lbs rear. My KX450f weighs 235 set up the same...115lbs front and 120 rear. I would like to see build pics if you have them.  JFAB 

Good:
Man that's nice.  Where are you having your pipe made?  I'm extremely interested in a custom pipe.

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