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Want access to issues of CMM going back to 2005? Want to find that road test before putting down your hard-earned cash, or perhaps you’re after a particular workshop article to help in the restoration of your latest project? Then CMM EXTRA can help! If you’re a subscriber you can have all of the last 210 issues of CMM at your very fingertips… Roughly, we reckon that’s 10.5 million words at your beck and call and around two thousand tests with around 2500 step-by-step workshop guides or project bike articles ready to be plundered. Want to know what Niall Mackenzie thought of his restored RD350LC? Dead simple – enter 350LC into the search engine and every issue it’s mentioned in will pop up – so you can search through EVERY issue where the legendary 350LC crops up. Want to find out how Steve Cooper re-spoked a wheel? Simply enter the words into the search engine and up it will pop. If we’ve done it in the last 13 years – it’s on there. Not only that, but we will be adding more issues onto this priceless database over time. We think CMM EXTRA could be as handy a tool as your favourite spanner… And all you need to do is SUBSCRIBE! See pages 40-41 for how to do that. cmm
and wrote down an initial list of big items – a barrel, base gaskets, head gaskets, clutch cover gasket, water-pump seal kit and bearing, output shaft seal, gear selector shaft seal, kick-starter shaft seal, clutch actuation arm seal, the basics. Then I went over it all again a bit slower, working my way from one end of the bench to the other but still just going off memory and experience on these engines – two cylinder base dowels missing, a few studs, head dowels missing, copper washers and head nuts not all there, powervalve cover gaskets and shaft seals, one powervalve cable bracket, an oil injection hose nozzle for one cylinder, countershaft sprocket retaining circlip, a missing clutch spring, a missing clutch steel and fibre plate, oil pump drive gear retaining pin, some other more obvious parts… piston circlips, small end bearings and gudgeon pins, etc. I then quit for the evening but as I retired to the land of zeds that night my night-time’s reading was not CMM but the Suzuki RGV250 workshop manual… The next arvo in the shed I went through the parts with manual and parts cattle dog in hand – powervalve return springs (the internal ones), powervalve retaining screws, one powervalve shaft and grub screw, powervalve spacers and retaining plate and bolts, powervalve cover screws, one external powervalve return spring, barrel nuts, exhaust flange studs for both barrels, oil injection return check valves (more on these later), one reed block and reed set, a few gearbox shims, dowels for the cassette gearbox main plate, selector drum bearing, nut and spacer that retains the kick-starter mechanism spring, gearbox drain plug and washer (I also noticed the cover needed a thread repair), locking washer for primary drive gear retaining nut and a few other small bits and pieces. Once I had the final list and after another once-over, I was confident that I was ready to order the parts required, so I jumped online and ordered the lot that night (no small task) from a local Suzuki dealership who had almost all in stock and at good prices, as this dealer was heavily involved in 250 production racing in the 1990s… Then came the waiting game. I have learned in the past not to start an engine build until all parts are at hand so for now it was time to cover the engine and find another project for a few weeks… cmm