CR250M 1974 Elsinore Project

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The chassis of our project 1973 CR250M has now been completely stripped ready for blast cleaning and powder coating. For the most part this was fairly easy to do despite the odd seized nut and bolt. Until, it became time to remove the standard, very rusty, swinging arm from the frame. Although the nut came off fairly easily. The spindle was well and truly seized into the bearing sleeve and despite liberal applications of a 1kg Birmingham screwdriver (a hammer in case you were wondering) was not moving at all. So out with the oxy-acetylene torch to apply some heat to the seized parts...to no avail!!! As the spindle is the whole width of the frame it proved impossible to get enough heat into the job to loosen it
	So we then tried our 12 Ton hydraulic press, which would probably have moved it in the end, but unfortunately it was pushing the frame rails apart in the process and would have resulted in a unusable frame, so there was nothing else for it, but to cut through the offending spindle. In order to preserve both the frame and the swinging arm the incision had to be made in the small gap between the two that is taken up with the end cap and shims. Typically, this meant that we couldn't use the hacksaw as it was meant to be used, but had to use a loose blade by hand. A slow, tedious and occasionally painful process.
But, eventually the bearing sleeve and the spindle inside it was cut through allowing the swinging arm to be removed and the offending parts to be consigned to the bin!! Just over four hours of hard work to accomplish what should have taken 5 mins!
	Eventually a large pile of parts were removed from the old chassis and put to one side to review at a later date. Things like the fork yokes are obviously re-useable but the shocks an front mudguard will inevitably end up in the bin.
The red circled area shows a common weak spot on the early Honda chassis and indeed when the layers of old paint and rust were stripped away this frame was cracked too. This was then repaired with our trusty MiG Welded and the re-enforcing plate shown in the picture was then welded in place.
	The rest of the chassis was then checked and where appropriate the rather poor Japanese welding was re-enforced. Part 3