I did a bunch of work on the 250R today. First, I bought yet another AC Racing product: a new bumper! There's not really any way I can justify this purchase other than pure asthetics, but I do think it looks pretty neat.

Then I got to work changing out the clutch. I actually got the clutch kit a couple weeks ago, but was stuck waiting for a fancy TM Design magnetic oil drain plug to arrive that ended up being backordered for a couple of weeks. The (apparently original) clutch wasn't slipping yet, but the cable was all the way at the end of its adjustment, and since the clutch kit was pretty cheap ($60), I decided to swap it out, rather than wait until a desert trip was wrecked by the clutch finally letting go.

The clutch went pretty smoothly--I had a little trouble getting the side cover loose from the dowel pins, and scraping the gasket off took forever, but the clutch job was super simple. The basket looked to be in good shape, and aside from being worn, the old clutch looked ok. No burnt discs or anything out of the ordinary. I put everything back together and installed a new Motion Pro cable, as the original one was slightly worn.

The final task of the day was to reinstall the exhaust system and figure out a way to stop losing pipe springs. If you're keeping count, I've had 3 fall off so far (usually while banging through whoops). The stupid things cost $9/pair (if you buy the FMF ones), and take two or three days to show up, so I'd had enough. My solution? Safety wire. I tied both ends to the little loops on the pipe sections. This way, the springs are still able to stretch as the pipes move, and only the ends are retained to keep them from falling off. We'll find out this weekend if it works. I do have a spare set just in case they still fall off, or something else happens to them (like they break). For the record, I didn't safety wire the upper springs (between the pipe and the cylinder), because they seem much tighter than the lower springs, and I haven't lost either of them yet.