another Saturday morning

I took the DT3 apart last Saturday and looked it over. I ordered the parts I needed, and hoped to have them all for this weekend, but didn't really expect they'd be here. I'm waiting on fork seals, the front tire, sprockets, exhaust gasket, and a few other things. I did get the rear tire, chain, and new clutch cable. I put on a set of old XT500 bars, and some new Scott grips. The XT bars are about a 1/2" wider on each side, but will be perfect.


I cleaned up and painted the exhaust, and straightened out the heat shield. I'm not doing any restoration work on the bike, but some fix-up and preservation on a few parts.
before:

after:

Here's the rear Shinko SR241 4.00x18 with the stock Dunlop. They have the right look, and should make the bike much more fun to ride, both on the road and trails.

The IRC tubes I'm using have a blue line that makes it very easy to see if the tube is installed without any kinks or twists. I got new rim strips also, but the bead locks were nice, so reusing those.

The wheel bearings had no play and are very smooth, so I just greased them. I popped out the seals, hosed them out with brake cleaner, dried with compressed air, and repacked them. This bike certainly shows it's age, but with the low miles many of the wear items are in great condition.



This was the contents of both forks. Gross.

The fork internals looked excellent though, so getting everything cleaned up and ready to reassemble when the seals get here.

One problem with the bike I noticed when riding it after I bought it was the gas cap seal leaked very badly. The seal is no longer available from Yamaha, and I didn't feel like hunting down a New Old Stock part and then paying NOS prices. I measured the seal on my SR500, and it was the same diameter, so figured I could make one work on the DT. SR500 tanks use the same gas cap as an XS650 "Special", so I ordered part # 20-0036 from Mikes XS. I took just a few minutes to make it work on the DT.

The XS650 seal upside down, which is how I installed it on the DT.



The gas cap taken apart.

The side of the seal that goes against the tank when used on an XS650 or SR500 was too thick for the DT, and wouldn't allow it to close properly. I mounted the seal upside down, and then trimmed the thicker part from the top with a utility knife blade, to allow it to work in the DT cap.

This puts the smooth untrimmed part on the bottom to seal with the tank. I also cut off the center part of the seal. I reinstalled the cap on the tank, and it's now leak free.

Hopefully I'll have the rest of the parts soon. She's still going to be a bit of a rat, but should be super fun to ride for not much money.