KR250.ORG : 2019+ Diary

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July 2019

You've probably noticed that there's very little activity on this site these days, for which I apologise. I've not actually had any of my KR's on the road for a few years now, though they get the odd trip out to a show or trackday sometimes. The project bike hasn't been touched for a long time, and the red/black one has been at my mate's place for 20 months waiting for him to gather the enthusiasm to fix the basic faults and get it through an MOT.

Hopefully, a significant step has been made this month into breathing some life into my bikes and this site - we've moved house ! We had 12 bikes and all my tools and spares crammed into a single modern brick garage at the old place, so if I wanted to take one out for a ride or to work on it, I had to move lots of others out of the way first. And with a narrow drive I could only just squeeze my van down coupled with too many nosey neighbours, it wasn't easy to get stuff done. At least that's my excuse...

So, we've moved. I've got a longer/wider garage now, and a longer/wider drive too, with few neighbours. I'll stick some pictures up soon, but everything's still packed away in boxes at the moment. I rented a local storage unit (in lime-green, naturally) so I could move everything into it in advance, to minimise the amount of stuff we had to shift on moving day. Well, 'day' would have been good, we actually had a 90-minute window to get it all done, but that's another story. For now, here's a photo of the 2 neglected bikes dragged out into the sun, and a couple of moving pics.

August 2019

Remember my red/black KR that I let my mate take away in Jan 2018 ? There was a very specific plan for it, but he lost interest and gave me it back. However, he did do a bit of work on it first, and so for the first time since I acquired it, it ... wait for it ... has an MOT ! The original tank was too leaky so he fitted the dented KR250S one I had spare. He also fettled the brakes and managed to improve the sealing on the front exhaust. I taxed it immediately, I'm looking forward to actually riding this one for the first time.

March 2020

So, Covid-19 happened. Seems like a good opportunity to get into the garage and finally get some stuff done, seeing as we're not allowed to leave the house for a while. I'm hopeful that I might update this site a bit more often now. Stay safe everyone, and be kind to people. In particular, don't be tempted to start profiteering like some...

Oh yeah, very much against my better judgement, I've volunteered to take over Doug's KR250 Owners Page on Facebook so feel free to join in on there if you wish.

April 2020

With a rare day off work, nice weather and a ban on leaving the house, I pulled the KR's out of the garage to see what's what. I put the red/black tank and sidepanels back on the second bike, and then raided my spares stash for the most lurid combination of mismatched colours I could find. I think it looks ace like that, frankly. The main green bike fired up first kick and I let it warm up and managed to ride it a few yards down the drive. Then I gave 'em all a very half-hearted wipe with a rag and took some photos.

June 2020

How cool is this ? I knew there was a factory race kit manual available back in the day, to instruct racers how best to tune their bikes for the track. I'd never managed to get hold of a copy myself though, but fellow KR owner Dan has got one and very kindly scanned the whole thing for me to share on here. Incidentally, Dan manufactures high-quality gaskets for a variety of bikes, including the KR - check out Gasket Guru and tell him I sent you.

Download the complete Factory Race Kit Manual here, courtesy of Dan.

July 2020

I have a bit more space now. Not enough, obviously...

August 2020

I have a confession to make. Yes, another one. The red/black KR has been road-legal for a year but I've never actually found time to take it for a ride. I needed to put that right. I discovered that my mate had fitted push-fit inline fuel filters which - as usual - started leaking straight away, so I added some clips to temporarily hold them in place. I pumped the tyres up, added a splash of fuel, and kicked it into life. Then I donned my helmet and ventured out onto public roads for the first time since I bought it in Oct 2008. I just did a short spin round the block, so I could check it over before venturing further. Sadly, that's as far as I got. Although it ran nice and crisply, the temp needle quickly shot up and it started dripping coolant. It was difficult to see where from, and suspecting the lower rad hose, I removed it to check it out. Though it doesn't explain the initial leak, you can see in the pic below that the cast stub on the water pump housing has crumbled away to dust. Looking at the state of the coolant, ok, rusty water, it's not surprising.

June 2021

A long-overdue update. Wish I had something to say though. My job, my family, my home life and the lingering global crapfest that is Covid-19 have all conspired against me doing anything at all with any of my bikes. Frankly, if I had even enough spare time to do it, I'd be getting most of them into suitable shape to sell them. I managed a great day out on the LC at last September's Yorkshire 2-Stroke Day but that was literally it. I did consider pulling the plug on this site altogether last month, but in the end I renewed my domain/package for another 2 years. Not entirely sure why. For now, here's some sample pics from the KR250 Owners Page on Facebook - feel free to join in there.

August 2021

With no advance warning, Hasegawa have just released a 1:12-scale model kit of a KR250A. Needless to say, I ordered a couple the same day and they arrived safely from Japan in less than a week. Since then they've also released kits for the black/red, white/red, red/grey and silver versions too.

June 2022

Anyone still here ? You may remember I reluctantly inherited the Admin rights to the KR250 Owners Community on Facebook that Doug Hughes set up a few years ago. Because he set it up as a 'community' rather than a normal 'group', it's proved very difficult both for me to manage and for any of the members to interact with it. I tried to get it converted to a group but that proved impossible. Understandably frustrated by that, one of the members set up his own KR250 Owners Group on Facebook back in July 2021. I've only just discovered it, and have joined it and been made an Admin on there too. The intention is for everyone on the community to now join the group, and migrate as much of the useful info across as possible. Then I'll let the community page die, and possibly even delete it altogether. So please join the 'new' group and help make it the best-known and most-useful Tandem-Twin resource on the net.

October 2022

Exactly 20 years to the day that I first rode home in the pouring rain on my quirky new toy, I dug it out of the garage, pumped the tyres up, freed off the brakes, kicked it into life on 18-month-old fuel, and rode up and down the drive a couple of times.

August 2023

Anything new to report ? Not really. I renewed the KR250.ORG domain/package for another 2 years. My bike still runs. And I persuaded the wife to sell her SDR200, which is hopefully the first step towards getting a grip of my life.

February 2024

It's probably been 25 years since I last bought a bike magazine that's devoted to modern bikes. To say I'm out of touch with current biking trends would be to understate it massively. I'd never have even glanced at the March 2024 issue of Bike, but someone on the excellent KR250 Owners Group on Facebook drew my attention to the back page. If some of the text feels uncomfortably familiar, it's because it's plainly been copied directly from this site...

September 2024

Another bike has gone, Edna the KS-II has found a loving home with Phil from AR Restorations. A couple of weeks later I tried to fire the KR up again and this happened. I've only ridden one bike all year and it wasn't even mine - Suzuki GB kindly lent me one of their new GSX-8R's for an hour. It was impressive but not really me, and though it made me want to do something with bikes again, that feeling quickly disappeared.

March 2025

It's exactly 20 years since I flew to Japan for the KR Meet.

I'm supposed to be at that part of my life now where everything is coming together nicely. I'm 58, happily married, healthy, I've paid my mortgage off and I have a few quid in the bank. I've been in continuous full-time employment since I was 18, but my career is now winding down and retirement is beckoning. This is what it's all about isn't it ?

No. It's been a terrible few years. My Mum and Dad reached that point where various health issues meant that they started needing a bit of regular help from the family, but we all lived close enough that we could step up and do whatever was needed, and were more than happy to do so. We became more familiar with ambulances than we'd like, but we kept them both home and happy and healthy-ish until the Chinese launched their global bioterrorism attack. Dad went into hospital January 2021 with a bad stomach ulcer but he'd have been better off taking his chances at home and we never saw him again. Mum soldiered on with our daily help, ultimately battling Alzheimers and a stroke and died in the same criminally-useless hospital in December 2024. So for quite a while there's not been much opportunity for me to do anything with my bikes or this place, though I know my experiences are very common and an awful lot of people have it much much worse than me.

But there's a reason why this final diary page starts in July 2019. A month after we moved house my job forced me into a 24/365 call-out role and I ended up working 12 days out of every 14 for more than 4 years. It was exhausting and meant I was constantly saying no to all sorts of events and experiences that I would otherwise have been able to do. It paid well, but I never wanted to do it and it only ended after I eventually told my boss that I was a broken person.

What you need in order to survive bad times like these is a little peaceful haven of your own that you can relax and lose yourself in. I don't have that. I really hate where we live. I knew it was totally wrong for us from the very first look, but I allowed my wife to paint a romantic (but totally deluded) picture of what our lives would be like here. The whole plot is wrong, it's on a slope and access is poor. She's the only person on earth who hates gardening more than I do, so we have an acre of depressing weeds and mud, an endless list of jobs that always need doing, and a collection of expensive broken and useless garden powertools. The house needs work, but I can't bring myself to spend any money or time making it better, I can only think of it as a temporary shelter until we find a proper home I can be happy in. We've not even decorated it at all, it looks just like it did in the 2019 sale brochure, except tatty and full of our clutter. I've always wanted a nice 'toy' car, something I can tinker with and take out on sunny Sundays. There's nowhere to keep one properly though, the garage is the wrong size and shape and in the wrong place, and anyway it's full of bloody lawnmowers and junk now. And I don't have the time anyway, all my bikes have been totally neglected since we moved here as this page makes clear. I'm currently trying to empty Mum & Dad's home, and it's made me acutely aware of how much crap I own myself - I don't have any kids, so I need to start getting rid of all my stuff urgently.

So, my life has taken a complete wrong turn into a literal and metaphorical dead-end. If this is to be my forever home, I just hope forever isn't very long. For the last few years, what's kept me alive is the need and desire to look after Mum & Dad. They don't need me any more. Why am I writing all this here ? I'm not sure. I don't have anyone to tell it to, and I sort of feel the need to explain why this place has gone the way it has. If nothing else it'll form some kind of explanation for when I'm gone. Sorry.