I spent 14 hours on the road today in order to go pick up this 1974 DT250A in Virginia Gold. It came with new tires, a new battery, a new seat cover, new grips, and a plethora of NOS, reproduction and lightly used parts like brake shoes, head light, carb rebuild kit, handle bars, spare cylinder, cables, harness', plugs, air filters, hardware, fork seals, etc. Included were an owners manual, parts list/manual, and service manual, a clean title and the original sales brochure and a few magazine clippings.

The owner was in the beginning stages of restoring it along with a Husky 400 when he needed money to restore and fix his 127 year old Victorian home, hence the sale. The bike looks pretty good, it appears to have very little off-road use looking at the skid plate and bottom of the frame. It has the buddy pegs, original tool kit under the seat and the right side mirror. The tank has one slight dent, the oil tank has a slight crease, and the rear fender has a few small dings but other than that she looks pretty good IMHO.

It's currently sitting at 3,971 original miles and it's on the stock piston. It needs a top end as there's some slap but the transmission and clutch look good. I plan to fix the rear fender and have it repainted along with the front fender and headlight brackets. I will wax the tank and oil tank in hopes of bringing out some more luster from the original paint. I'm not sure what can be done about the small dent in the gas tank or the crease in the oil tank, but I'd like to keep the original paint on those parts. Is PDR an option on these older, thicker metals?

I'll polish the cases and the wheels but I am considering having them re-laced with new spokes. I need new hardware for the cases as these bolts are certainly not correct and I am assuming I'll need gaskets as well. The pipe is missing the hardware at the cylinder and where it mounts as the rear of the bike. The intake boot looks great as does the pipe itself and the chain and sprocket are fairly new as well.

Any suggestions on things to look out for and/or what to tackle that might go overlooked would be much appreciated. I am going to start with recovering the seat, rebuilding the carb and rebuilding the forks. I also need to find a shop here in Texas (preferably the Houston area) to do the top end work as I don't have the time. Any suggestions there would be greatly appreciated. I am looking forward to getting this thing decently restored so that I can get out and enjoy it as well as sit back and admire it. I hope to learn a lot here in this forum and to enjoy the process I am about to embark on lol.

Below are some pics from the sales ad and a few of it on the trailer on the way home today. Let me know what you think.

Nice find - we can only dream of finding bikes like that here in the UK!

I assume that "brake pads" was a slip of the finger and you meant "brake shoes"?! Unless you know their age and provenance, buy new ones.

Clean out the carb and replace the rubber "O" ring, but leave the jets and other metalware alone.

Great, exciting story …..It has got all of the Elements - Finding the "right bike" , Purchase , Road Trip, Pics on the way home and now the Forum , Learning and Planning the Project - a lot of Satisfaction to be had at the the end of this Journey . Congratulations...!

Yes, I meant shoes lol. After being on the road all day and still little sleep I am mentally exhausted, good catch on the slip though. The new ones can't be more than a few years old and are still sealed in the packaging. Any suggestions on where to source the button head hardware for the cases?

Could you post close up photos of what is currently fitted - might be original.

Yamaha probably still sell those screws/bolts, but I have a sneaky suspicion that the part number might have superseded to something that might not suit the bike (I'm thinking BZR to a very dark olive/black).

You can check Partzilla (USA) or CMSNL (Europe) for part numbers - they're both fairly straightforward "follow your nose" type websites. CMSNL tends to have more photos of parts.

The dimensions of screws, bolts etc are incorporated within the part number - ie 91316-06035 is size M6 x 35mm long (sorry if you already knew this!).

There are probably companies in the US that sell replacement packs, so wait for the US members to chime in regarding this once they are up and out of bed!

Wow. What a great find!

Your story is stuff dreams are made of.

On the case screws, Motodad24 on eBay sells very nice hardware kits. Link to his eBay store:

www.ebay.com/usr/motodad24

It's... it's beautiful!

WOW !!!!
Bikes like that are rare...NICE....JUST REALLY,,,,,NICE !!
Looking forward to watching what you do with her.

On another note: case screws: The 74 DT250A was the 1st yr Yamaha built the bike with recessed hex head screws.
Your tool kit may have a hex wrench in it. If not they are easy to get.
Much better to work with vs. JIS phillips hd screws. If you didn't have the correct driver you could mess them up easily.

Nice find, this is a great group of knowledgable enthusiast, I live about 1/2 way between Austin and Houston, in used to ride with the trials group at Rio Bravo MX, might check with Mike at Bluebonnet MX to find you someone who can help you with the bike, there are some vintage guys who hang out at Rio too, maybe find a local contact out there

Edit note; I do vintage repairs here at my home, I am currently backed up, a year or so before I could help you

Yeah... Good point. I just looked... Motodad might not have the 74 kits listed. You could always contact him as he might have them? The original good black finish hex socket bolts that don't start rusting quickly are harder to find aftermarket than stainless or shiny ones...