The begining

  

In the nineties, I used to own and ride a 2 stroke 100cc Kawasaki RTZ. There were quite a few Japanese 2 stroke bikes around to tinker with. The Yamaha RX 100 was one of the most popular two-stroke,  100cc  motorcycles around at that time. Fast forward twenty years later and I bought myself a midlife cycle, but the force within to tinker and rebuild something was still strong. A mate of mine here in the land of Oz had bought one of these 1980's Yamaha RX 125 a few years back.

 Intrigued by the fact that you could still get one down under, I spent countless hours browsing Facebook marketplace ads and gumtree listings. Finally, all the stars had lined up and I  found this little beauty. Rented a trailer with another mate of mine and drove up north to get this baby home!

Yes, you can imagine the situation with the Missus when she saw this little rust bucket! But I wasn't one to get phased by a little, err may be a moderate amount of rust and a bike that wouldn't exactly start or move 😬

Knowing this was going to be bigger than Benhur I began to prioritize my rebuild. My first goal was to get it to start smoking again and prevent further degradation from rust. Sounds simple enough so I got to work.  

Rebuilds projects usually fail because people set very high expectations of themselves. Time is a limited resource so use it wisely, besides a bike rebuild can often get frustrating.  This is when people give up and move on. 

In order to get it breathing again or rather roaring again, I needed the following basic bits.

 

1) Battery 

2) Sparky

3) OIL checks 

4) Carby clean and rebuild possibly

When I first started looking for these parts I couldn't find Jack Sh@# or a nut anything that was specific to the RX 125E.