Yamaha YTM 225 DXN Three Wheeler Rebuild / Mod

[zacker]

SO I found this old Three Wheeler on Craig's list a couple years ago and figured it would be fun to blast around on, especially in the snow.

But it needed a lot of work.. lol I bought it and it came with almost another trike... well, a frame, blown motor, a tire and rim, seat, tank, head light, extra fork tubes...lol none of it usable though. So I got it home and assessed the damages,

wrong carb (which was why it didn't run and hardly started at all)

Tore up, Duct taped seat cover

cracked front fender,

Bent handle bars (Trike probably flipped at one point)

Bent front fork tube (looking more like it was flipped)

Bent rear axle (yeah, positive she was flipped...lol)

bad rims

dry rotted tires

bad muffler

no battery, wiring all messed up.

here's what I had to work with...

 

[zacker]

...so after looking it over, I decided to jump right on in and "Git r done"! lol

 

SO I bought a new Battery and straightened out the wiring... put a new fuse in, changed out the starter and got her to crank over...

then it was onto the carb. the OEM carb had a hole that had rotted away in the float bowl but the rest was good so the previous owner bought a new carb off of Ebay.. it was a size smaller than the original but it got the trike to start, just not run right and after it died or you shut it off, it wouldn't run again until the bike cooled off completely. So, I found an OEM carb on ebay, and rebuilt it (luckily you can still get all the jets and carb parts new from E replacement parts on line... I was able to buy from them and get correct part numbers to help find parts on Ebay.

Once the carb was rebuilt and added she ran pretty good. Next was all new break cables, throttle cables and break pads.

then I got to straightening out the fork tubes, not easy but a big vise and an even bigger piece of pipe made it do-able. I got them as good as I could which wasn't much and it was still hard to make it go in a straight line but hey, it looked better... lol Added a new set of Handle Bars, and new Yamaha stickers to the tank sides and was able to ride it a bit.

 

 

But It wasn't done by a long shot...lol It still needed a new muffler, and the bent rear axle made it ride with a serious limp! and I still needed to do something about the front forks Soooo.... another long search on Ebay and I had found an (New old Stock) rear Axle so I snatched that right up, then I found a deal of a life time... a good, straight front end from an 86 Yamaha Tri-Z Trike (Yamaha's two stroke dirt racer) with rim and new tire and complete break set up for $100.00 Shipped!!! Needles to say, It was mine a few seconds later...lol when it finally came to me, I cleaned it up and painted it and all that fun stuff and figured out how to mount it up on my frame which wasn't too bad, just needed a spacer as it was a bit longer than the stock front end. I used the lower bearing from my front end and the upper bearing from the Tri-Z , a big washer, a spacer and I cranked her down and it was good to go! , then I put the new Axle in.

 

New Rear Axle, no more limp!

 

 

New Front end mounted up...

 

 

Before and after front end swap...

 

 

 

Now that it ran good and rode good, I had to change out the muffler, so back to Ebay I went. I found a used muffler from a YZ 250 for dirt cheap.... Close enough for my liking...lol 2 stroke muffler on a four stroke you say? Yep, works like a charm although, it is a bit loud but hell, it looks good!! lol

 

YZ 205 muffler fabbed onto the trike... now its got a better mount so it looks cleaner but I don't have a pic.

 

 

 

Now I had the rear tires to deal with... I was lucky again on Ebay... I found out that the Yamaha Blaster 200 Quad was basically the YTM 225 DX with four tires and a different engine but everything else was the same. so I was able to get two rear rims with nice Maxxis Hole Shot tires for it and then I got two rear hubs as well because the new rims were 4 bolt and the old ones were 3 bolt.

 

Here it is with the new rims (which are now gold not silver...lol) on it...

 

 

As she sat with the new tires and front end on her sans Plastics.... (I like it without the rear fenders!)

 

 

... On Display at "Valley Motorsports" next to my buddies seriously clean, custom Honda 250R!

 

 

and the latest up grades were to add a newer style rear grab bar and a trailer hitch for work around the property.

 

 

Hitch...

 

 

Working...lol

 

[CAtaylor]

Good Job. Very nice build.

[zacker]

Good Job. Very nice build.

Thanks!

[Cowpie]

Kick myself whenever I am prompted to think about it, why I never picked up on one of the 3 wheelers when they were available new. Especially for winter stuff. I saw those used with a ski placed on the steer tire and thought it was pretty impressive. Now they are collector's items. Not the first time I missed the boat.

[zacker]

The farther south or west you live, the easier and cheaper they are to find. Craigs list has them all the time and eBay has everything you need for them lol old Hondas are the most common.

[Hawk2463]

Very nice build/rebuild. Please do remember though there was a reason that three wheelers were outlawed. to many kids died on them. They are very unstable, but man they were fun. I was a Polaris dealer at the time when the US decided to just outlaw the sale of them. Polaris had to buy back any three wheelers we had left in stock.