Honda Elsinore DG Performance Racer
The Honda CR250 DG Performance Racer was inspired by the original DG CR125 team bikes. We wanted our CR250 to be outfitted with as many DG components that we could find, plus a few cool extra touches to make the bike something special. We started out with a ’73 Honda CR250 Elsinore that was purchased in Florida. Our donor bike was a real beater and we ended up using all the electrics, the tank, a Mikuni carb, and a perfect dent free DG exhaust. The donor bike had a tired motor with a broken case half at the rear motor mount and a faulty kickstarter gear assembly. Fortunately, we had a a real hot rod motor sitting on the shelf in the workshop. The new motor was completely rebuilt with a nice DG Performance Gold Head and a trick looking Mossbarger Racing reed set-up bolted to the intake. We scraped the stock ’73 Elsinore frame and went with a modified unit that was reinforced on the frame downtubes and a cross brace was also added between the bottom frame rails. One final touch to the frame was modern wide footpegs to keep our feet happy and a fresh coat of yellow paint that continued our DG theme. After our frame was painted, we bolted in the motor and used a custom billet aluminum motor mounts to hold the engine secure. Immediately, we could see a problem with the Mossbarger reeds because the carb was now located much further back on the engine and the stock Honda air filter and airbox could not be used. This problem was solved by fabricating a new airbox piece that would still allow the rear fender to fasten in place and it would also protect our new clamp-on filter from flying debris. Our next addition was a set of standard CR250 forks with air caps. The air caps were linked by a high pressure line and fork adjustments could be quickly altered by using a single valve to equalize pressure in both fork legs. The suspension on the rear of the bike featured an aluminum DG swingarm with brand new brass bushings that we had to press into place. We also spent hours polishing the swingarm, because cool shiny stuff on your bike lowers your lap time…or it just seems that way.
Next, we bolted on a set of rare Fox Air Shox to the polished swingarm and added a quality Pro-Tec chainguide to keep our chain on the sprockets and out of the expensive engine cases. Our bike was looking really good, however it wouldn’t roll anywhere, so we added two sparkling wheels with new wheel bearings, spokes, brakes and grippy
Michelin tires. The bike was finished off with DG yellow fenders, sidepanels, and fuel tank. A custom seatcover was stitched up with the DG logo emblazoned on the back to complete our project racer. Another fun project is completed and now we are thinking about something totally new….and FMF themed CR250. We already have a custom cylinder head that has been milled Porcupine style : )
