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Andrews Or Birkitt?


marky g
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My Pinky is going to have a full stripdown and service at the end of the month, two names spring to mind for the engine work...Nigel Birkitt or Mick Andrews.

I know NB is still about cause I saw him at a trial on Saturday, but what of Mick Andrews??

Anybody got any contact numbers??

cheers guys

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I had work done by both, I had a 250 which Mick 'breathed on' A couple of mates had Mick Andrews 270's.

A couple of years later I wanted my new bike doing but Mick couldn't do it for me so I went to Birkett. I had a 270 and full porting job.

I have to say I was rather disappointed with the Birkett job, the porting was really rough, big gouges out of the ports like it had been done with a chisell!! Performance wise I prefered the Mick Andrews one aswell. Don't get me wrong it was a big improvment on standard but not as good. The MA bike seemed to respond quicker on the throttle.

This was 1992 however and I may have had a bad un.

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Cheers Guys,

This is my 4th TY250 and as far as I know none of mine has had any work done to them (except for my current one).

It's a 92 pinky, the bore is std but is has had the inlet manifold shortend, as for porting I cannot tell, the motor is fairly noisey (nothing major) but I cannot stand a rough sounding engine.

I plan to do most of the work myself with the exception of a rebore and a porting job + a new big end.

What was the 'done' mods to Yams in their day??....I know out of all my old bikes, it was the pinky that I bought new in 91 that was the best out of the lot, it felt a bit more zippy than the 'R' and the 'S'.

I rode it in the Welsh Trophy trial on Saturday, there were quite a few TY's in the aircooled mono class, one stood out as having a very sweet sounding motor (an m reg pinky) I happened to notice it did have Birkitt stickers all over it.

I never got to speak to the owner but I will if he's at the next round I'll make the effort to have a chat.

Anybody else got any info on Birkitt or Andrews work on Mono TY's?

Edited by Marky G
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If the inlet has been shortened then it's very likely Mick Andrews has already tinkered with it. After the inlet mod the front of the airbox has to sit under the frame tubes, Is this the case with yours ?

I used to spend a lot of time with Mick and got the impression that you can easily go too far with the TY and spoil the very things that made them so easy to ride.

For the 270 they use a piston from a Yam 250 enduro bike, think it's the IT250 ?

Get a nice 'tight' rebore and run it in carefully. I once spent several hours at Mick's riding the bike on the pilot jet for about 10 mins- letting it cool 10 mins etc... felt ok to me but Mick reckoned it was a little on the tight side. It finally started to loosen up a little towards the end of the day and turned out to be the best motor I ever had in a Yam.

One other thing. The old Yam never like fully synthetic oil. You could wear a barrel out in no time on fully synthetic. Mick did explain why once, but I can't remember!

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Cheers for the info guys.......Steve your right, the front of my airbox does sit under the frame rails, I did wonder why but thinking on it's the shorter inlet tract thats the reason :huh:

Steve, was it only Mick who shortened the inlet port or did other folk do the same type of work? (I'll post a pic or mine soon)

What oil did you use on your TY?

Cheers

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A few years back I had a 270 Pinky, the logbook showed Mitsui Yamaha as being the original reg'd keeper and I was told it had been a works bike used by the late David page who was the son of Ernie Page who ran a motorcycle shop in Edinburgh. And if my 41 year old (and fading fast!) memory serves me correctly young David may have ridden this bike in a trial I rode in my younger days, I think it was the Mitchell and I remember David rocketing the Yam up a huge rock slab in a gulley as if it were a mere pebble. Tommy Alvahla (apologies if spelling is incorrect) rode the same trial on an Aprilia and made hard work of the same rock slab. David sadly passed away at a far too young age but I'm sure if any of you remember him, he was a belting lad with more bottle and ability than most of us would ever dream about possessing.

I was preparing the bike for the SSDT in 2000 and took it to Birketts for a once over, Kev Seward (read very capable trials bike engineer) breathed on the bike for me and returned it to its former glory.

I then went and sold the bike before the SSDT as I had been threatened with divorce. In hindsight I should have took the trials option as they never nag, they are always there for you, they don't burn your tea! (Ouch, its just a bit of fun love!) and they always respond favourably when you fancy throwing your leg over one!!

Eiger.

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