The pictures below show the finished chassis with the RGV250 front and rear end, the Aprilia RS250 subframe and seat unit, the stripped tank, the rearsets and the White power rear shock in place.

It was at this stage, with all the major construction work done that I got the motor back from Mick Abbey who had been working his magic on it for me. Mick said that with a set of pipes and the fuelling set up correctly I would see in the region of 70BHP at the wheel. Now considering that the YPVS in its most potent form only ever put out 50BHP at the wheel I thought this was a bit of a bold claim. Then he showed me the dyno print out of one of his tuned YPVS350s. It showed 73BHP, and yes it was rear wheel figures. Well that convinced me that he was the man for the job. I had also had loads of excellent reports about him and his work and examples of what he has done are all over the internet, so I felt very safe in letting him loose on my motor. Just one thing though.............if you are going to drop your motor off personally, don't expect to leave in a hurry! The man can talk the hind legs off a donkey and then start on the second one. Tea, he drinks gallons of the stuff. A thoroughly good guy.

When I went to collect the motor, I met Mick at one of his moped racing weekends at York Raceway. He let me have a go on his 50cc air cooled Honda racer. Wow, what a bike. It is putting out in the region of 12BHP and feels like a Yamaha RD125, the old air cooled twin model of the 70s. I had one and I can just about remember what it felt like to ride. But all this from 50cc, it really was amazing and testament to his  work. Obviously there was very little power low down in the rev range, but boy did it fly when it got wound up and revving, fun.

As well as having the barrels ported, I also had the crank cases matched to the new profile of the transfer ports, the waterways in the barrels and head ground out for unrestricted water flow as this is an area that can cause problems with overheating when more power is produced; and we all know how much two strokes love excessive heat don't we! Finally I had all new bearings and seals fitted so that I did not have any nasty surprises later on. When I picked the motor up from Mick it was clean and ready to be refitted.