Me and my 1988 blaster

nick20555

Living life 2 strokes at a time
Jun 23, 2014
690
149
107
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Just outside Evansville, IN
Hi everyone. I am new to this forum. Never knew it existed or I would have joined a long time ago. As my profile states, I was raised on my dads 88 blaster (bought new in winter of 88) and fell in love with it. It was bone stock back then and I started out on it when I was about 8 years old and could reach the shifter. Fast forward to now when I'm 22 years old and we still have the old 88 blaster. It is no longer stock, but a high performance beast in my opinion. Me and my dad spent a lot of quality time working on it over the years and I have gradually adopted it as my own. It has undergone 3 top end rebuilds and are about to perform its second bottom end rebuild. It has gradually made its way up to bored 50 over (i think), milled head, aftermarket reeds (not sure on brand), toomey b1 pipe, silencer, filter, and air box vents, and numerous jet kits. I'm probably forgetting something but needless to say, its been built over the years and is a beast. It most recently is down until we get time to rebuild the bottom end because apparently the oil drain plug was not on tight enough and it lost all its oil one ride without me noticing until it made the awful noise of fried bearings and the inability to shift. Just thought I'd introduce myself to fellow blaster lovers. I plan on keeping posted on all work we do and any questions I have.
 
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Welcome, you'll find lots of answers here. 3 rebuilds in 26 years is pretty good, sounds like you may already know about leak testing, but gotta mention it anyway! Plug chopping is little known also, I noticed you said "numerous jet kits", so maybe your on to that too. Most guys on here will tell you to ditch the kits and just buy singles. Good luck with it and look forward to pics!!

Just wondering does it still have the oil injection?
 
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Welcome, you'll find lots of answers here. 3 rebuilds in 26 years is pretty good, sounds like you may already know about leak testing, but gotta mention it anyway! Plug chopping is little known also, I noticed you said "numerous jet kits", so maybe your on to that too. Most guys on here will tell you to ditch the kits and just buy singles. Good luck with it and look forward to pics!!

Thanks everyone! Yes only 3 rebuilds. First one due to just aging and the next 2 we believe were because we think it wasn't jetting in tune with the bore and pipe kit put on it. All 3 rebuilds happened within about a 6 year time frame. Now we think we have it jetted properly because it runs like a champ and hasn't shown any signs of quitting (until it lost all the oil lol). I said jet kits but I really just meant that we played around with a few. I don't know too much about "leak testing" but if you are just referring to making sure its not leaking anywhere inside or out then I can safely say its not leaking anywhere.

I will try and get some pics up as soon as I can. It still has original plastics and stickers. Only things really modified are the engine and performance parts. Still stock body. Just thought I'd post on here and see if there was appreciation for the ORIGINAL blaster.

No we do not run the oil injection. We took it off and run a safe 32:1 ratio with the yamalube. It did run for over 10 years on the oil injection though.

Just to get a little better of a timeline for it:
Dad bought it brand new in 1988. I started driving it around 12 years later when I was about 8 years old and still had all original parts (never rebuilt or anything). after about a 15 year run it finally needed rebuilt. We were forced into boring it out and then decided why not start building it. About 5 or 6 years later after adding performance parts and rebuilding and boring it out some more, we got it tuned perfectly and is currently about 6 years old on its top end now.
It is a great quad and I plan on keeping it for the memories (and because there is almost zero resale value on blasters especially this old lol). Plus me and my dad have torn it apart many times and there isn't a job on it that is out of our range. So no matter what happens to it, we will just tear it apart and fix it again.
 
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Leak testing is where you actually pressurize the engine with a small amount of airto make sure it is air tight. Your 2 stroke engine being air tight is as important as using oil with the gas. A small leak can cause havoc! Plug chopping can get your jetting dead on so no guesswork involved. Heres some important links 4 u I stole from another thread:
 
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Thanks for the links. I'll definitely use those in the future. Leak testing link is dead though and I feel that was is the most important. I'm sure I can find out how to do it though through some searching
 
Welcome. Resale value out here is ridiculous. Stock 89 Blasters are in the $1500 range. However you seem to be a lot like me. I'll never sell this bike. Brings back too many memories.

As far as leak testing is concerned. Everytime I go riding the tester is in my truck.

Again Welcome.
 
Welcome. Resale value out here is ridiculous. Stock 89 Blasters are in the $1500 range. However you seem to be a lot like me. I'll never sell this bike. Brings back too many memories.

As far as leak testing is concerned. Everytime I go riding the tester is in my truck.

Again Welcome.

Wow. Thats great resale for them. Out here you can pick up an early 2000s one for $1000 or less in good condition.
Still working on the pics. Sorry its taking a while. The blaster is at our farm where we do all our work waiting for its turn to be worked on.
 
Well we found some time to do a little more research on our blaster and it doesn't look like we are going to have to completely rebuild the bottom end on it anymore. Not sure if i already mentioned but while riding it the drain plug was loose and it lost all its oil without me noticing and made horrific sqeeling noises. So naturally we thought it was trashed but we filled it up and it smoothed out. so the bottom end is probably weakend and will probably need rebuilt sometime but for now its runs strong. One thing that we did notice was that it may be burning oil now though. Any thoughts on whether this could be related to it running dry on oil? What do you guys think might be causing this? I still need to look into it more because it might just have been that we didnt give it long enough for the oil to settle back down so I'll have to look more. Thoughts?
 
Also I will add that we don't think it was burning oil before it leaked the oil out on the ride i took it on. And we are pretty sure it leaked the oil out of the drain plug instead of it burning it off because when I got it back and looked it over and found no oil in it, I also found that the drian plug turned a full turn before it even got hand tight so I'm sure a full turn loose is plenty to leak the oil out of a running quad. Just trying to get the old blaster running so we can have some fun on it again and not burning the oil. I also have some questions on my future plans of suspension upgrades for it but I want this resolved first.
 
Time for a leak test.

You may be shipping oil past the crankshaft seal.

Not only will oil be transferred but air also, this will cause a lean mix and create excessive heat which can be harmful to the piston and rings.

Is it smoking more than normal with a white smoke that stinks?
 
Time for a leak test.

You may be shipping oil past the crankshaft seal.

Not only will oil be transferred but air also, this will cause a lean mix and create excessive heat which can be harmful to the piston and rings.

Is it smoking more than normal with a white smoke that stinks?
I didn't notice it smoking much more than normal. We only had it out for about 10 minutes so I need to look at it a little better.
And I plan on getting a leak tester. I realize how important it is. Then I'll do a plug chop to make sure the jetting is right even though we have ran it about 6 years on the same jets and it seems to run great I'll do it anyway just to be sure
 
Alright, after I got off work I took a quick glance at the blaster and it looks like I just didn't give it enough time to let the oil cool off and settle all the way so it may not be burning oil. I still don't know 100% so I need to leak test it and put some time in it to determine for sure but for now it may be ok. I did snap a few quick pics of it for you guys to see