Written by Tom Gilroy
When you mention a Yamaha XT to any bike enthusiast a few things come to mind. Yamaha?s XT series set the bar in off-road racing for a long time, and since then they?ve been synonymous with durability, performance and reliability. So of course, I have one rolled into the garage that looks anything but. Ex-farm bike. Rolling chassis, motor, box of parts and three words, ?Make a scrambler.?

The easy route would have been to mount a nice, rounded fender and a run-of-the-mill round tail light with roll-stitched seat ? probably lower it so it looked nicer ? throw some 50/50 tyres on and be done with it. But I don?t tend to take the easy way out and the Yamaha XT250 MX scrambler wouldn?t be any different. Why not build a custom motocross bike" I couldn?t think of a good enough reason, so that?s exactly what I did.
The tear down was simple; I think the only thing I removed was the old front fender. The rest was already missing. The light frame plus the monoshock of the XT250 lends itself to a simple design. The top seat rail was maintained with the bracing modified to better suit my ideas for the tail and exhaust. Next, I dropped the forks through the triple clamps to sit nice and high on the front and modified the rear suspension to suit. Overall, I lifted the little Yamaha about 35mm.
Stand up and be counted
The wheels were stripped out, the rims were polished up and re-laced with stainless steel spokes. They were then wrapped in a Dunlop K606 off-r...