Post by wotavidone on Nov 12, 2006 17:51:21 GMT -5
Now I've gone and done it!
On the weekend I bought a 1981 XT.
This bike is complete, except for a muffler and front brake lever assembly.
The bike has done 7000km, has service history and owners manual with it, but looks as rough as a rough thing.
New front mudguard, air cleaner and recovered seat.
The bike sat in the weather for years, so accumulated lots of corrosion, and one of the previous owners addressed this by spraying everthing black.
Which mighta been OK if he'd at least done enough prep work to make the paint actually stay on.
Still I made a 6 volt charger (never throw away transformers and diodes) and charged up the 6 year old battery while I was thinking about it. Then I read the service book which said it was only 500k out from an oil change.
Oil was way down in the frame but I theorised that the rest was probably leaked back into the motor over the years.
Tank wasn't on the bike, but I found a plastic squeeze bottle that the nozzle fitted in the fuel line.
Filled the bottle up, sqeezed some fuel in the carby, and gave her a boot. Then another. On the third kick, this bike which had not run for three years fired up and tried to jump across my garage.
The kids came running to see what the racket was. The missus said something along the lines of, " You don't mean to say the piece of crap actually runs?"
What to do next is the question.
I'm truly torn betwen making myself a cafe racer or getting the thing back to a running registered dirt bike.
As I say, "decisions, decisions."
Mick
On the weekend I bought a 1981 XT.
This bike is complete, except for a muffler and front brake lever assembly.
The bike has done 7000km, has service history and owners manual with it, but looks as rough as a rough thing.
New front mudguard, air cleaner and recovered seat.
The bike sat in the weather for years, so accumulated lots of corrosion, and one of the previous owners addressed this by spraying everthing black.
Which mighta been OK if he'd at least done enough prep work to make the paint actually stay on.
Still I made a 6 volt charger (never throw away transformers and diodes) and charged up the 6 year old battery while I was thinking about it. Then I read the service book which said it was only 500k out from an oil change.
Oil was way down in the frame but I theorised that the rest was probably leaked back into the motor over the years.
Tank wasn't on the bike, but I found a plastic squeeze bottle that the nozzle fitted in the fuel line.
Filled the bottle up, sqeezed some fuel in the carby, and gave her a boot. Then another. On the third kick, this bike which had not run for three years fired up and tried to jump across my garage.
The kids came running to see what the racket was. The missus said something along the lines of, " You don't mean to say the piece of crap actually runs?"
What to do next is the question.
I'm truly torn betwen making myself a cafe racer or getting the thing back to a running registered dirt bike.
As I say, "decisions, decisions."
Mick
. Going to have to do a quasi-HL as I have no idea which late 70's Husky frame was used on the build, and I think the Norton factory produced HL's would run... (in my best Dr. Evil impression)... ONE MILLION DOLLARS if you could even find one. I know there's supposedly a guy in Australia that makes replica HL frames, but I can't find any contact info online. This one may be a longer build than my cafe project... but at least my TT FIRES UP!