Post by raff35 on Apr 17, 2008 9:59:57 GMT -5
Thought i'd say hi, for some reason the god of sr's seems to be smiling upon me. I've spent the last 20 or so years collecting, tuning and restoring restoring vespas and lambrettas. Ive been thinking about getting hold of something I could turn into a decent cafe racer for quite a while. Last week I was over at a mates place, he'sbeen fixing up a stock sr for ages, he's got a couple of ducs so hes decided to sell the sr on. When I asked him how much he'd want for it he has agreed to give it to me for what I have discovered to be a bargain, plus he's said I can pay it off (gotta love good mates)
Aside from that, I was over at another mates place that i'd met at trade school. I was helping him put some dodgy autocad software on his computer, he's got a pretty trick cr250 in his shed, plus a little xr75 (i think its an xr, could be wrong, little early 70's four stroke traily) I mentioned to him that I was buying an sr, he didnt know what an sr was, I said it's a street version of an xt500. Next thing out of his mouth?? "Oh an xt500?? Ive got one of themout the side of the house, it's been here since the early 90's" So we adjourn to the side of the house to find a pretty rough xt. Of course I said that if he ever wanted to get rid of it........
Well $100 later, I am now the owner of a pretty solid and complete xt500.
I was thinking of turning it into a cafe, but im starting to like the idea of restoring it to original, Ive always had a soft spot for duc and triumph scramblers so I reckon a nice stock xt would be very nice thank you.
It's got an open road larger capacity tank, and some yz plastic fore and aft but apart from that and a missing chain cover it all seems to be there. The compression aint crash hot but he said that the bottom end should still be sweet. So hopefully a new set of rings and a hone and she'll be up and running again.
Im a welder by trade so I was thinking of maybe extending the swing arm to fit a larger rear wheel (if I do change my mind and go for a cafe style conversion)
There is a cb350 ive seen on a cafe racer forum in the states which ive been in love with as long as I can remember and I wanna turn one of these beasts into something similar.
Here's a link
scooterbbs.com/bbs/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=15&topic_id=6376&mesg_id=6376&page=2
heres a couple of crap pics of the xt
flickr.com/photos/25412003@N04/2421291402/
flickr.com/photos/25412003@N04/2421292462/
Anyway, I hops to get as much help, encouragement, knowledge and general support as up until now I havent touched anything with two wheels that had wheels larger than 10 inches and that wasn't two stroke.
Cheers fellas
Raff
