Goal Number 1 met

My goal for the first summer (2010) was to get the engine running reliably. When I bought the bike, it "ran" but if you tried to ride it, it was a handful. It would cough, sputter, die right off idle, then the RPM's would surge once past half throttle... Needless to say, there were multiple things going wrong. So, I stripped off most of the "unbolt-ables" and was left with this.

I worked on the bike in this condition until the engine was behaving. I actually like the bike MORE stripped down like this than how it comes stock. The stock bike looks like every other early '80s motorcycle. Tall, top-heavy, and ugly. It could be anything... Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Honda, etc. They were all the same back then (to me).

I remember the day that everything clicked. I had cleaned the carb about a hundred times, rejetted it due to my little pod filter (instead of an airbox) re-built the top end, new gaskets, cleaned years of carbon and crud out of the exhaust port, and replaced every little rubber o-ring and seal.

Kick #1... nuthin.
Kick #2... sputter, sputter, rummmmmmmmble... POP!
Kick #3... VRROOOOM!  putter putter putter putter...   like a kitten.

Success! So what do I do? Quick grab the seat while it's idling (perfectly, mind you) bolt it one, and point it towards the street. Here we go!

I probably only rode around for a couple minutes, but it felt so GOOD! I shut it off, went inside to tell Debbie (my wife) then went back outside to see if it would do it again.

It did, and it's been a 1-2 kick bike ever since.

 So now, the engine sits on my work bench and it's starting to get a bath. Years of chain lube, leaky gaskets and dripping gas has discolored the clear coat on the engine cases. I plan on taking it down to bare aluminum and leaving it. I just want it to be silver... not dirty brown.

The stripped-down bike is no more. I have the 2 pieces I needed to build my project bike... and that was the engine, and the head tube of the frame. See, the head tube has the serial number stamped into it. That tube, along with the bikes title is worth it's weight in gold. Now I can begin bending and welding steel to the head tube to fabricate the rest of the frame.

Blurry pic of where the head tube used to be...

The start of the new frame

Goal #1 = met.