How it started...

I found it the same as I did with the Yamahas- randomly searching for legendary deals.

It’s a hobby and past time. I search forums and craigslist for people offloading cheap projects. I have this mind set that anything is fixable. Maybe not so much a mind set, but theory…anything mechanical is fixable.

Yet to find that false…though some things are far more challenging than others. But the challenge is the fun.

So I was perusing Two wheeled Texans (twtex.com) and saw a thread where someone was offloading a bike (the model of which I’d never heard of) they said the crank bearing was bad, it had a title, ran, etc, etc.

A decent deal was struck. It was all there, it had a title, and most important, it was close by. So pickup was arranged and work began.

It lived a long 12 years as mostly an off-road bike. No mirrors, no blinkers, no speedo, no tach. A key switch and a petcock. My vision for it is a bare minimum dual sport, with the primary sport being dirt. The secondary barley qualifying sport- on road travel.

Not even an hour after loading it in to the truck the knobby tires hit the grass and I fired it up and drove it maybe1/10th of a mile. It rode well, but it did have a hearty knock. A sound that is akin to the sound of a bad rod bearing in a car (motorcycle rod bearings are different in construction) so I took that to be the diagnosis.

And there on the front lawn I started taking the machine apart. The engine was ripped out and taken to Houston. The frame and other parts left in Central Texas.