Hi All:
After skulking around here and cherrypicking great info from the braintrust I stopped and thought, "I wonder if this is what Al Gore had in mind when he invented the internet?"
;-)
Seriously - a great wealth of info and (from what I can tell so far) a huge number of good people here.
I started this project because a friend of mine had taken this bike in on trade at his shop, thought about using it as a ratbike/shop bike, but then decided it was too slow for him. So when I told him I wanted to do a resto-project (it had been a while since I've done a big project) and probably make a cafe racer, he pointed me to the snotter in the corner and the related boxes o' parts. It was pretty nasty and generally had the appearance that it must have spent most of the past 30 years (last registered in 81) at the bottom of a septic tank. We made a deal and off I went.
I spent a week cleaning it. Layers and layers of scum and hours of scrubbing... ugh.
Then the disassembly, the reorganization of stuff, the hours of online parts perusing and sourcing, ... those of you who've done it know what an amazing time-sucker these things can be.
And it has been a rewarding/fulfilling blast thus far.
I'm getting close now... I basically just decided today that I'm gonna leave the motor alone (it had 19k miles on it and while not perfect, has pretty good/even compression etc).
More in the other section as I go.
