I was given this bike a few months ago by a mate of mine. I was sat in his shed for quite a while, it had a cracked front rim which he had started to repair and then gave up. In other words he pulled the front wheel and all the plastics off then walked away. These photos are from when I got it home. I have since re-laced the front hub to a secondhand rim from an XR650 and cleaned the carb.
I got it running today and found the exhaust is cracked off where the pipe goes into the muffler. A couple of quick revs and all the neighbours knew it was cracked as well
. I still have to replace the front master as the lever mount is cracked off.
Once it was running I took it for a lap of my bottom paddock, talk about torque. At the bottom of my block there is a hill about 10' high and it is better than a 45 degrees up, I took it over it and barely needed any throttle. It just climbed it without even trying. The other thing that surprised me is it has a rather high redline for such a large thumper, and it reaches it easily.
I originally got it to fix it and sell it, but now I'm not so sure. It was fun being back on a dirt bike again. One thing is for certain if I do decide to keep it I will need to build the muscles in my right leg a bit. It is an '89 model and is kick only. Even with the decompression it is a #$%* to kick over. Thankfully though after its carb clean this morning it starts easily.
