Well, my story is a little different. I grew up loving motorcycles but hadn't owned anything other than a dirt bike before. As a matter of fact, I haven't ridden a bike since 1984...my senior year in high school.
Fast forward to present day and my 17-year old son youngest son is a senior in high school. All the high schools in Cherokee County, GA require seniors to do a senior project. Ostensibly, it's for the student to do something along the profession they can see them doing and to get some experience in doing that...see if it's for them kind of thing.
Well my son is a gear head and absolutely loves cars, motorcycles and anything else with an engine in it but really hasn't had the opportunity to work on any of them. (I think I may have caused this by the way...I drive a classic 89 Mercedes 560 SL convertible with the old manual top. We get so many compliments when I'm driving it, that he quickly saw the beauty in the old vehicles. That, and watching Top Gear, really got him hooked on cars and motorcycles.)
Anyway, he told me that he thought what he would really like to do is go to college and get a business degree with a specialty in finance/accounting. After getting the degree, he wants to own a business doing restorations of old cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
While we have a nice big house with a 3-car garage, all of those garage bays are full and when my oldest son comes home from college, there is even one car parked outside. So we don't really have the space nor the equipment for restoring a vehicle. But I reasoned we could certainly handle a motorcycle. There's about 1100 square feet of unfinished basement on one side of my basement (the other half is finished) and I figured we could set him up a place to work on the bike.
After searching Craigslist for several days, looking to find a bike, we had just about decided on a 75 750K that was up in Cincy and were trying to work out the logistics of going up that far to get a bike and get it back to Woodstock, GA in the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta. Right before pulling the trigger to call the guy and tell him we wanted to come look at the bike, I did one more search on my iPad app that will let you search multiple Craigslist locations. Loh and behold, a 78 750K bike had come up in Lafayette, GA. We called the young man and arranged to come look at the bike the next day. I explained to him that we wanted it for my son to rebuild as a senior project.
The next morning he called to tell me that someone else was coming to look at the bike at 11 am, so he wasn't sure it would still be there when my son got out of school. I asked him to call and let me know either way but we sure were interested. About 12 o'clock, he called and said, "The guy came but he was trying to really get me to come way down on price and besides, I'd rather see you guys get it because I really want the bike to get restored." So we borrowed a trailer from a friend and hooked it up to my son's Jeep Wrangler and made the 1.5 hour drive to go look at the bike.
The bike would turn over but the tank wasn't attached at the time. It needed a petcock but the tank had already been sealed and was in good shape. The seat was the original seat and was in fantastic shape and the bike was in remarkably good shape with only surface rust on the metal for the most part. The one exception is the mufflers were black and in pretty crappy condition so we'll have to replace those. The headers are in good shape though.
We paid $500 for the bike and I'm convinced it was a very good price as we've gotten it home. So far, we've been sourcing parts that were missing (petcock, air filter box, lock for the gas tank, hinge pins for the seat, front chrome Honda plate and stay that goes across the front bars, etc...primarily cosmetic stuff but some functional pieces as well). Now that we have that done, we went to Home Depot on Wednesday and purchased materials to build him a workbench. We ended up not only building him an 8 foot workbench but also an 8'L X 2'W X 24"H "bike stand". Once he finishes with the disassembly of the bike, we're going to strap the bike down on the bike stand for re-assembly to make it easier to work on.
Started disassembly last night and got some basic stuff done. Removed battery & battery box, solenoid, rear tail light assembly, carburetors, exhaust manifold and mufflers. Drained the oil from reservoir and sump. We had already removed the spark plugs earlier to do a compression test. Tomorrow morning, we plan to remove all of the wiring, tachometer, speedometer, handle bars and wiring harness, front fender and brake, and rear fender and rear brake. Hopefully, we'll get pretty much everything off the bike but the engine and have that ready to remove on Monday when a buddy of mine and his son plan to come over. My buddy is serving as my son's "facilitator/advisor" because the county doesn't allow a family member to do so.
To end the story, we had agreed that we would buy the bike, restore it and then sell the bike....hopefully at a profit. After repaying my investment, any profit would go to him and he could use that for whatever purpose, but hopefully he would enjoy it enough that he would want to buy another bike and restore it as well before he graduates and goes off to college next year. Well once we got the bike purchased and got it home...rolled it into the basement and got it set up in his designated work place area...I told him to sit on the bike and let me take a picture to send to his mom. (She travels a lot for work and was somewhere like New York or Miami at the time). After we took the picture, he just sat there on the bike for about a minute not saying a word while I was putting up stuff and moving things back into place that we had moved when we brought the bike in. I asked him, "What's up?" because he is usually the type to jump in and help when others are doing stuff. He looked at me and said, "Dad, can we keep it? Do we have to sell it? Because I think I already love it." I smiled and said, "We'll see."
I thought about it most of the next day and when he came home from school that afternoon, I told him, "OK, here's the deal. We'll track every penny I spend on the bike just like we had planned. You do the work on the bike with me providing any help you need and ask for, and get the bike in really nice restored condition for your project. Once it's done, we'll check the price of similar bikes on eBay and see what we believe we could sell the bike for. Whatever that profit margin would be, I'll pay you that money. But I'm going to keep the bike for me to have to ride because how cool would it be to have a bike restored by your son, right? Of course, you'll get to learn to ride it and get your motorcycle license and can ride it any time you're home and want to ride it. But I don't want it taken off to college with you to sit outside after you put all this effort into making it look great again." He grinned and came across the room and hugged me and said, "Dad, that's what I wanted all along. I wanted to rebuild this bike and be able to give it to you as a present. This is awesome!"
Best. Money. Spent. Ever.
