oh, believe me, the list, it may become long.
Took X to work this morning, sitting down to brekkie of wheetabix 'n xtra creamy coffee. Soon, I'm going to go out 'n play. First the carbs come off, so when I get cold, I'll have something to do inside.
Then stuffing cleaning rags in the carb boots to keep the inside clean (LOL) and spraying the motor w/ a little WD-40, then taking to 'im with a tooth brush and paint brush, getting all the crap out of the seams and blowing a little foot powder on once he's dry to see where he's drooling from. PO said it had good compression, so that makes me wonder if the head gasket is actually ok and it's seeping out the rubber gaskets up top. I wouldn't be surprised, but then those gaskets up top would have to be MUNCHED bad for the sheer volume of oil all over when we checked it out.
Planning on wiping down, cleaning and inspecting the headers/exhaust, too, to see what we're dealing with. The ends of the trumpets are mostly un-rusted and unhol-ey so unless hell really broke loose on the inside with the baffles, I think they're in real good shape; possibly replaced when the bike went down. I hear there's a crack and a hole on the timing cover somewhere. That's... hmm... I'll have to look.
Coils, CDIs, Battery, maybe check the air filter and evict the mice. We KNOW the plug wires and caps are crap, so that's no biggie.
Clutch cable is stiff as hell... may not be really reparable. Dunno if I should bother putting in my
prolink lube in or not. That stuff is great, btw. $9ish at any bicycle shop and a dab'll do ya. (or for crappy cables, put in at the top and pump the cable on the casing 'til it comes out the other end, then wipe muddy looking rust until your arm falls off.) The metal lubricant stays in and the carrier solvent evaporates so your bicycle chain/cables/whatever end up feeling dry and not collecting crap.
I'll take pics all the way thru so you guys can feel like you were there, and so X can imagine doing it without having to hear me cuss all the way through.
Basically making sure we don't have to drop a
large fortune on the bike to get a good running ride out of it.. rather save a small fortune and have a parts bike than blow a large fortune. I suspect our 'limit' is piston/crank/bottom end work, trying to weld anything in the bottom end... etc.
I.e. stuff we can do okay ourselves... though we will likely be ok with replacing the head gasket and seeing if the guys at the shop can help walk us through it so we don't install the cam wrong.
For now, until I have a compression tester on my person, it turns over nice and fast like my bike, has spark, doesn't fire. No crunchy, scary noises in the top or bottom ends while it's turning over. Not even a "Can full of walnuts and tomato juice" sound. Actually sounds a lot like my bike, which I take to be a good sign.
I'm also planning on accosting the tank with some rubbing compound and wax to see if I can't get some of the scrapes et. all out of it. It's a bummer it's so beat-up because it's far less sun-faded than mine was and the original color mine was.
...and Marti, I cry inside every time I see your bike's 'before' pics just because that's what mine could've looked like had my PO not jacked it and the radiator place not f*cked my tank and...
