Just a bit more history before I get too much further. The license plate on the bike was 1979. The seller told me that it had been sitting and then an attempt was made to get it running again in 1986. They never succeeded because they couldn’t get the carbs right. So, I was told, it sat in a barn (don’t they all) until he obtained it. (If it was in a barn it was a leaky barn.)
Anyway, one of the first things I discovered was it had the 19 liter tank and in pretty good shape at that. The badge recesses had been filled in and unfortunately the cap and short-neck petcock were missing.
By the way, does anyone have a short neck petcock they could sell me? This is a high priority for me because it is one of those really visible things.
Note the lack of dimples in the area where the carbs tops are.
I could tell from the bottom of the tank that it was originally candy red and after some debate I decided to keep it the color it was born which happened to be the same color as my later sandcast. It’s already been internally derusted and coated and repainted and looks great. Blake Conway who did my others did this one too.
My K0 was the blue/green so I put that tin on the other sandcast (so I could have one of each color) and I plan on using the red where I need too and borrow parts off the K0 so I can maybe get #97 put together while I hunt for correct parts. Eventually I’ll probably do the K0 in gold (even though the VIN is a little low for that). Can’t even think of that right now.