Thursday, January 23, 2014

Honda XR/XL600 Streettracker redux

Wow. It's been a long time since I've written anything, if this blog can be considered writing. I guess I've gotten a little sidetracked by facebook. I also haven't raced much, the last race was a disaster that I chose not to put in the blog. Still paying E.R. fees on that one.
Ice season is upon us here in the Northeast, but with the ice last week came a Polar Vortex, and seemingly now the son of Polar Vortex is upon us... it was -18 degrees when I woke up this morning! I'm not going to put gear on and race around in a motorcycle induced wind chill of -50.

But on to different things, as hinted by the title. I recently repurchased the '86 Honda XL600 from Seamus's dad. I had sold it to him a few years ago, he wanted something to ride on the ice, and I needed some cash to fund the up coming racing season, plus I had decided it was time to let a few bikes go. In the end, he never did get the bike on the ice, but he did spend some time taking it apart and then letting it sit in his garage. It was a little worse for the experience from when I last saw it, but I was able to determine that it was still complete, so I bought it back.

I have a few concerns, the fuel tank hadn't been drained, so there was some nasty old gas in the tank and carbs. I can clean the carbs, and I'm hoping that the fiberglass tank doesn't leak. Beyond that, I just hope the rings haven't siezed and I still have decent compression. I think I'll need to freshen it up a bit, new chain, tires, some paint etc.


The idea behind buying it back was to get it back into shape as a streettracker, with the 19" wheels, lights and license plate back on, bring it down to Brooklyn and see if Scott can get somebody to pay lot's of money to own it.
Here's what it looked like last time it was on the ice, I'm guessing about 7-8 years ago...