R
rustydusty
Guest
About 5 years ago I purchased Mike the Bike (named in honor of my Brother in law who turned me on to this style of bikes) for $200. It wasn't running, and there was a lot of cleaning to be done. Luckily I found this forum right as I started and you guys helped to guide me through the first phase. During phase 1 I basically restored the bike. Cleaned everything by taking it completely apart, cleaned the carbs 3 or 4 times and rebuilt them, new tires, cleaned and polished up the chrome, painted bad areas on the frame, replace all of the engine and head gaskets, Dyna coils, plug wires, electronic ignition, Electrotec stator, rectifyer, reducer, new rear shocks, and more. Mike was looking really good, but it always took me an entire battery charge to get him started. I kept tearing the carbs off and cleaning them until one day I found that the choke piston on the far throttle side carb wouldn't lift all the way up when I pulled the choke lever up. Once I realized that I would lift it manually and Mike would start much more quickly. Eureka! There were other carb issues though, like not much power in the middle (it wouldn't be until just recently that I realized how to adjust that part of the range). My wife and I moved to Wisconsin, I took a job with a 1 hour commute on big interstates, and Mike got parked in an alley with a tarp over him (we had no other parking options). For 2 years Mike sat and was brutalized by Wisconsin weather. My heart was breaking. Then I started to get the bug when things changed and I took a job 1 block from our apartment. I asked a friend of mine who owns a custom vehicle painting shop (a really legit one) what it would cost to paint the bike. He gave me some figures that were difficult to swallow. We agreed that rattle cans would be best given my budget. Then something happened...he called me to say that he just purchased a 79 GS750 for $400, and that he wanted to work on them together! That was the fire under my tail that I needed. We took our bikes to his shop and started to take them apart. We both love cafe style bikes, so we set off modifying them. After loads of soda blasting, sand blasting, scrubbing, a little welding, and cutting, my bike was ready for the paint booth. I used a combination of flat and gloss black to make a blacked out version of the former Mike.More to come...
