Picked this up on Craigslist, site unseen last weekend.. Felt like a bit of an adventure so it went down like this
-Bike has been sitting for over 5 years. Was told it ran.
-Buddy from CT rode his KTM 1190 adventure to north northern Michigan and met up with me after I flew to Detroit from Portland, OR and took a rental car north.
-Bike was in rough shape with lots of spiders and cobwebs, but did start up. Only running on two cylinders. Still ran great.
-Put air in the tires next morning, and rode it an hour south to the hotel room.
-Started to install my spare fairing and luggage racks I made up for my other 81 GPz550 D1.
-Left later that day running on three cylinders
-Got to a hotel way in the upper peninsula and rebuilt carbs in my hotel bathroom.
-Bike ran like a champ on 4 cylinders! Wahoo!
-Rode like a bastard to someplace in North Dakota and managed to find a proper rear tire in stock. Not much of any tread on existing tire and didnt want to chance any rain.
-Flew thru Montana, slept thru Washington and dipped home to Portland. We wanted to do more of a trip, but time got to us. And I really really screwed up and didnt even think about the fact that you only really get 125 miles out of one tank of fuel before you should stop. I did squeeze 166 miles out of a tank by necessity. Lots of drafting and praying.
So now I have two bikes. This one has some fantastic original pieces that my other one doesnt have so it will be good to go over them both and get them both up to as close to factory as possible spec.
Heres some pics. Including my doskcil cases which worked perfectly. I didnt even have them bolted to my frame. The aluminum u channel just slid over my unistrut and that was good enough. The strap you see going from the handles over the seat was there for added assurance, but it had no tension on it, and wasnt needed. Cant wait to make version two of my brackets and frame work!
3,000 miles on a craigslist bike purchase from an unknown seller on a bike that hasnt run in 5 years. My kinda week off work!
Iron bottoms.. Michigan to Portland in 4 days