Sunday, March 11, 2012

Bridgestone 350 GTR Buyers Remorse

So, I guess I didn't have enough projects while having too much money and time, so I went and bought a cool old classic motorcycle. The only problem is, it's a total piece of crap. I am not optimistic this thing will ever run down the road again. The really interesting part of this adventure is trying to figure out WTF happened to this machine for it to end up in this condition.
The guy I bought it from was cool, and he has a little motorcycle museum, I will make a separate post about that.


But whoever the owner before was... there is quite a mystery going on.



2300 miles, this bike should be just like new, right?





So why does it have this big crease in the front fender? It looks like it was bent over double, but the fender stays are perfect.


 Once we got it home, I told Randy that
I wanted to spray all the bolts with PB Blaster and let it sit for a while before even trying to remove any fasteners. But... we both started trying to figure out why things were already loose or missing, and the next thing you know:










Now, in our defense, it turned out that the damned cylinder head was not even bolted on, the nuts were all finger tight. There is just a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense, and we couldn't help ourselves.
The front brake connector bar is broken, how can that happen?
All of the parts for the rear brake are gone, the pedal, the cable, the torque rod, and the wheel is installed upside down. WTF?

1 comment:

  1. Looks like a huge undertaking! What happened to this beast? I am working on a 175 Dual Twin that had a cracked top yoke! How does that happen?

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