Ive had my old S2 for about 20 years now. I had it on the road for about 8 of those years, always keeping it alive but just barely. I kept it on the porch because I had no garage or anything, (it was a rowhouse) and so the elements would take their toll against whatever low budget steps I could take to keep up on it. It was already in a slow decline when my house caught fire last year. After that I packed it away in a storage locker with all of my other bikes, as we went to live in a townhouse while the old house was being rebuilt. I feel like my life has been on hold the last year, since I have not been able to really work on anything---not for fun anyway. It used to be hard enough before the fire to work on anything --the front porch was the only place to do it, so the weather mattered, and the neighborhood was bad---I never dared keep my dirt bikes there for very long...sometimes I would bring them in a day or two before a race to work on them but I never failed to wind up turning wrenches frantically at the track.
Well, after the old house was finished, we decided to sell it. It was never going to be as nice again, so this was our chance to make it out of there. It's been a long grind, but we settle on a new place in about a week. My new place HAD a two car garage that had been converted into "living space". Gee thanks previous owner. One of the slots has been turned into a little "suite"--could be a bedroom and a little sitting area. One of my adult sons has laid claim to that, but he will pay board for it. The other slot was deemed a "game room"....tile floor, but open space. My better half has conceded that this will be my shop. The big bay doors are long gone, but I can get my bikes in there. Going to put a work bench in, etc. Climate controlled no less! A far cry from hiding under a tarp on the front porch. I am beyond excited---I think I will take the old S2 down to it's bones and take it back up. Low budget as always--no powder coated this and that--but she deserves to be put right! Hell I might even spring for some professional paint work at some point. Of course it will have to contend with all the rest of my fleet of junk. What I am looking forward to most is this: If it is 11:30 at night, and I cant sleep, I can walk in and tool around for 20 minutes. As I find little slots of time in the day, 30 minutes here, an hour there---then I can go in and work on something. Before the fire, it took a longer comittment....unlock my bikes, move them around on the porch until I could get to the one I wanted....or go to storage, get one out, bring it over, work on it, put it away..the way my attention span and my spare time go, that meant most of the time I just did not feel like putting the effort in. The one trade off is the commute I will now have (about an hour with no traffic, more with rush hour)---I just could not find anything in my immediate area within my price range. On the plus side, I will be in a 10 mile radius of almost my whole family.
Ive missed nearly the whole vintage MX season this year, looking forward to a busy winter!
_________________ 1972 S2 350, 1972 F9 350 Bighorn, 1975 KX400, 1981 YZ465, 1980 XT500 (Built for MX) , 1987 KD80, 1995 MZ Skorpion, TTR 125, 1994 KDX200 , 1978 Mobylette, 1985 KX350R-F91m (Frankenstein) and a Doodle Bug
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