Made some progress. Getting into this house took all we had but Im glad we took the plunge. I had hoped to come away from the sale of the old place with some money in the bank but it did not work out that way. No matter, Ive been a week to week guy all my life anyway, nothing new there. And of course, I had a slow month at work right after moving in...If Im busy, I do ok with the overtime...on a good week I will do 60 plus hours, but any time Im down to 40 hours for more than a few weeks at a time, things get tight!
Point is, I am putting the shop together little by little, and with some creativity, again, been doing thigns like this all my life. I found a new base cabinet at a salvation army thrift store for $20....that made the base for my work bench. $30 piece of wood from home depot, etc... Its coming together nicely. We had to remove a section of kitchen cabinets because the fridge we bought was too tall, and I put those up on the wall in the shop...put my MX trophies on top. I installed my old Kenwood system (from Goodwill) on a shelf next to the bench.
I got a belt sander from goodwill about a year ago and Ive got that fixed up. An old metal file cabinet thing with some drawers and shelfs, etc. About 12 years ago, my oldest son bought me a bench vice from a yard sale for Fathers day..he was 15 at the time, and only paid $10 for it and it is a big Mac tools unit that looked brand new. I had used it over the years, sitting it on the ground, but it is so nice to have a place to bolt it onto. Ill be hawking craigslist for a bench grinder, table saw, drill press, that sort of thing.
Ive been messing around with my XT500 which is a carcass at this point...trying to put a front end together for it with parts I have on hand...at this point, I just want to make a nasty old trail bike with it.
We have a little Baja mini bike, one of those retro style pull start units. It has not run in 3 years. I put some gas in it, some air in the tires, oiled the chain up and it fired up with about 5 pulls. I wish every bike was like that! I hadnt even drained the carb or anything.
I have the S2 in the shop now, but so far I have not started taking it down. I know if I do it will be down for a good while...with about 2 hours worth of work I could ride it again, but theres so many little issues that would still be there. Again, there will be no expensive work done or exotic parts, just a real elbow grease rebuild, and hopefully I can spring for a professional paint job at least when its done.
All the other bikes need some attention as well....its sort of overwhelming really. I bought a Maico frame last year and I am actually going to try and cram a bighorn engine into it....oh so many projects!!!!
_________________ 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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