Slowly, but Scheherazade

    
    

Well, it won't be quite one thousand and one adventurous nights, but I'm learning from her nonetheless. I picked up the wheels a week ago and really felt that tectonic shift from a thousand pieces of metal to a realistic view of an overhauled vintage motorcycle. I had the wheels and hubs that I shined up threaded and trued and the tubes and tires popped on and balanced at the premier spot in Azusa, CA, called Buchanan Wheel and Spoke. Amazing place - all they do is make wheels and spokes - I was taken on a tour tour by one of the elders and witnessed spokes being made on cylindrical presses from the turn of the Century...yes the other Century! Very cool insight. Wheel truing is an art form. Mine are now shiny and beautiful...and on my bike! The photos show the wheels flanking the frame, and then on the bike. The engine block is up on the bench. I've sent the the barrels, heads and reed cages, along with new .25 first over-bore pistons and rings, off to a two stroke specialist in Tennessee. This guy is passionate about these bikes. He is going to do a glass bead pressure cleaning of the parts and then carefully bore and fine tune these parts. The compression will be considerably higher and therefore the bike will offer much higher performance. These other shot is of a pair of old Yamaha shocks that I disassembled and cleaned up. They are now on the bike and looking sharp.

Like you need another project, Brett...

    

Those are the words, verbatim, voiced by many of my friends upon learning that I'd bought a '70's street bike and had decided to completely rebuild it. It's true, with my loft only half done and a number of musical endeavours crossing my path it's seems a bit overwhelming to take on such a project, but truth be told, I'm loving every obsessive minute of it! And the unfinished half of my space is the best bike repair shop in the world!

Seemingly from out of nowhere, I've become fascinated with 70's Japanese street bikes. I first had a Honda CB750 Four in mind (which I'd still like to have at some point), but then after meeting people who had different smaller bikes was introduced to the Yamaha RD series. After looking up all things RD on Craigslist, a day later I found this RD200 2-stroke bike that ran, but needed some love. It was an impulse buy and after having some major issues during my first ride on it, I thought I'd really made a mistake. But with some encouragement from local bike shop personnel, I had it towed to the loft. One thing led to another and by the end of the week it was in pieces!

The shots above are of the bike the day I bought it and about three weeks later completely disassembled, with the frame and peripheral parts de-greased and repainted, wheels unthreaded waiting for new chrome spokes, and all chrome and cast aluminum parts rigorously cleaned and polished. Whew! that's a run-on sentence...and that's kind of what the process has resembled to this point; one continuous line of research, reading and hard work.