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.