old house find

[Fire-medic]

Got a home slated for demo in the neighborhood, the house is supposed to be 85 yrs. old. Look what I found for hauling it away! I have another 1 yr. older 250 & a 360 Enduro I bought new & still have.

This one has spark & the gas tank is clean as a whistle inside! Everything needs refurbishment, but the engine turns over & seems to have compression, havent gauged it yet. Even the Autolube is still in-place! All the cables need replacement, but the clutch cable still works & has a trick second-class lever to do-away w/the front sprocket cover, the lever is the clutch actuator and provides cover for the sprocket. I had to disassemble the front brake drum & remove the shoes just to roll it out of its hiding place. The headlight, taillight, and speedo/tach were in a box next to it. I don't recall seeing this buzzing the neighborhood.

The hermit who lived in the house isn't there anymore, and the city is demolishing the decrepit dwelling this month.

 

[06VMAXIMUS]

Quite a find! Looks a little rough, but anything can be brought to life with some determination and elbow grease.

 

[KJShover]

Bikes that are old but all together need to be restored. Don't think of it as just another ride, but a piece of history.
Get this puppy restored and your throwing a leg over a time machine.

 

[Fire-medic]

Went to the bike shop & looked for some n.o.s. cables. I don't want to try to start it w/o having the brakes fully-functional. My friend the shop owner brags of having "the world's largest stock of Honda 350 capacitors." Watch out you young whippersnappers, because when you started hanging around the local garage, one of the rites of passage was being told, "here, catch!," and one of the mechanics would throw you a fully-charged capacitor.

I need all new cables, gas, front brake, clutch. I need new brake shoes F & R. I think I found a clutch and front brake cable which are not exact-fit, but can be modded to fit. I've soldered ends onto cables to shorten them before. I think I may go to the bicycle shop as they have cable casing in bulk & the ferrules in a gauge which can be used for the throttle, but I am probably gonna have to convince my friend to dig-out his old cable-making supplies. He has the bulk cable casing & different gauge wires, but he hasn't had to do any of that in awhile, so he's gonna have to get it out from wherever it is, and do it for me as a favor. I spent about an hr. going thru a 2' x 2' x1' box filled w/cryptic numbers and 40 yr. old cardboard labels, some in bags, some not. That is where I got the cables I will need to mod to fit, I can do that in the meantime while I am waiting on him to get out his cable-fabrication supplies, & fire up the crucible of lead solder. It was definitely a trip in the Wayback Machine, as Mr. Peabody & Sherman used to do, to look at the defunct companies on the labels. "FL Cycle Supply, The Outrider, Arnley/Beck, and others.

If anyone has leads on old dirt bike stuff besides eBay, please PM me, thanks. I saw Speed & Sport in PA, they have some n.o.s. Yamaha stuff, but what they currently have is nothing of what I need.

 

[06VMAXIMUS]

Watch out for the crank seals. If they are old and dry rotted, they will leak air. And everyone knows that too much air in a 2 stroke equals kaboom!

 

[DakRatFink]

Nice barn find. I say restore it. Looks like a fun project.

 

[The Beekeeper]

Document your progress with pics so we can follow along!............My brother had one in the early 80s, we pounded on that thing for a few years, tough little bike!

 

[dannymax]

"Rusty Gold"!! That baby needs to be restored, like KJ said, she's a peice of history. As rough as it looks, it can be done....to quote Mike from American Pickers...."Guys are building bikes from an oil stain these days!"

Check the web for a forum on that bike, I'm sure there is one....could be a lot of your searching has already been done for you. Great find!

 

[Fire-medic]

Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, a tentative web search has shown me some helpful info & I will continue. Also, the reminder about the crankshaft seals is well-taken, that is something I know I can still get & I was going to replace them before I tried to start it. I am not going to trust what are probably the original seals.

I think this is an excellent opportunity to purchase a gravity-feed sandblaster! I have a 220V 60 gal. tank air compressor, and it will be fun to see the parts come-clean. I admired Kyle's bead blaster cabinet I saw in his garage pics. I don't have room for one, but someday...

 

[KJShover]

I admired Kyle's bead blaster cabinet I saw in his garage pics. I don't have room for one, but someday...

I had one of these: http://www.eastwood.com/top-and-side-door-opening-blast-cabinet-24x36x24.html

It has a nice and small footprint, and easy to load. I miss mine, I ended up giving it away cause (insert irony here) there wasn't enough room for it to fit when I moved back to Fairbanks.

I'd like to have another one, one of these years.

 

[COP RUNNER]

i YEA' YA' GOTTA DO IT , " BRING IT BACK FROM THE DEAD " ! .. YOU WON'T REGRET IT ! .. unk:

 

[Thevmaxrider]

WOW!!! Talk about bringing back memories!!! Used to ride one of those around when I was much younger!! Neighbor had one and would let me putt around the fields around our houses. Man am I getting old LOL!! It must be brought back to life!!!

 

[dannymax]

Here are a couple possibilities Fire-Medic

http://www.yamahaenduro.com/

http://www.yamahaenduro.com/forumdisplay.php?f=110

 

[Fire-medic]

"Dannymax," thanks for the website. It looks like a lot of content of people like me who intend to spend $$ on their youthful rides to recapture some of the good times they had. I don't care if I never go to a quarry and scream up the excavation sides, and then jump off the top and fly down the side airborne until the side slope rises to meet me and deposits me back on the sandpit floor. The point is, I could if I wanted to, once it's done. I even have a pair of Koni shocks I put onto my bike all-those many years ago & still have both the bike and the shocks.

SInce it's small & light, it doesn't take up much room and I can just remove the handlebars & hoist it out of the way on a pair of blocks & tackle left over from my Sol-Cat catamaran. A couple of jam cleats and easy access!

Right now I just got back from getting a set of points, a couple plugs, some gas line, & a magneto puller. Still haven't found a capacitor, but I bet going thru the recommended website will get me to one really quick! Thanks for the encouragement.

I'm thinking of filling the crankcase & cyl w/ATF for a week & letting it sit, to lube everything really-good, plus, that stuff is a great solvent. Maybe fill the gearbox too, while I'm at it.

I probably will fab a block-off plate for the oil injector & plug the tapped hole in the cyl base & use pre-mix, when I try to start it. I am not in any hurry to try to start it because as has been observed by readers, a too-lean condition could seize the engine from sitting for so-many years. The last time it ran? ????

 

[kaboom]

Watch out for the crank seals. If they are old and dry rotted, they will leak air. And everyone knows that too much air in a 2 stroke equals kaboom!

HEY!!!!!!:damn angry:









:biglaugh:

 

[RaWarrior]

Neat to get for free, but it sure does look to be in rough shape. I'm all for saving stuff like this, but if I was you I'd stop, take a look over it, and make a list of everything that it needs. Which sounds like is quite a lot. Then estimate how much all that stuff will cost. Now double that number, and that's probably how much it will actually cost.

Is it worth several thousand for an old 250 dirt bike? Even in mint shape, it's really not worth a ton. Unless it's for sentimental value over monetary value, then I guess cost really doesn't matter.

 

[Fire-medic]

Neat to get for free, but it sure does look to be in rough shape. I'm all for saving stuff like this, but if I was you I'd stop, take a look over it, and make a list of everything that it needs. Which sounds like is quite a lot. Then estimate how much all that stuff will cost. Now double that number, and that's probably how much it will actually cost.

Is it worth several thousand for an old 250 dirt bike? Even in mint shape, it's really not worth a ton. Unless it's for sentimental value over monetary value, then I guess cost really doesn't matter.

You are absolutely right to dispassionately construct a shopping list of required parts and to calculate the end cost. Is it worth it? Maybe if it was a snow sled named, "Rosebud."

The saving grace for me is that I have collected two other bikes which are essentially the same bike, another 250 and a 360, all Enduros. So, I have a good stock of parts. I probably could get all three running, eventually, but I realy don't need 3 Enduros. I could get one presentable for sale & use the proceeds to offset the restoration costs of one good one, and have the third as a source of increasingly-scarce parts. If I was smart, I would spring for one of those 2K mi. examples that show up on eBay Motors sometimes for ~$1K & sell the bikes I now have, "as-is" after I got them running.

Here's where your noted "Sentimentality Factor" comes into-play. The only new bike I have ever owned is the '72 360 Enduro I've had for the last 40 years. I bought it, not my parents. I went into M & M Cycle in SW MI with a friend, and we both bought identical 360 Enduros. I used it for a couple of years as a street bike to get back & forth to work, and weekends, I stripped-off the lights and raced it in MI at places like Buchanan and various places around Grand Rapids in hare scrambles and enduros (Mt. Garfield, one of the oldest AMA events as a hillclimb, ask Beekeeper) and at Amelia Earhardt Park in Miami FL (Fred Noonan and Amelia Earhardt left Ft. Lauderdale/Miami as the last USA stop on their ill-fated round-the-world trip) where at the same time I was an AMA amateur, Pierre Karsmakers and Tim Hart were racing twin-shock Yamaha YZ's to 1-2 finishes in the Yamaha Silver Cup, a winter AMA pro series. The next year, they came back on monoshock Yamahas which allegedly had to be ballasted because they weighed less than the minimum class weight thanks to titanium components putting their rides considerably below 200 lbs.

So, yeah, there's a certain amount of sentimentality in the 360, at least. The end of the first racing season, when the bike was 6 months old, I had heliarced-in a lowering kit which dropped the engine cradle 2" and put the swingarm parallel to the ground, so the countershaft sprocket, the swingarm pivot, and the rear axle were all in a straight line, which in the days of 4 inches of rear-axle travel, was supposed to be the 'hot ticket' to better handling. I had to go to pre-mix, because the stock oil tank no-longer fit. Thirty-nine years later, it's still that way. And I have the original oil tank and the gas tank sitting on a shelf, since I installed an aftermarked plastic tank for more capacity for the enduros.

I think I will mix & match the best parts to make one, get another running & possibly sell it, and keep the third for spares. I know of an electrician in the FL Keys who has one in his possession, maybe he wants one for spares, too.

 

[dannymax]

"Dannymax," thanks for the website. It looks like a lot of content of people like me who intend to spend $$ on their youthful rides to recapture some of the good times they had. I don't care if I never go to a quarry and scream up the excavation sides, and then jump off the top and fly down the side airborne until the side slope rises to meet me and deposits me back on the sandpit floor. The point is, I could if I wanted to, once it's done. I even have a pair of Koni shocks I put onto my bike all-those many years ago & still have both the bike and the shocks.

SInce it's small & light, it doesn't take up much room and I can just remove the handlebars & hoist it out of the way on a pair of blocks & tackle left over from my Sol-Cat catamaran. A couple of jam cleats and easy access!

Right now I just got back from getting a set of points, a couple plugs, some gas line, & a magneto puller. Still haven't found a capacitor, but I bet going thru the recommended website will get me to one really quick! Thanks for the encouragement.

I'm thinking of filling the crankcase & cyl w/ATF for a week & letting it sit, to lube everything really-good, plus, that stuff is a great solvent. Maybe fill the gearbox too, while I'm at it.

I probably will fab a block-off plate for the oil injector & plug the tapped hole in the cyl base & use pre-mix, when I try to start it. I am not in any hurry to try to start it because as has been observed by readers, a too-lean condition could seize the engine from sitting for so-many years. The last time it ran? ????

Now THERE'S something you don't hear much anymore!! :rofl_200::rofl_200::rofl_200:

 

[Thevmaxrider]

Now THERE'S something you don't hear much anymore!! :rofl_200::rofl_200::rofl_200:

No kidding!! Ask a kid if they know how to gap a set of points and they think it is some kind of betting terminology concerning basketball or something.:rofl_200::rofl_200:

 

[Fire-medic]

No kidding!! Ask a kid if they know how to gap a set of points and they think it is some kind of betting terminology concerning basketball or something.:rofl_200::rofl_200:

Didn't that used to be called 'points shaving?' "The fix is in, bet the Celtics! (or whoever, insert the team of your disparaging choice here, and no I am not against the Celtics)" That is one of the funniest posts I have seen here!

I spent some time last night soaking all bolts I could see w/PB Blaster & then used my 40 yr. old 1/2" impact driver to loosen all the front-end nuts & bolts, thankfully, none "wrung-off." After they were loosened, more PB Blaster to lube the threads, & barely torqued them down. I'm half of a mind to spend a couple of hrs stripping the frame, swingarm, & triple trees & dropping it off at my local powdercoaters. Shoot a coat of no-gloss black heat paint onto the motor, bead-blast the cyl & head, re-assemble everything, but it needs an appointment w/Forking by Frank, which is probably a bit < $300 shipped. I may look for a replacement dirt bike front end, but they will all have disc brakes. Not in-keeping w/the era of its use! I did find this, however, and I think it might make for an interesting ride:

http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/mcy/2527731781.html

Late addition: Since I was taking the initiative to post about my heap-o'-Enduros, I decided I should inventory what I have, exactly, or as-close as I can figure. I thought I had two 250's and my bought-new 360. Turns out I have two 360's, one reed-valve and one w/o, and a 250, all Yamaha Enduros. The non-reed-valve 360's came in unique color schemes, I cn't recall which is which, I think the 1970's were pinstriped yellow on the oil tank for the Autolube, and the 1971's were red-pinstriped. Mine is red-pinstripe. Also, the 250's didn't come w/a compression release to ease starting and kickback, the 360's did. So as I see it, I have a '71 360, a '72 360, and a '73 250.