Moving on…

Wow.  2012.  The last post I made on this blog was way back then.

Very little has happened with the Dream since then.  I’ll confess, getting the head apart stymied me long enough that I just sort of stopped working on it.  My wife rolled the chassis to the back of the garage, and pushed the engine (on its dolly) back beside it, and the boxes of parts are all with it, so if I ever get back to it, it’s all together.  I just feel out of my depth, mechanically speaking.

But a funny thing happened a few weeks ago.  My daughter found this 1980 Honda CB650 for sale on a local swap shop page for $800.00… a bargain, for a running bike.

Here’s the other side, with my TW in the background:

Note the mileage:

These pictures are all as-we-found-it, incidentally.

The story has it that the original owner bought it new around 1980. The bike had inspection stickers in two places: high up on the left fork tube, hidden by the fairing, and on the lower left fork slider (as you may notice in the first pic). The lower inspection stickers are 1991, so I’m assuming that’s the last year the first owner licensed it.

The original owner, I’m told, bought the bike for himself and his wife, and garaged it after she passed away. The fellow we bought it from acquired it a year or so ago, intending to ride it himself, but he lives on a gravel road; he scared himself rather badly, it seems, but it appears he did not actually drop the bike. The only damage is the broken right front turn signal, and the fairing has a ding and a crack that are consistent (in my opinion) with a garage fall… which the guy we bought it from said happened in a high wind.

As I say, he scared himself, and so decided to sell it. His choice of amount is what he needs to buy a shotgun, he said.

I took a test ride, and yeah, it’s not much fun on gravel. It runs a bit puny at low RPM but revs pretty nicely; I’m suspicious of some gunk in the carbs, and hoping some fuel treatment I added (along with fresh gas) will help.  I don’t relish pulling all four carbs and cleaning them.

The modifications were our main issues right now, though. There was a back rest on the bike when the last guy bought it, and he removed it; the bolts for the back rest are longer than the original grab bar bolts, so he did this:

I know hex heads were standard, but I replaced them with Phillips heads instead so they don’t snag on my passenger’s clothing.  I would have liked to use Allen heads instead, but had difficulty sourcing the correct type in a bright finish (black was easy, but would have looked strange).

Then there were the engine guards, which were pure evil. Just try to shift:

And then, I suppose you’d like to stop?