1978 Suzuki DR370 Hot Damn! Rust Hellride

irk miller

You've been mostly-dead all day.
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I came back from Mid-O with a 1978 DR370. It's a good running bike with a lot of painted rust, but the bones are all good. It'll need a bunch of work to make it pretty.

Here it is in it's current glory with a PE tank on it for now:

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The bike came with a KE175 or something tank that was also rusted to shit. SP370 and DR370 tanks aren't easy to find, so it'll be quite a challenge to find one. I have a line on some dented tanks, which I intend to buy if the price is right. Through a day of searching, I wasn't finding a comfortable match. Then, after about 20 minutes of his own searching, Kanticoy pulls a horseshoe out of his ass and finds this tank:

s-l1600.jpg


It appears to be a desert tank that may just fit. I was reluctant to drop the cash, but it's yellow and the shape is rad, so I will do what it takes to make it fit. Here's a stock SP tank for reference. The DR was the same, but yellow or silver:

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Here's the bottom of the plastic tank vs the stock SP/DR tank:

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By measurements, I think this may be a tank made just for this frame.

Onwards and upwards...
 
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First things first... The muffler is pretty bad rot, so I cut the inlet off and grafted it onto a vintage Supertrapp.

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Love those alloy rims with the little extra lip on the side, hope you're hanging on to them?
 
Pete12 said:
Love those alloy rims with the little extra lip on the side, hope you're hanging on to them?
For sure. The front rim is in great shape. The rear rim is straight and appears dent free, but seems to have been painted with a silver paint. The spokes are all rust, so when I take the wheels apart to replace them, I'll clean the rims up.
 
Most every bolt, screw and nut is rusted, so there will be lots of this...

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Turned into this...

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Where do you source that hardware around here?

Fastenall that was near me shut down.

I'm sure Lowes or Home Depot probably has it too.

Just thought you might have a preference.
 
I'm in man. So happy you ended up with this over the xt350. That is one heck of a good starting point and already a solid mule. Can't wait to see you put the irk miller touch on it.

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WhyNot said:
Where do you source that hardware around here?

Fastenall that was near me shut down.

I'm sure Lowes or Home Depot probably has it too.

Just thought you might have a preference.

I've got a pretty good ACE hardware in town that has a decent metric selection. HD and Lowes have a terrible selection of metric. McMaster Carr has everything but they're a bit pricey, I find its worth it to go through them if you want packs of 50 or 100.

Knowing Eric he probably makes them from scratch ;)
 
advCo said:
I've got a pretty good ACE hardware in town that has a decent metric selection. HD and Lowes have a terrible selection of metric. McMaster Carr has everything but they're a bit pricey, I find its worth it to go through them if you want packs of 50 or 100.

Knowing Eric he probably makes them from scratch ;)

Thanks, I think there's an Ace around here somewhere's.


Ha Ha...........yep.
 
WhyNot said:
Where do you source that hardware around here?

Fastenall that was near me shut down.

I'm sure Lowes or Home Depot probably has it too.

Just thought you might have a preference.

The Fastenal on Washington Rd in Evans is where I go locally. I hope that's not the one that shut down. There's one in Harlem I go to sometimes, too. Otherwise, I order from McMaster-Carr. They have a warehouse in Atlanta, so bits are here by 10am the next morning. I keep stuff in stock, so I prefer to buy in quantity.
 
Hurco550 said:
I'm in man. So happy you ended up with this over the xt350. That is one heck of a good starting point and already a solid mule. Can't wait to see you put the irk miller touch on it.

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Funny how I got talked into one bad choice, and talked out of another one. #MidOhiostories
 
We are going to try a Mikuni TM-33 pumper carb. They came stock on DR350’s, so hopefully it translates here.

I should’ve taken pics from when it was painted orange and green.




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