zachattach
Project Doldrums
So, I've lived in San Francisco for about a year now, and in that short time I've more than had my fill of hunting for parking spots, paying parking tickets (~$1k thus far), and wasting hours on the grossly inefficient mass transit system Muni. Recognizing that none of the transport solutions I've tried in this city were going to work, it was time to find and alternative. Over the past few years I've been growing increasingly interested in the urban fascination with the contemporary Cafe Race, and these two stimula got me scanning the Bay Area Craigslist pages for a suitable piece of transportation equipment with some Cafe potential. And this lead to the recent purchase of a 1982 Moto Guzzi v50 III(?).
I picked up the bike for $750. It does not run at the moment, but if you click it into gear you can roll the bike and hear it turning over; so, nothing has seized. Aesthetically, it looks more like a swamp monster than an elegant Italian machine, but the lack of museum potential is no matter. That just gives me more freedom to get really creative with the restoration/redesign.
Inspired by Dale's thread about his v50 project, I though I might add a second one on here, and chronicle the progression of my project.
I rolled the bike into the TechShop annex here in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, which is where the project will be housed. The next door facility has an incredible array of equipment that is available to the public if you're willing to foot the $120 per month membership fee. With a little luck, I'll be using quite a bit of their equipment to fab parts for this project.
Now, before I get too much further, I should add that I have: (a) never owned a motorcycle before, and (b) never restored a vehicle of any sort before. But no matter, I think this will go fine. I've done quite a bit of automotive work on a '98 Jeep Wrangler project that is another of my 'babies,' and I've got a pretty respectable mechanical aptitude.
To start, given the condition of this thing, the whole bike is going to have to come apart (if for no other reason to allow the necessary deep clean that would be required for me to feel comfortable getting anywhere close to it in clothes I care about), and that process began on Monday. Attached to this post is a picture of the bike at the start of things on day one.
I picked up the bike for $750. It does not run at the moment, but if you click it into gear you can roll the bike and hear it turning over; so, nothing has seized. Aesthetically, it looks more like a swamp monster than an elegant Italian machine, but the lack of museum potential is no matter. That just gives me more freedom to get really creative with the restoration/redesign.
Inspired by Dale's thread about his v50 project, I though I might add a second one on here, and chronicle the progression of my project.
I rolled the bike into the TechShop annex here in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, which is where the project will be housed. The next door facility has an incredible array of equipment that is available to the public if you're willing to foot the $120 per month membership fee. With a little luck, I'll be using quite a bit of their equipment to fab parts for this project.
Now, before I get too much further, I should add that I have: (a) never owned a motorcycle before, and (b) never restored a vehicle of any sort before. But no matter, I think this will go fine. I've done quite a bit of automotive work on a '98 Jeep Wrangler project that is another of my 'babies,' and I've got a pretty respectable mechanical aptitude.
To start, given the condition of this thing, the whole bike is going to have to come apart (if for no other reason to allow the necessary deep clean that would be required for me to feel comfortable getting anywhere close to it in clothes I care about), and that process began on Monday. Attached to this post is a picture of the bike at the start of things on day one.