CALfeRacer
Fat man on a little bike
Hello all!
Today I made my way out to the sticks to scratch an itch I've had for a while: a new bike to work on. I miss wrenching, so after cruising craigslist for a while, I found a Honda XL350 for sale, drove about two hours to check it out, and decided to buy it for $200! Bike is pretty complete, minus lights and gauges. Also appears to be in pretty good shape, has spark and compression, just needs the carb to be cleaned. Sounds good so far!
First thing's first, you may have noticed I haven't thrown out a model year yet.. That's because I'm not quite sure. The frame says 1982, however the bike is a side port, and has what appears to be a '75 tank, so honestly going in to this I thought the bike was '75. I thought the sideport was only for model years '74-'77 (ish?) and that by '82 there was a different engine and exhaust, with the two small header pipes and a high pipe on the right as opposed to the low pipe on the left mine has. who knows? hahaha ???
So, in my excitement I decided to tear in to the carb once I got back. I knew it did'nt have a throttle cable, and that it was also a push-pull cable. never seen that before! I noticed it appears to be a non-cv carb, the throttle body appears to be moving the slide up and down. However, upon removal I noticed there is another cable which controls a butterfly valve, which would be characteristic of a CV carb? Upon removing the bowl I noticed that there is no float needle attached to the floats, which were a bit of a pain to get out. The jets were clear, and other than some residue on the bottom of the bowl, it all looked pretty clean. Tank is also clean, so it looks like when it got put up, the PO did it right, which is nice. I'm contemplating swapping the carb for a Mikuni VM, I've heard it's a common swap that doesn't really have any issues. Seems like it would be nice to get rid of the two (or three?!) throttle cables and just buy a round-side. Plus oldrice has a bunch of info on carb specs for swaps.
So, to where I want to take this bike. I like the classic dual-sport style, but really want to try my hand at a street tracker-esque build, and time will tell where this build goes! being a college student, I don't have a ton of money to play with so progress will probably be slow, with my main goal for now being to get her clean, running, and street legal!
Any input is welcome, just glad to be back on the site and ready to wrench! ;D
Today I made my way out to the sticks to scratch an itch I've had for a while: a new bike to work on. I miss wrenching, so after cruising craigslist for a while, I found a Honda XL350 for sale, drove about two hours to check it out, and decided to buy it for $200! Bike is pretty complete, minus lights and gauges. Also appears to be in pretty good shape, has spark and compression, just needs the carb to be cleaned. Sounds good so far!
First thing's first, you may have noticed I haven't thrown out a model year yet.. That's because I'm not quite sure. The frame says 1982, however the bike is a side port, and has what appears to be a '75 tank, so honestly going in to this I thought the bike was '75. I thought the sideport was only for model years '74-'77 (ish?) and that by '82 there was a different engine and exhaust, with the two small header pipes and a high pipe on the right as opposed to the low pipe on the left mine has. who knows? hahaha ???
So, in my excitement I decided to tear in to the carb once I got back. I knew it did'nt have a throttle cable, and that it was also a push-pull cable. never seen that before! I noticed it appears to be a non-cv carb, the throttle body appears to be moving the slide up and down. However, upon removal I noticed there is another cable which controls a butterfly valve, which would be characteristic of a CV carb? Upon removing the bowl I noticed that there is no float needle attached to the floats, which were a bit of a pain to get out. The jets were clear, and other than some residue on the bottom of the bowl, it all looked pretty clean. Tank is also clean, so it looks like when it got put up, the PO did it right, which is nice. I'm contemplating swapping the carb for a Mikuni VM, I've heard it's a common swap that doesn't really have any issues. Seems like it would be nice to get rid of the two (or three?!) throttle cables and just buy a round-side. Plus oldrice has a bunch of info on carb specs for swaps.
So, to where I want to take this bike. I like the classic dual-sport style, but really want to try my hand at a street tracker-esque build, and time will tell where this build goes! being a college student, I don't have a ton of money to play with so progress will probably be slow, with my main goal for now being to get her clean, running, and street legal!
Any input is welcome, just glad to be back on the site and ready to wrench! ;D
