What's your dream donor bike?

[Hoosier Daddy]

Hows about a Benelli 500 quattro to turn into a late 60's 500 GP replica?

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[Staffy]

Holy crap, that thing is hot!

 

[egardner1970]

A Jawa 350 2stroke with scrambler pipes, same size tires front/back, aermacchi speedo/headlight and clubmans.

 

[jimmiejoe]

There s a Ninbus in the Sacramento area on Craigslist $6500.00 running or so it said...good luck

 

[ProSimex]

Hows about a Benelli 500 quattro to turn into a late 60's 500 GP replica?

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After...

A friend of mine has a quatro he was selling. I dont see what the big deal is since its basically a CB500 with tilted cylenders. Most of the parts are totally interchangable, it is literally the same thing. Pretty dull bikes too if you ask me. Oh its rare I suppose, and Italian so you get cool points for that I guess.

 

[NortonGuy]

I've always wished for one also but real XRs don't have generators. Unless you can somehow bolt the top ends onto an XL bottom. The closest thing to a streetable XR is the XR1000 and I've only ever seen one for sale, they're even more rare than the XLCR.

I used to have an alloy xr750 in the 1980's which I decided to ride on the street one year. No, it did not have a generator but all that did was kept me from riding it at night.
Back before things got so chickenshit with motorcycle paperwork I got it titled in my state, so then I could buy insurance and get a registration. I put dummy lights on it with the wires flapping in the breeze. I had the front brake setup for the bike that one would use in TT style dirt-track. No, I never took it for the state safety inspection, just rode it, and yes I got a ticket from the state cops for not having that sticker, but one $90 ticket for a year of fun riding is not a big deal. No kickstart either, another reason it would not pass inspection, if you stall it in traffic you better be really good at bump-starting.

It was fast enough, about 300#@90hp give or take. I took it to a drag strip a few times to see what it would do, but it was a very hard bike to ride like that, short, large rear tire and it sat high, so it was a wheelie-king, but even with a very poor start being off the pipe for the first fifty feet, it would still mph a bit over 110 in the quarter.

In the end the original Harley race bikes are not good street machines. The original run of alloy xr750s was between 72' and 80', after that all Harley offered was an engine kit for you to build up, you had to build or buy your own chassis. The other disadvantage to the 1980 and earlier Harley race bikes is that their engine components are not interchangeable with the current kit engines, so there are no spare parts for when you blow them or wear them out, and original Harley "R" parts are as rare as hen's teeth now. I had three old Harley dirt-track racers back before they became worth anything, and I got rid of them twenty years ago because I saw the writing on the wall, they were nothing you could use and re-build anymore unless you were a millionaire and could afford to buy or have made the rare parts to keep them going.

Also the original frames have very quick steering for dirt-track and do not work well at high speeds on pavement. Even with the forks dropped all the way down in the yokes and the shocks lowered all the way, just the wind buffeting on your shoulders and fore-arms will make the bike wobble. They did make a road-racing frame for the bike that had more rake, but I did not have one.

The current evolution Sportster is a great bike though that is a lot like an XR750. It has an all-alloy engine and a welded up frame, probably not enough posing value for certain people though huh? The evo Sporty is even a good poor-man's Vincent, a unit construction V-twin of about 1000cc, I rode both and the engines feel about the same cruising down the road.

I have had or have all my dream bikes, I am on the downside now, putting the last of them together to ride and keeping an eye out for good homes to pass them to when I have one foot in the grave.

 

[Deviant1]

Hesketh, Vincent v-twin, Brough Superior, and on the less exotic side, a kz1300 6 cylinder. Any of those would be a wonderful place to start. The Hesketh is just a straight-up bone stock dream bike for me, as well as the Brough. The Vincent either an Egli or just a ground up custom. The kz1300 would become the broadest stripped down hardtail bob ever. Also would like a Hercules rotary someday.