I purchased this old 125 on offer up for $500. It needs a lot of stuff but it runs, rides great, and best of all it has a title and is currently registered… kind of a rarity for a $500 project on offer up or craigslist. My wife has been wanting to learn to ride on the street for some time .....she knows how to ride dirt bikes and stuff from years of desert trips...... but I figured it would be best to start off on something as small as I could find. As you can see it needs a few things and from just a preliminary inspection I would guess an additional $500 to $700 worth of parts……. So it could potentially be a $1200 motorcycle/project before I even take one rag to wipe the dirt off...but I feel it's worth it.
In my opinion there are 3 pressing issues that need to be addressed before she rides it and one is the front brake. It works but the inner workings are seized and just a big clump of rust. I thought it was a run of the mill front brake but it's some kind of cable squeeze contraption… something I've never seen before. It will stop now but it needs to be addressed. The 2nd thing is the carburetor. The engine sounds tight and not loose but the carburetor is not adjusted correctly or is not the correct one. It'll start…. Sometimes hard… It will idle high and then sometimes normal. It looks like at 1 point they replaced it with a Chinese knock off. I've had hit-or-miss issues with Chinese knock off carburetors so it may be that. It has 6800 miles on the clock and from the tapit covers it looks like the valves were probably never adjusted.
The 3rd thing is electrical. The horn and the headlight works and the tail light is dim. The previous owner told me it had a slow power drain so it may or may not be charging. I haven't taken a multimeter to anything yet so who knows but I'm preparing for the worst.
Good news is parts seem fairly abundant. Some things are dirt cheap and other things are through the roof. I can find a full electrical knock off wiring harness for 40 bucks new and mirrors and gators and little rubber things cheap.
So for now I will address the front brake before anything else so my wife can ride around in circles in a parking lot.. She's small at 5'2" and this bike is extremely small but something tells me she will outgrow it very quick.
It's nice to have a small bike back in the garage…. even if it is a work in progress. I'm sure things will surprise me along the way.
Unless you want to keep the bike in original condition, I'm guessing that you could probably get a hydraulic front caliper/mastercylinder set up. It would be Chinese of course, but might be an option.
