I probably should have bartered for that instead of the Nighthawk. Instead I traded painting and tuning his RC truck then dragged the flatelining wretch out of there to my buddies shop.
While I wanted to keep the spongebob-duct tape, threaded rod, turn signal stalk, I started to peel back some of the layers of abuse from the maniacal previous owners of this poor little bike.
Turns out it was in much worse shape than first impressions gave.
Back to front:
Shocks, just springs.
Wheels, are true.
Rear body work, hacked apart for an attempt at some sort of disco lighting theme and then mended with pop rivets and that pipe hanger stuff with all the holes in it.
Seat, foam is good but Hannibal Lecter must have supplied the cover.
Airbox, modified with a 32oz Estwing.
Wiring, ugh. Now I know how people who know nothing of a bikes electrical system feel when they look at a wiring harness. The only wires that are un-molested are the two battery cables.
Carburetors, "just need to be cleaned" apparently.
Engine, 9000 miles on the gauge but for some reason the crankcase seems to be a vessel for holding Marvel mystery oil. Has Compression!
Gas tank, Rusty, gummy and denty.
Controls, garbage. Same with the neck bearings, stanchions, fork seals and wheel bearings.
Not bad, right? So first things first was to sort some of the wiring to make some spark. Drain the gunk and replace. Filters, plugs.
Soak, strip, scrub and rebuild the carb bank.
Now that it starts and idles I'll start procuring parts and getting deeper into it cleaning and rebuilding what I can, replacing what I cant.
My hope is to bring this back to life and get it as near to 90hp and and 45-50 ft-lbs torque. I think it can get close to those numbers judging by the stock specs for this model. hoping to reach that with just headwork and tuning. I want to keep the stock internals and the compression at a reasonable level as I plan on actually riding this heap at some point.