I had gone as far as trying to get it to crank over with a booster box but the best I could get was to get it to crank really slowly. It had spark, but I think either the battery in it was shorted or the starter was bad. I don't think the motor was the problem but I didn't go that far. He kept on about how he needed to use two car batteries to get it to start every spring after it sat. With the list of parts it needed and the sellers odd excuses I got a bad feeling and walked away.
I had already wasted half a day there. I was only interested if it was something I could clean the carbs and the fuel tank and go riding but it needed too much. The more I thought about it, the list got longer. a carb job, clean out the tank, tires, mirrors, a headlight bucket and ring, a rear fender, the seat vinyl felt stiff or dried out so it likely would need a seat soon, and a ding or two in the tank. I'm not looking for a long term project and if I was, I just didn't see that bike being a project I wanted to take on. If it were an air cooled model, like a Bonneville, or an older bike maybe, but my time is worth too much to spend on a run of the mill bike that's in rough shape due to neglect. I'd take a bike with more miles over a low mile bike that's been beat up in the garage or dropped. There were too many variables and the seller kept tossing out excuses for every little thing I found wrong.
A buddy said he sold it today after his daughter put it up online. Better them than me to deal with all the issues.
The one thing that killed the deal for me was seeing that the fuel tank was badly rusted and had been coated rather than cleaned out properly. I've got bikes that I've owned for 30 years, I've not once had to coat a tank on a bike. I've had to clean and de-rust a few that sat but never had one get so bad that I had to resort to coating the inside of the fuel tank. Something in the back of my mind is that the bike could have been a flood victim at some point. Being so close to the shore, I've seen dozens of old bikes that have been sitting that got exposed to saltwater in one of the big storms over the past 10 years or so. The more I thought about how the tank likely got that way, the less I wanted to take a chance on that bike.
I had already wasted half a day there. I was only interested if it was something I could clean the carbs and the fuel tank and go riding but it needed too much. The more I thought about it, the list got longer. a carb job, clean out the tank, tires, mirrors, a headlight bucket and ring, a rear fender, the seat vinyl felt stiff or dried out so it likely would need a seat soon, and a ding or two in the tank. I'm not looking for a long term project and if I was, I just didn't see that bike being a project I wanted to take on. If it were an air cooled model, like a Bonneville, or an older bike maybe, but my time is worth too much to spend on a run of the mill bike that's in rough shape due to neglect. I'd take a bike with more miles over a low mile bike that's been beat up in the garage or dropped. There were too many variables and the seller kept tossing out excuses for every little thing I found wrong.
A buddy said he sold it today after his daughter put it up online. Better them than me to deal with all the issues.
The one thing that killed the deal for me was seeing that the fuel tank was badly rusted and had been coated rather than cleaned out properly. I've got bikes that I've owned for 30 years, I've not once had to coat a tank on a bike. I've had to clean and de-rust a few that sat but never had one get so bad that I had to resort to coating the inside of the fuel tank. Something in the back of my mind is that the bike could have been a flood victim at some point. Being so close to the shore, I've seen dozens of old bikes that have been sitting that got exposed to saltwater in one of the big storms over the past 10 years or so. The more I thought about how the tank likely got that way, the less I wanted to take a chance on that bike.
