Guess, I am to blame myself. My dad's old XT500 4-valve (an Austrian oddity by the way - until the mid 90ies there were only two tax classes in Austria up to 500cc and over 500cc, which meant that many Japanese bikes of the 80ies were available in strange 500cc versions, such as the XT600...) finally kicked the bucket some time last year and so he was left to ride his 1200 Bandit *boohooo* or his equally nice Aprilia Moto 6.5. *double-boohoo*
BUT he wanted to finally have a bike he could use to ride to work, grab the ever-so-often-elaborated pack of frozen peas and generally not be bothered too much with the looks and just ride. At pretty much the same time a friend in Graz had a 1984 XT500 (XT600, type 43F) for sale for just about the right price. It was quite shabby looking, but on the up-side it had been completely overhauled and prepared for a Sahara-trip that never took off.
Now of course I had to start somewhere and those were the carbs, trust me if I say they were gunky...
The other thing that bothered me after passing the Austrian MOT was the fact that even by XT600-standards the brake was even more than weak.
A new brake master cylinder came out of stock of fine spare, i.e. heap of well assorted junk.
My dad wasn't too fond of the heated grips, but there was a lot of neat wiring done behind the lamp, so it seemed naturally to fit a socket to the bars to charge a sat-nav, whilst on the move...
The thing you can't see in these two pictures is how much later the second picture was taken. It took me a while to find out why the left front indicator didn't do much or more precise anything at all...
Ah well, and this is probably my favourite picture of 'em all - my dad pushing his new precious back to the petrol-station as the carb needs a new float-chamber gasket and even though he smelled the petrol, when riding he literally ran the bike on reserve until he ran out of gas... Guess that's a mistake he won't make again.
No comments:
Post a Comment