My first bike was my ‘07 Savage that I bought the day I turned 18. It treated me great, put just about 30k (36k total on the odometer as of today) miles on it over a couple years. Since that time, I’ve just let my poor Savage sit in a garage while I enjoyed the various Ducati’s and Harley’s I’ve had over the past 7-8 years. I haven’t owned a car since the day I first bought that Suzuki, been on 2 wheels everyday since then.
That brings us to the next part of the story, I was hit by a car on my ‘17 Harley Sportster a month ago today. Broken wrist, some sort of ligament or tendon problems in my ankle, plenty of road rash and nerve damage above my right eye after the 15 stitches. I was wearing a full face helmet too.
I’ve been out of work since this accident (after already taking my yearly month off) and am starting to get low funds wise. I had the full intention of finally caving in and buying my first car in 10 years. I couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t nuts the bed in a month with the budget I’m working with. As much as I don’t want to rely on a bike as my sole means of transport, but I gotta do what I gotta do to get back to work as soon as my wrist is healed a bit more (kinda difficult to bartend with a broken wrist). Once I’m back at work, I’m just gonna grind until I can find a decent little Chevy, Toyota or Nissan pickup.
Luckily my roommate owns a motorcycle fabrication shop (frame up builds usually). We”re going super budget with the build, just enough to get her running and semi safe. He fabbed up a battery tray and a plate to hold the electrics, we have a brand new carb on there, new battery, new tires, brake pads and shoes should be here tomorrow, replaced oil, filter and spark plug, new throttle and clutch cable, solo seat/no rear fender, new taillight/tag mount.
Eventually I want to strip the tank and paint it, fab a proper fully enclosed battery/electrical box, delete the hand controls and just mount a simple 2 switches on the box. Then down the road slap on a modern GSXR front end. Need to rewrap the exhaust too (luckily I just found 2 rolls of the titanium stuff in my garage yesterday that I had thought I lost. And polish up the casings a bit.
Now here is where I could use some information guys. Aside from regular maintenance, I haven’t touched any of engine internals. What would you all recommend I look into to make sure to squeeze all the life possible out of this thing?
Here’s how it was looking yesterday
And today
Clearly we have a long way to go to get it up to my standards, but the goal here was to simply get me back on the road, looks be darned for now.
Like I said, any information you all could give about what sort of engine work I should look into would be great.
And I can post pictures of my “totaled” Sporty if anyone is interested. They said the frame cracked and paid off my remaining balance. I’m gonna miss that bike, it was pretty much my perfect bike. Just put a nice Bassani 2-1 on there recently too.