The bike: pretty original, 1989 Savage, 4 gears.
It has some 40k kms on the clock, but recording mileage on technical inspections is relatively new phenomenon over here, so that is to be taken with a big pinch of salt.

Thanks to this website I did a through inspection/maintenance session:
cam chain tensioner still has about 10mm to go (it's the original, not modified), and more or less everything is working.

Electrical connections are quite corroded / dirty, I have good charge only with lights on, and i suspect that decompressor solenoid is quite weak. (more of that later)

Tires were crap but otherwise the rest is in neat shape.

Lately i went to ever lighter bikes, CM200: 120kg, CZ175, 130kg, so the Savage's 174 (got it measured at the local scrap metal yard!) feels heavy. Of course It's a 650, but hey, I was looking for some old 250 dirtbike, right?

So the idea:
Basically a tracker-kinda thing without raising it too much. Knobby tires (of course), dirtbike front fender, fork boots, an entirely different rear section, but I keep the seat, the belt drive even airbox, though that might end up thrown to the pyre at the end.

It's wintertime here, so building time.
Unless... with a mate we aim to make it to Elefanttreffen, so bike should be ready (even if I won't) by first weekend of February.

So, what has been done?
I promise, I'll upload the pictures.

- Got an old rear fender, taillight from a bike that I rode to UK when I still had a lot of hair... It's a Jawa 634 rear end, so i figured i'll transform a bit of it onto the savage. So there's that. Also got some whatever dirtbike front fender from a project I had so we got that, and there's the MIG welder and some pipes.

Got new tires on:
Rear: Wanda 130/90r15, knobby, and pretty much the only one availble in this size. Not much info on it, so I'm not too hopeful, but if someone has experience with it, shoot!

Front:Since Elefanttreffen is a stable 1400km there and back, I invested into a wintertire, 100/90r19, Mitas E07+. I read pretty good things, though not on a Savage.

Built a subframe to hold the rear fender and be a base for some luggage rack that's gonna be needed.

Installed the fork boots. (Benelli Imperiale 400 boots, they were pretty cheap, a tad short I think, we'll see if they slide down)

Made a bit of steel plate with half of the original horn mount to hold the front fender. Very Fiddly to install and i'm not famous of having patience. There was some swearing included. But it's on. Front looks wicked, very weird but in the good way!

Jawa rear lights with Simson turnlights (they were available and cheap here) installed, electrics to be wired up properly.

Oh, and got original foot controls. Mine were even more forward and it was very weird for my short legs. The original is fine. As what i got second hand was a horrid mangled set of scrap with missing footpegs I installed .... Jawa footpegs.

rear section is almost 9kg!
(that's fender, chrome sides, lamps, backrest)  Quite a bit chunk!

This was the basic idea. (since then it's finished, painted, mounted) A U bent 21mm pipe (I believe 2mm thickness) that i had lying around.
Mind you, my bending tools are limited, a bit more complex bend the rises up towards the end would be nicer perhaps. This shape gives good mounting points for:
- top shock mounts
- big threads at the end of the frame
- mounts the fender at the middle

And I wanted a bit of pipe to grab the bike when moving it about the garage / yard. This gives it.

Meanwhile:
not mentioned before but got Yamaha Grizzly petcock. Perfect. removing/ mounting the fuel tank saves a few hairs and a few years off my lifespan. Huge difference, and I never trusted fancy vacuum things... Like I said before, eastern bikes, simplicity, patience.

I'm sure somebody will tell me how to add multiple pictures...?

Next job, nad help / advise hoped for:

- checking decompressor.
Might be my battery weak, in the summer i often had this horrid 1/2 second when starter stalled, then always pulled through and fired up.
After buying I checked all, worked pretty well, but the issue was the same.
Electronics works, decompressor cable adjusted... Can it be just too weak and it can't lift the arm to open the exhaust valve?
I have seen manual decomp mentioned a lot... will it work if i add a cable to the handlebar with a 60-ies style choke lever? I assume you need bigger force than that. Of course, I can also make that lever right there on the cyl head, I've seen that done on the forum.

-carb cleaning / adjust. I assume as a 1989 it will have the notches in the needle to adjust?
Issue: fires into the air after turning it off. It was quite fun at first, now it's more like a redneck thing and I'm hoping in front of the post office it would quit doing that. No backfire on deceleration though, only if I go downhill for a long long time.

Everything is stock now, airfilter, exhaust. It was serviced, cleaned, replaced not long ago, so new plug, new filters. Starts fine, and pulls fine.
Probably could be much better, I can't compare of course.

Yesterday evening I did hook it up to some petrol and hit the start button. All worked perfectly fine, the solenoid lifted the decomp arm, bike started perfectly (it's 3 degrees C in the garage and bike has not run for weeks) I'm actually impressed.
So much so that i might scrap the idea getting the carb apart, after all... 'is something is not broken, don't fix it!'

Solenoid is very loose, adjusted the cable according to the manual on this forum. Bloody good stuff!

I'll measure voltage when starting though, that a neat idea.

What makes it go bang after i turned it on? It's a proper backfire a good 1-2 seconds after you switch it off.
And there's a horrible clank after the engine stops when you turn it off. What would that be? Is that normal?


EDIT:
Just came accross this from Verslagen in another decomp-related thread:
"However, there is an issue at shutdown.  The piston will sometimes stop on the compression stroke and the crank will turn backwards to release pressure.  Going backwards will engage the one-way clutch of the starter.  The starter is strong enough to resist turn and excessive forces will either break teeth or blow out the bosses supporting the shafts.  This was fixed when they added the torque limiter gear."
Is that the horrid CLANG after stopping it? Should I worry?