I won't whore up the riders against depression thread, so here's the start of my bike prep....
I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to ride. My dearly loved 88 KX125 was the obvious choice from an emotional point of view, and wasn't a ridiculous choice on logical criteria, but I kept thinking about how horrible it would be on drit road/tar transports, and abot how I'd put five seasons of VMXing onto an above-average, fairly original bike by doing the 4-day on it.
More thinking lead me to decide that I wanted to ride an 89 KDX200 or 89 YZ250WR, with a KTM250/300, Husky 250/400 or RMX250 being outside choices.
After spending LOTS of time on Gumtree and Ebay, and finding nothing, I bought back my old, rough 1990 KDX200E that I bought on a whim a few years ago. I sold it to a mate to use as a paddock bike, but even though the power valve was jammed shut, he thoguht it was "too fast" and hardly ever rode it....
I never remember to take "before" photos, so here it is after I'd taken the motor out:
Sexy, yes?...
I pulled it down, and then started to add up what it was going to cost to get it up to speed....
Then three much better sounding bikes all came up for sale. Yesterday, I drove three hours to Bombala and bought one with a properly rebuilt motor and a pretty good parts bike:
The runner is another 1990 model, but the parts bike is a 1989 one. The plan is to get the mechanicals right in the 1990 frame, and then give the 1989 roller a cosmetic rebuild and transfer everything over.
Here's how it sits tonight:
I haven't done anything major yet: Swapped the bent bars for some straight ones, fitted a Yamaha (IT200?) top triple clamp to move the handle bars forward, fitted the FMF Powercore silencer from the original bike, and a few other tweaks.
Next is to fit a set of 88 KX forks and an 89 KX shock. Just waiting for the new springs, Gold Valves and seals/bushes to arrive so I can rebuild the KX suspension bits.