Hey there! We hope you are having a wonderful springtime! To our Northern friends - hopefully it won't be much longer before you are back on your bikes and enjoying the beautiful landscape that us "flatlanders" don't get to see as much!

Well, sort of...Well, not really actually! 
Wipe your tears (and the winter riding blues) and let Yankee Dave tell you a story of a fellow rider who's winter lasted wayyyy to long!

I scheduled a time to come look at it, plugged his address into my GPS and headed out right away. I pulled up next to a pretty good looking Ninja that was parked next to what seemed to be another bike, covered with a brown tarp...I'm thinking to myself, he said he had a ZX600 and the bike I'm looking at here is a 250.
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So I begin to peek under the tarp and as I'm snooping (yep - ZX600 in there!) Dan comes out and we pull the tarp all the way off - it was the great unveiling! I'm not gonna lie here - the bike was in dire need of more than just a carb rebuild and as Dan is telling me his story....from 3 years ago to now. His not willing to give up on it and his determination to get her back on the road...After hauling it 1500 miles, from yankee-ville (just made that up...it means new England!) to his new home in FL, I decided to help him bring his dream to fruition and made arrangements to come back with a trailer and get started!

(Below are some before pictures from Dan - to help you get a better understanding of my starting point)

As I said before, this bike needed wayyy more than just a carb rebuild. So I got the bike to the shop and put her up on the lift to get a closer look...21 point inspection time!

What I discovered was:

• The bike had been put together (by someone other than Dan btw), with a mish mash of odd parts - coming from various different models.
• The Carbs did in fact require rebuilding of....
• Many critical parts were also missing.
• There were some wiring problems (no directionals/tail light)
• The brake fluid looked more like mud than brake fluid. 
• It needed a new chain and sprockets.

But the bare bones were there and

It took some time to completely get through the bike and we did quite a bit of "on the fly" repairs, dealing with each challenge as it presented itself.

As we head out on the road, wether it is a short hop , or a long day trip being prepared for what mother nature has in store for you can be vital to your health and saftey. For instance what happened to my wife and i last weekend.. Hmmm. Let me reflect on a few of the details, well, it starteout os a beautiful sunny day with a few puffy clouds in the sky. After finishing some morning chores and picking up some much neede supplies for the shop we decided to hop on our bikes and take a short jaunt to the local watering hole for lunch. Well the ride out was great!! Just what we needed to get our heads functioning properly, and lunch hit the spot nicely.but once we left mother nature unleashed her wrath upon us!! And being ill prepared for the deluge of rain that followed, and nowhere to hide we wede forced to ride thru it till we could find safe harbor. Now if we only had some assemblance of rain gear, some gloves, and some other essentials it might not have been as uncomfortable. I think we will be keeping extra gear in the bags for the next time.