TURE
PROJECT
WORLDBEATER:
PART 2
WORDS & PHOTOS: ODGIEBUILD FEATURE THE PILEDRIVER PROJECT
Right, so a chance eBay find, a madcap desire to celebrate entering
my seventh decade by racing motorcycles again and a stubborn
refusal to follow any well-worn paths when the untrodden
alternatives are so much more fun have seen me rather rashly buy
an old American-import Honda SL350. Which is eventually (trust
me) going to turn into an amazing world-beating pre-’74 classic
scrambler. The total budget is one thousand pounds. Easy Peasy.
Or to quote George Formby, Wallop Mrs Duckett, Your Daughter’s
Won A Bucket
A
s we saw in the last
instalment, the overall
condition is slightly less
than pristine. But where
would the fun be in just
buying a shiny bike and riding it
straight away? No, we’re going to
investigate the joys (and perils) of
buying cheap and cheerful. I’ve quite
honestly no idea what the outcome
will be; as you can see from this
month’s photos, I’ve got as far as
pulling the motor out and stripping
the top end. A somewhat worrying
amount of water also came out the
sump when I dropped the oil, but
we’re steadfastly ignoring that for
the time being – what the eye doesn’t
see the heart doesn’t grieve over- so the current plan is to fix what
obviously needs fixing, replace a
few things with a view to reliability,
possibly try and make it a bit faster
along the way. Then put it all back
together and see what happens.
Fasten your seat belts then, here
we go...
And here we see why the gearlever was spinning freely in the wind. Quite honestly, I
don’t think I’ve ever seen a splined shaft with so little of it actually resembling splines.96 | 100% Biker | issue 250 | http://www.100-biker.co.uk