So it begins....

Initially I pretty much resigned to not ride bikes anymore. No, I didn't have any horrific crash, no near death experiences or anything that life changing.... I just have a bum back. Technically it's a deteriorated disk at the L5-S1 that causes a lot of problems and a slightly bulging one just north of that. So, sitting on a cruiser bike, bobbing up and down with my spine vertical compresses the bad stuff and I feel like someone is pushing a bowling ball through my lower back. I keep threatening myself with an eventual spinal fusion, and I think that day is getting closer by the year, but for now I thought that possibly leaning over on a bike, taking the vertical stress off of it would help. So, here we are.

I start the usual searches that a poor man performs; Craigslist, maximum price of $500, local buys only. I come a cross tons of basket cases, plenty of rice rockets with no titles, tons of dirtbikes, then I find a gem.

74 CB200, looks decent, new pistons and rings, loss of compression at high speed (hah, high speed...), hasn't been run in a few years. I find this around noonish, one day after it was posted. I email, get a reply, then call, then after I make it home call again, then I finally hit the owner's house around 9:30pm.

I roll up in the driveway and two men are standing at the bike in the garage, looking it over, almost like they had never seen it before. One is the owner, the other is the neighbor. I introduce myself, we small talk, he shows me all the misc items that come with the bike, then we talk bike. The neighbor actually has two bikes of his own, an older BMW and a huge Harley bagger. We get the bike loaded on the truck, the owner says he'll miss the little bike and to swing back by sometime and visit with it... and that's what I plan to do.

Fast forward a week or so, I start tearing into the bike as best I can, get some help from my buddy Scott, start trolling Ebay for parts, completely drain Google Images of everything CB200 related. Over that course of time I:

Drain the old gas from the tank. I'm pretty sure this is not a good color:

I tried to run it with new gas, it fired for a bit and got me down the road, then died. Scott helped me adjust the carbs, diagnose bad plug wire caps, adjust the points, few other odds and ends. Fired up again and ran! We both drove it down the road but then the rear tire pancaked and that was the end of that.

The kick starter is broken at the shaft, so I ordered a used one:

Tires, neither holding air, ordered new tires, tubes and bands:

Can't get a good spark with the old caps, went to Hager and got a pair:

Ok, that's enough for now, will continue soon....