At first light tomorrow, The Wife and I are off on a road trip to see her brother et al in LA.
We’ll be stopping off at Vegas for Saturday night at the Tropicana, but don’t expect much material for FtN, as we will probably be just as likely just get a bite and hit the bed as we would be to spend time at the gaming tables.
Was this space for camera phone pics, but don’t expect much more.
We’ll probably be leaving the gang at Los Feliz on Wednesday and getting back in time for me to hit the ABATE class Friday evening.
Good times!
Almost a motorbike
Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.
Erik was griping about not being able to find my pictures of the CL350 easily, so they can now be found at my Flickr account under “cl350k3″.
I am happy to report that my buddy Erik and I made some happy progress on the CL350 over the weekend.
First, we got the carbs cleaned and rebuilt — We’re just going to give ‘em a shot as-is before we worry about replacing any jets or anything like that.
Then - in what felt like a major leep forward - we figured out the electricals. We were worried that the whole thing was dead and would require us to strip the entire harness to track down bad connections. As it stands, though, once we figured out the correct combination of switch positions, most things seem to work. The horn doesn’t sound on just battery power, but we’ll see if that changes when the motor is running. We’re also not too sure about the electric starter, but we’re not quite to the point where we feel the need to worry about that too much.
Yesterday, I put the gas tank and the seat back on and test-fit the carbs with the throttle cable and so forth. I also gave a shot at fitting the pipes back on, but that’s a bit too unwieldy for a single pair of hands.
We have a handful of parts we will need to order from Honda soon in order to button the whole thing up (and then there are various parts, like broken light lenses, that need replacement for mostly cosmetic reasons, but those can come as they come), but it’s really looking like a motorbike now.
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Also worth noting (and somewhat exciting for me): I just signed up for the ABATE Basic Rider Course. So, at least I’m more likely to have my motorcycle endorsement before the Honda is road-worthy now. 
Saturday, we got the mofo engine in the frame!
Today Erik and I liberated the chassis and engine of the 1971 Honda CL350 from his garage and re-imprisoned it in mine.
Here’s what we have (click an image for the bigness):
The rolling chassis:
The motor:
Hopefully someday soon it will [A] run and then (a while down the line, probably) [B] look a lot more like this.
Today, I learned the basics of riding a motorcycle.
My buddy Erik took me out in a field and put me on his 250 Honda dual-sport. It’s such a forgiving bike that it managed to compensate for all but my worst starts, and once I was going, there was no problem keeping it steady, even when I double-shifted from first to third (something I need to work on, it seems).
I rode it back and forth for an hour or two, getting as high as third gear on the little dirt trail. I only managed to scare Erik once as I came around a turn slightly hot, fishtailing just the littlest bit. I thought it was good fun, of course, but he didn’t want to explain to Heather if I ended up on my face.
I would still do the multi-day training course before I actually got the “M” added to my license and started riding on the streets, but man was it fun!
The Wife, afterward, asked “Was it fun, feeling the wind through your hair?” My answer: “Well, I had a helmet on…” “Good answer!”
Tricky woman.
So here’s the kicker: I’m adopting Erik’s basket case project bike.
Here’s the first load of parts:
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