Submitted by shredjesse on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 23:07
Cabin fever will make you do crazy things. Fortunately for me, my crazy is limited to hobling around my garage on crutches and highly addictive pain killers trying to fix up a motorcycle... the very same kind of contraption that got me on those crutches to begin with. I obviously don't learn lessons like I should.
Submitted by shredjesse on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 23:06
First and foremost, I had to get the gas in the tank out. It's surely been there since 2004, gross. I dumped it all out, and the gas was brown and muddy. Not a great sign at all... I then washed the gas tank out lightly with water, and hit the interior as much as I could with an air compressor to blow it out. Next up I hit it with a heat gun for about 20-30 minutes or so to dry it out thoroughly. Lastly, I took a pencil propane torch into the puppy and tried to burn out any remaining gas. There was none to be found it would seem. Success... oh wait...
Submitted by shredjesse on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 22:48
Today I got my Girlfriend to ride the bike around. I wish I could, but the whole recovering broken leg thing is dangerous to get on a motorcycle again. I'm pushing it just working on and around the bike. Anyways, she hopped on and took it for a spin. She drove around my neighborhood, then on side roads to the elementary school by me. She spent some time in the empty parking lot doing some figure 8's to get used to the bike and see what it did for handling, then drove back to my house.
Submitted by shredjesse on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 22:42
Some additional progress occured on the second day, but not a ton. I changed the oil and the oil filter. Old oil was definitely at the tail end of it's life and the old filter was quite rusted on the outside indicating to me that it was from back in this bike's Hawaii days (2004 or prior). Oil and filters are cheap so I swapped them.
Here's some pictures of the bike as it sits today in the garage along with some info:
Submitted by shredjesse on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 22:30
My original thoughts with this bike were to get the bike running and mostly presentable again on the cheap and then flip it for an easy $500-600 profit... but the I secreltly desired a mellow bike, and the thought kept growing on me. I've done the whole 170+- mph sport bike thing... I'm okay with a comfortable safe pace on the street!So with that in mind, I started rebuilding the bike as if I would be keeping it for myself.
Submitted by shredjesse on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 21:10
TheTaurus 740 isn't particularly exciting in the box. It's not an amazing box, the packaging wasn't anything special, and my particular gun was supposed to come with two magazines and only shipped with a single magazine. That was sort of a bummer, but in the end I got an even further discoutn on the gun, so to me it was worth it. Really though I bought a gun not a box... so if this deters you from buying the gun you shouldn't buy a gun to begin with!
Submitted by shredjesse on Wed, 05/15/2013 - 23:45
I remember my first week out on my own better than I remember the first girl I dated. I was sitting there in my shoebox studio apartment, thinking that I could do whatever I wanted! I could do anything no matter how wise, short sighted, or how many times my parents had told me never to even consider it! The world was mine for the taking.
TheTaurus 740 isn't particularly exciting in the box. It's not an amazing box, the packaging wasn't anything special, and my particular gun was supposed to come with two magazines and only shipped with a single magazine. That was sort of a bummer, but in the end I got an even further discoutn on the gun, so to me it was worth it. Really though I bought a gun not a box... so if this deters you from buying the gun you shouldn't buy a gun to begin with!
