Dirtbike

I bought this bike a couple of weeks ago. Got it pretty cheap and am trying to get it fully sorted and awesome for under $1000 total cost. It's an old Honda XL 185 that is in pretty rough condition. I probably paid a little too much for it in hindsight, but whatever it's gonna be sweet. (I'll put up more photos of it when I've done what I wanna do to it.)

I've done a bunch of stuff to it already but never had a camera handy until lastnight when I was putting new brake shoes in the rear wheel. So far I've put on a new rear wheel, stripped and cleaned the carb and replaced the needle, and put on a new throttle cable. And then obviously the brakes last night. Unfortunately the brakes still aren't much chop? You can see the old shoes are actually not totally worn out either. Not sure what that's about? All the linkages look ok, but you have to put a lot of weight on the brake peddle to make it slow down (any advice greatly appreciated). It also needs the cam chain done, but I'm gonna get Kevin at KG's to do that for me (he said he'd do it for $80 all up!).

Once it's running all good I'm gonna strip it and paint it. Oh and make a new seat. Gonna cut down that front mudguard too, or find a more old school lookin one? Guards will be black and might paint the tank gold... would love a metal-flake but can you do that at home? Also thinking about the classic coffee sack seat cover...

It's pretty much ready to ride though. I took it up the Port Hills lastnight, up the Bridal Path, which was pretty fucking fun. Esp cause all those tracks are closed since the earthquakes and people getting killed by rocks up there, so there's no one at all around and I was able to really fang about without worrying about anyone coming the other way. Was a bit worried the cops might be waiting for me at the bottom so came back down without the engine running. Seriously good fun!