My brother in law Mike bought my '75 blue 400 a few years ago. The bike wasn't titled, didn't have turn signals, and didn't exactly fit in the "daily ride" category. But I needed money and Mike loved the little bike. Finally he decided that he didn't want to fix it up and sold it back. Then we started looking for one for him to pick up. He didn't want to get a super nice one like I look for, but something nice enough to ride.
What a deal - he found an average condition '75 for $250, a complete steal considering the tank and original muffler. After a one week clean up/resto job, we are quite pleased at not having spent an additional dime on the thing! Yes, we've used some spare parts, but they were in my "extra parts" pile. No, we didn't figure out how to re-grow chrome. That's a better header we swapped out! The bike will need carb and fuel valve kits, and a front brake job, but not much more.
The following are pics of Mike's bike on 11/24 after a simple cleanup and wax job. Not bad for $250, huh?!
11/25: After the initial clean up, we decided that the bike would really benefit from a thorough cleaning and maybe a little bit of touch up work. So we proceeded to yank the carbs, airbox, battery box, inner fender, rear fender, exhaust, and even the engine. The frame was pressure washed and the chrome parts were scrubbed. The frame was then touched up and finally waxed. The engine mounts, footpegs, and battery box were also resprayed.
FUTURE PICS
That night everything was replaced except the carbs, battery box, and inner fender.
11/ : Mike resprayed the battery box and we were able to replace it. We used an extra set of carburetors I had and got everything in. Then we switched his starter/kill switch box with one I had and got everything buttoned up.
The bike ran but did so very roughly. I think we removed and checked the carbs 5 times. I finally said "enough" and we quit for the night. The bike looked great but we were a little scared. 3 pipes were hot, one was warm. Uh oh...
Then on 12/3 something happened. For some reason the bike ran great (I think the points were corroded).
To update everything (12/6/01), we found out that (1) Mikes bike runs REALLY nice, (2) he has some weird electrical gremlin action, and (3) you really can adjust clutches to work right if you read the &U^%$ing manual. I've never had a bike be so fussy when testing it out after it's been in a coma. This bike refused to be 100% ridable until we turned every screw and adjusted every adjustment. First it wouldn't run nice. Then it wouldn't shift into second gear. Then the clutch would slip, etc etc. The whole time the headlight is going on and off (more off than on) and we are scratching our heads. When the bike decided to run nicely, the instrument lights went out!
BUT the thing runs nice and we can fix the electrical stuff. Hopefully that is nothing more than some contact cleaner and a little bit of time away.
Stuff I'd like to see replaced are: the mangled rear fender, rusted taillight bracket, nasty comfo handgrips, and tires. This can be done later though. The bike really came out of it's one week resto looking pretty impressive!
This page needs a little bit of work on the dates and resto activities, but it's coming finally coming together.....not as fast as the bike did though lol.
Update 12/13/01:
Well I think I have all the dates right now and the bike seems to run great. It also sounds nice thanks to a small hole in the bottom of the muffler.
Mike and I went out for a ride last night. It was really neat having 2 400F's out at one time. Mike had to deal with no front brake and no brake light, and after a while he had no taillight too. Oh well, when you go really fast noone is going to run into the back of you!
After a few trips around the block it was time to go home but not before some jerkwad in an F150 decided his bike quota needed filled for December. I was lucky to be quick on the horn and brakes or might not have had the chance to be updating the site today!
More to come....
