It's ALIVE!

I really wasn't planning on getting it running today, just paint the parts of the frame that were exposed after taking out the oil tank, battery tray, starter and starter housing to replace the drive gear needle bearings. I pressed in the new bearing last week and painted the oil tank and battery tray "wrought iron flat black" (the color the entire bike will soon be) on Monday. After painting the frame today I started fitting parts back together to get an idea where I was going to have trouble. "I might as well go ahead an put this in while I know where it goes." I was saying to myself. And before I knew it, it was together!

I got kinda excited once I had everything together. I decided to go ahead and try to turn it over without the plugs in it just to see if there was going to be a problem anywhere. Put the battery in, turned the key, hit the starter and NOTHING! Oh well, what did I expect. I looked down to see that I'd forgotten to put the starter in! Idiot.

So, put the starter in and it turned over perfectly; smooth and quiet, no grinding noise! "Hell, lets put the plugs in and see what happens." Turned over beautifully and even tried to START! Hot Damn! Give it some choke! And it fired right up! Idle is still a little fast, but it's running on roughly-set point gaps and dead-center timing. Plus I still haven't re-jetted the carb, so it's actually doing VERY well considering.

The next thing to do is check for oil pressure, set the timing, rebuild the front brake master cylinder and then MAYBE ride it!

Oh, and in case you were wondering . . YES! This has been every bit as much fun as I dreamed it would be!