wallster
XS400 Enthusiast
I've just spent the entire weekend working on my XS400 cafe racer project and even though this is one of many bike rebuilds/builds/restorations, it always wipes me out. We all have seen those cable shows where these people grab all the parts off the shelves, cut this, weld that, and within sixty minutes it's all ready to get torn down. Meanwhile, a team of workers reweld all the new stuff, sand down the steel, bondo and paint parts, a chrome plater strips and chromes the parts, and by the following week these guys are bolting fresh new parts together. I'm not saying that they're not great mechanics or designers, I'm saying that in our world there's way more work that takes weeks worth of time to pull off. Case in point: I already had spent weeks getting to the point where I could fill and bleed the rear caliper. Everything seemed great except the caliper was hanging up and the rear wheel was very difficult to spin. I couldn't just grab another off of the shelf, that caliper was taken off, drained, then I had to pop the piston out and clean the entire caliper (inside and out). Then once it was put back together, I could fill the mc and bleed it again. This is just one of a thousand parts that needed attention before I could take the next step in completing this bike. These hours are only available after we all work our daily jobs, and finish our other daily commitments which place first over our projects. I want to acknowledge everyones hard work that I see on this forum since I know only too well how much work it takes to bring these bikes back to life.
Wally
Wally