iaregenius
XS400 Enthusiast
This is my proper introduction, I realized I kinda just jumped in asking questions without really sharing much about myself.
My name is Nathan and i was born but not raised in Texas. i grew up in the the Caribbean and moved to canada when I was 15 or so.
After college I moved back to Texas to reconnect with family and to find a job, Houston is where I'm at now but I plan to move back to Austin a year or so.
I have a wonderful girlfriend, 2 wonderful kids and a wonderful ex-wife
My bike build has been an extremely slow process. Growing up my dad and brother where the motorcycle riders and I'm a late-comer. I had ridden dirt-bikes as a kid but I wouldn't have called myself an experience rider when I picked up my 80' XS400 Special II at the beginning of 09'.
I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do with it but needed to get comfy with riding again.
After about 6 months riding I laid it down and tore my MCL in my right knee, minor setback but several months later my girl's dad died in a motorcycle accident.
There has been a lot of "I told you so's" and "see what happens" and the pressure to garage the bike and forget about it has been immense.
Then in february of '10 I decided to start hacking it up much to the chagrin of the girlfriend and family. I called my buddy and we started drinking and chopping and wrenching. we went from this:
to this:
We did it in a day and came back the next weekend with a box of parts that he had laying around. After that it looked like this:
We tinkered for a few more days and then back into storage it went. We took it back out, tweaked some stuff and then it looked like this:
this is how it sits right now:
My name is Nathan and i was born but not raised in Texas. i grew up in the the Caribbean and moved to canada when I was 15 or so.
After college I moved back to Texas to reconnect with family and to find a job, Houston is where I'm at now but I plan to move back to Austin a year or so.
I have a wonderful girlfriend, 2 wonderful kids and a wonderful ex-wife
My bike build has been an extremely slow process. Growing up my dad and brother where the motorcycle riders and I'm a late-comer. I had ridden dirt-bikes as a kid but I wouldn't have called myself an experience rider when I picked up my 80' XS400 Special II at the beginning of 09'.
I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do with it but needed to get comfy with riding again.
After about 6 months riding I laid it down and tore my MCL in my right knee, minor setback but several months later my girl's dad died in a motorcycle accident.
There has been a lot of "I told you so's" and "see what happens" and the pressure to garage the bike and forget about it has been immense.
Then in february of '10 I decided to start hacking it up much to the chagrin of the girlfriend and family. I called my buddy and we started drinking and chopping and wrenching. we went from this:
to this:
We did it in a day and came back the next weekend with a box of parts that he had laying around. After that it looked like this:
We tinkered for a few more days and then back into storage it went. We took it back out, tweaked some stuff and then it looked like this:
this is how it sits right now:
