Sceep
🖕___ 😆___ 🖕
Got tired of the hardcore crawling game years back and dad and I moved back to our motorcycle roots. Spent a few years riding gnarly singletrack with some amazing riders. Both of us also had street bikes so cruised them as well. We both still had our (what would now be called) overlanding rigs and spent many weeks each year out wandering the dirt roads of NM & CO. Sold the street bikes and moved over to big ADV bikes to camp off of. Rode the COBDR, half the UTBDR, half the IDBDR and dads ridden half the NMBDR. Rode all the hell over CO passes and dirt roads.
While on the IDBDR in fall 2020 I faced an OBS chevy coming at me sideways around a blind dirt corner. Kid was hauling ass to his hunting camp after school on Friday afternoon, slanging his truck around the dirt corners. I've done that thousands of times. I won't judge him. I have no idea how we didn't collide. My rear pannier must have missed his rear bumper by fractions of an inch. Bike and I hit the ditch and came out ok. Dad came up on the scene a few minutes behind and was glad I was alive. I am positive that kid and I both learned a lesson that day and will be safer in the future because of it.
But it scared the shit outtah dad and I. We're not getting any younger and wrestling the big bikes around with all the camping gear makes long days longer. I want a cage back.
So we're sitting around last summer having some beers and I just go "HEY, you know what? We need sandrails! We can get our wind therapy, our camping trips, our 1k miles of dirt and 1k miles of pavement trips. We can run any damn trail in CO that we want to anymore. We can cruise em to lunch, to work, WhereTF ever."
A week later dad drug his home.
I've been shopping for something that I wanted since then. Nothing meets the cut. I don't want to build something. I've built stuff. I'm over it. I want to buy and fly. But my budget is also too low for my goals. So I ended up buying a pile a few weeks ago. Ran poorly and couldnt test drive because of no brakes. Seems like it has a good heart and bones but needs its muscles worked on. Maybe a good start. Lets put some time and monies into it.
Best I can tell its homebuilt and had at least 2 prior owners (the builder, and the guy who did some hack work). Its got a late 80's Ford EFI N/A 2.3. Late 60's 3 rib bus trans. Late 70's king/link pin front beam. All 4 tires face different directions. It's had poor landings, and hooked trees with the rear tires. It has dryer ducting as an intake hose
FIrst thing is get the thing running and stopping.
E2000 fuel pump that we've run in everything forever sounds really, really sad. Traced down a shitty filter that was bleeding air into the system. New filter, thing fires up, idles and revs great. Slam some slave cyls in the brakes and we're off!
Drivers front tire is SUPER wonky. Flopping all over and just pointing over there / . Ordered up rebuild kit for the king and links, bearings for the beam, shims. Everything. Rebuilt the front end, tightened up the wheel bearings and its about 75% better but still fawked. Spindle is bent. Whatever. It's good enough for now to see if this thing is gonna do what I want.
Put a muffler on it so I could cruise to the office and keep the wife happy.
Threw the dryer duct in the trash and tidied the intake up.
Been driving it for the past few weeks, couple hundred miles on it now, and its good but have to get the rear tires facing forward instead of to the side. It's sketch as F on the pavement.
Pass rear looks to have hooked an immobile object at some point and bent the F outtah the trailing arm (note the dirt stripe on the tire in the above pic). Drivers side isnt as bad but is also bent.
So now we're to today and waiting on boxed arms, bearings, seals, boots etc. to show up Friday hopefully.
While on the IDBDR in fall 2020 I faced an OBS chevy coming at me sideways around a blind dirt corner. Kid was hauling ass to his hunting camp after school on Friday afternoon, slanging his truck around the dirt corners. I've done that thousands of times. I won't judge him. I have no idea how we didn't collide. My rear pannier must have missed his rear bumper by fractions of an inch. Bike and I hit the ditch and came out ok. Dad came up on the scene a few minutes behind and was glad I was alive. I am positive that kid and I both learned a lesson that day and will be safer in the future because of it.
But it scared the shit outtah dad and I. We're not getting any younger and wrestling the big bikes around with all the camping gear makes long days longer. I want a cage back.
So we're sitting around last summer having some beers and I just go "HEY, you know what? We need sandrails! We can get our wind therapy, our camping trips, our 1k miles of dirt and 1k miles of pavement trips. We can run any damn trail in CO that we want to anymore. We can cruise em to lunch, to work, WhereTF ever."
A week later dad drug his home.
I've been shopping for something that I wanted since then. Nothing meets the cut. I don't want to build something. I've built stuff. I'm over it. I want to buy and fly. But my budget is also too low for my goals. So I ended up buying a pile a few weeks ago. Ran poorly and couldnt test drive because of no brakes. Seems like it has a good heart and bones but needs its muscles worked on. Maybe a good start. Lets put some time and monies into it. Best I can tell its homebuilt and had at least 2 prior owners (the builder, and the guy who did some hack work). Its got a late 80's Ford EFI N/A 2.3. Late 60's 3 rib bus trans. Late 70's king/link pin front beam. All 4 tires face different directions. It's had poor landings, and hooked trees with the rear tires. It has dryer ducting as an intake hose
FIrst thing is get the thing running and stopping.
E2000 fuel pump that we've run in everything forever sounds really, really sad. Traced down a shitty filter that was bleeding air into the system. New filter, thing fires up, idles and revs great. Slam some slave cyls in the brakes and we're off!
Drivers front tire is SUPER wonky. Flopping all over and just pointing over there / . Ordered up rebuild kit for the king and links, bearings for the beam, shims. Everything. Rebuilt the front end, tightened up the wheel bearings and its about 75% better but still fawked. Spindle is bent. Whatever. It's good enough for now to see if this thing is gonna do what I want.
Put a muffler on it so I could cruise to the office and keep the wife happy.
Threw the dryer duct in the trash and tidied the intake up.
Been driving it for the past few weeks, couple hundred miles on it now, and its good but have to get the rear tires facing forward instead of to the side. It's sketch as F on the pavement.
Pass rear looks to have hooked an immobile object at some point and bent the F outtah the trailing arm (note the dirt stripe on the tire in the above pic). Drivers side isnt as bad but is also bent.
So now we're to today and waiting on boxed arms, bearings, seals, boots etc. to show up Friday hopefully.
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