Yes,it's winter here in New York.Not my favorite time of year but we deal with it. Been thinking about how nice it would be to be living in Arizona but the emails I get from Zillo are telling me that I'm getting priced out of that market now.What I could afford two years ago before this damn disease struck is now out of reach for my budget. Thinking about spending the end of my time here on planet Earth up in the frozen north of Northern New York. can still afford housing there and I could use my camp as a shop to build motorcycles and sell them from. Could set up a wood shop in my barn and make things . There's lots I could do but it gets me depressed when I think about those long long very cold and snowy winters.Well, maybe the housing market will cool off by the time we are ready to leave here when my wife retires in two years.I sure hope so but if it doesn't at least I have this option to head north. Can't stay here in Long Island that's for sure.The cost of living here is way more than we can afford on our SS and her pension . Oh well , enough of this garbage. It's been a pretty good year for me.I had these two good jobs that kept me occupied and able to remain isolated from the population for the most part keeping me free of the Covid .Now I'm hanging out at home building a motor for a friend who is restoring a 1975 Yamaha RD350. This time last year I was at this point in the shed job I had going for my neighbor next door.
At this stage I just secured it for winter and did other stuff. Over last winter I built windows for it and in early spring I finished up the carpentry by building a door and doing the trim. Then I went to work on my friends kitchen renovation.That took 4 months of real hard work and was finally finished in September.Went back and painted the shed to finish out the year after waiting all summer for my neighbor to pick the colors she wanted.Now it looks like this.
For a long time now I have been looking to replace my old 1971 Chevy C20 pick up truck . Cars and trucks are crazy expensive these days so I sort of put it out of my mind.Went riding with my friend Paul back in October and he told me he was looking for a good used car for his wife to replace her 2000 Chevy S 10 pick up .I told him to let me know when he is ready to sell it because I'm looking for just that sort of truck. You know , a small pick up with a 4 cylinder motor that is good on gas.My C20 has a 350 V8 that gets 8 to 10 mpg on a good day and I just can't afford to use it to travel. It only rolls when it's earning money ! So.a couple weeks go by and he finds this 2010 Honda he likes for her.They finally get it in the 2nd week of December and he tells me I can have the S10 in exchange for building the motor for his restoration project and he'll bring it over. So,now I have this cool little truck and something to do that I really like doing.
Yeah,it's pretty funky inside but when I'm finished with it it will be like new ! Split the case the other day and got inside.The clutch looks to be good as does the transmission but the crankshaft it toast.
So,I cleaned everything and honed the cylinders .They are good and standard bore so we ordered new pistons ,rings ,wrist pins, small end bearings ,and a full engine gasket set. I dug thru my inventory and found I had 5 cranks for this particular motor and all were good so I gave him a good crank so he doesn't have to spend 700+ dollars to have this old piece of crap crank rebuilt.See,he helped me with a truck and I help him with his motorcycle project. It's a win for both of us .So now here I am waiting on the parts doing projects around the house. Refurbished a cool turbo convection oven from the 1970's for my wife.Yesterday I built a nice shelf for it to reside on in the kitchen. Gonna paint the inside of this little old house we live in .It's an easy job for me and I can do it at the same time I build this motorcycle engine.Wanna get these things out of the way while it's real cold out so I don't have to spend so much money heating the garage with kerosene .By mid February it usually starts to warm into the 40's F and the garage heats up quick and costs way less to heat.At this point I start my next motorcycle job,a 1970 Yamaha R5 . I want it built and have it for sale by June. So there you have it.my first post of 2022 .As I look forward I'm hoping for a good year . I'm also hoping I find the electrical problem that is preventing me from being finished with this little gem.It's ready to sell , I have a friend interested ,all that is left is this damn electrical issue. Well ,perhaps we'll have a warm day next week at some point and I'll light the heater and get to it.I did fire it up, there were no issues with the motor so it's just one small problem away from finished now that I have all the paint work taken care of.
Happy New Year !
