Success

 So,the clutch job on the 1971 Yamaha R5 is good ! I took it out yesterday after writing the previous post and went for a 50 mile ride.All is good ! Upon my return I got to work on the Chevy C20.I got it started ,moved it out to the front of the driveway and power washed it.It's all ready to drive to the scrap yard this morning .After I get that chore finished I'm going to ride the R5 out east with a stop at this little bike shop I know of to get it inspected so she's all legal again. Sure felt good to ride my old friend again! I bought this bike way back in 1985 .Paid 185 bucks and she had about 5000 on the clock .Since that day I rode the crap out of it.Packing her up like a horse and hitting the interstate going to Mid Ohio to AMA's Vintage days 13 years in a row , the Japanese show in Pa more times than I can count , and all over New England and Northern NY for it. Now she has around 135,000 on it ! Here she is on one of her outings going to Mid Ohio .

And here she is out riding around locally the way most of her miles have been done.

I'm a 2 stroke guy .Rode nothing but 2 strokes from 1965 until 2007 when I bought my 1975 Moto Guzzi 850-T .I rode a 65 Yamaha across the country in 1969 2 up from NY to LA California then back to NY a year later, 

Rode my 1969 Yamaha DS6C up to Newfoundland in the mid 70's  .I still have this bike ! I restored in in the early 90's and use it often . This bike  and the R5 will never get sold as long as I'm still breathing !

Then and now photos .

The bike has been thru the ringer more than once.It was used ,abused,stolen , recovered ,rebuilt as a driver ,and finally restored.I've owned it for 51 years ! I do love my 2 strokes.Have quite a few of them and soon I will be thinning the herd some . I think this one is going to get sold next ,my 1966 Yamaha YM1 . I've owned this since 1989 and restored it back in the early 90's. She's been good to me but it's time to pass it on to someone else . This was the first bike I ever restored. I learned how to do paint work so I could do this bike and then went on to paint bikes for guys from all over the country.They'd ship me the parts ,I'd paint them matching the factory colors and paint schemes and ship the finished product back. Ah,the good old days when we did business thru magazines like Old Bike Journal and Walnecks before the internet ! They were good days.I made some life long friends doing this and trading parts.Painting bikes led to auto restoration where I also made some really good friends .

I restored this car in the mid 90's .It was a really fun project doing a ground up resto in my friends driveway !

This was a fun build and I enjoyed this car for a good 12 years before selling her .She looked as good the day I sold her as she did the day after I finished the build.Never saw the weather was always garaged and only used when the sun was shinning . I love working with my hands . Well,maybe this winter I'll go thru the Moto Guzzi , you know,get her all fixed up and ready to do a long distance ride like I did back in 2010 and 2014 . She's still a really good reliable running motorcycle that is capable of distance so this is the plan now.Go thru the entire bike .Spend whatever it takes and head out mid summer next year to the west.Get down to southern California by September,check out Arizona in late September  then head east across the south to the Barber Vintage Festival in early October before heading north up the Blue Ridge Parkway towards home. It's time to sell some shit to bankroll this adventure and get my Moto Guzzi ready for another good ride !