1964 Honda CA160

 

Also known as the 'Baby Dream', I bought this one for $50, ostensibly for parts, but of course "Hey...! I can save this!" came into my head, so, yah...There Ya Go...

The PO said he "found this in muh field in a puddle, thought it might be useful to somebody." 

Riiiight....well, apparently that 'somebody' was me. I still don't recall exactly why I bought this...but I did...and if you ever need any more 'street cred' from THIS 'bike saver,' this is the story that'll do it.  Take a look...

The gas tank...note the blue paint - not red. And the rust...

The head - open spark plug holes are some Bad Juju...!

Oh, it just keeps getting better...here is the underside of said head...the valves are where...??

The cylinder head...looks like the surface of the moon! 

(To be fair, this cylinder head and pistons were shot, I had to replace them...).

...and how about these points?? Meh - a little WD40, maybe...NOT!!

And don't forget the stator...! EEEEKK!!  

You can actually SEE the waterline where this thing had laid in it's puddle of mud...! Meh- spray it down with some brake cleaner, it'll fix it right up...piece of cake! (Riiiight....!) Believe it or not, though, I actually cleaned this up and IT WORKED!

 

Here's some more bike porn - the starter...

...and her innards, with some kind of goop that I took to be old oil...clutch looks pretty good, though...maybe...

Yeah, she was a mess - I wondered if it would be worth it, but if any bike needed some saving, this was the bike that needed it - here's the shifter side of the engine...

Yeah, it looks bad, but at this point it's mostly just crapped-up parts that needed to be cleaned, so I dove right in and opened her up...

The transmission actually wasn't too bad, if you look beyond all the old, crappy oil...

The cases were pretty gnarly though...

Long story short, I went through her and did what I do, and I think she came out rather nicely...

'Back from the Grave', as it were. The sharp-eyed among you will notice some little things I still had to add here, like the clutch cable and side covers, turn signals and whatnot, but at this stage she was running well, and a lot of fun to ride up and down the street. 

I eventually finished her up and sold her, for about what I put into her, what with time, parts, paint and elbow grease.

Which brings up a good point - if you think you're going to get into motorcycle restoration to make a profit - well, you won't. Oh, you might be able to get a few hundred bucks over what you paid into the project, maybe even enough to finance the next project, but you won't get rich doing it. I do this because I love it - it's a great hobby to have and keeps me off the streets, so to speak, but I love to rebuild broken-down, unloved motorcycles because for me, the payoff is hearing something that hasn't run in years, decades even, fire up when you hit the starter and move under its own power; and you learn a lot about how things work (or don't work, for that matter). It's History come to life, and for me, there's no other feeling like it. Just sayin'.