Trials and Tribulations, Restorations and Resurrections

There's no place I can be
Since I've found Serenity – Theme from Firefly

You may recall that I purchased a large, elaborate Victory Vision touring bike last year.  Because of its color and shape, I call it the Enterprise:

I have been, with a long lay-off, riding motorcycles for many, many years.  I started out more as a horseman, and I still love horses.  Horses will break your heart.  Not that that is a bad thing, it’s just a fact.  Bikes will break your bones and sometimes your heart, as I discovered in the ‘70s.  My cousin and life-long friend, Larry, talked me into going along to buy a motorcycle.  He wanted a Yamaha DT175.  We drove down the dealership on Porter Wagoner Boulevard.  They had two blue DT175s.  These were called “enduro” bikes, street-legal but dirt-oriented.  Now they call them “dual-sport” bikes, and they are a lot spiffier than those Yamaha dinner-buckets.  Anyway, Larry bought one and so did I. 

I got a job out of college and soon bought another Yamaha, an SR500 street bike, the big single, a thumper, tons of torque with modest top-end -- a throwback to the big Brit singles like the Royal and the BSA.  Both the SR500 and the DT175 I had bought new.  I was looking at the paper one day and saw a classified for a used Yamaha TY175.  The TY was an Observed Trials bike, and 175 was, for many, the preferred displacement.  These were really pure off-road machines, despite the head and tail lights.  They were designed to go over challenging obstacles – boulders, vertical or near-vertical outcroppings, climb mountains, ford streams -- all that stuff.  OT competitions were extreme before anyone was using the word extreme. 

I drove by after work to look at the bike being sold by a guy about my age.  The TY looked to be in pretty good shape and was at that time, 1977, only a couple of years old.  It didn’t look much different than this one:

Oh, wait, that is, in fact, the very same bike.  I rode the TY with great enjoyment for several years.  The DT ended up getting sold because I was desperate for money – wives and children are such a burden.  The SR was sadly wrecked, though I actually know where it is.  Hmmm.  Anyway, the TY got very hard to start, and I had little time or money to spend on it.  I fiddled with the carburetor, but I think the problem was probably somewhere in the breathing.  Rather than tear it down, I parked it in my parents’ barn with a promise to it to someday get back and get it going.

Years rolled on and I would see her sitting there in the barn from time to time, abandoned and forlorn, but very, very patient.  I moved a number of times, changed jobs, left the state, came back, and still she waited.

In 2008, my father passed away, my mother having gone on several years previous.  The old house where I was born and grew to adulthood along with the barns and outbuildings transferred to my older brother.  I went over a couple of weeks after Dad died to help clean out Mom’s attic and the barns, and there was the hopeless TY, pushed over on her side as if she were so much junk metal.  Like an archeologist collecting bones and pot shards, I loaded her in the back of my pickup and hauled her to a new barn where she could at least stand again upon the rotted tires that clung to her rims like hair on a mummy’s head. 

At first, she seemed to have regained her hope, but the demands of work, the constraints of time, tools and talent left both of us hesitant and unsure of the future.  I looked up parts on the internet, but the things I could do to restore her seemed rather a waste if I did not know that her finned heart would ever throb again with its rhythmic, keening song. 

Once more I loaded her in the truck and drove to the holy city to ask the advice of a high priest of cult.  He shook his head at the sight of her then, stepping across her spine, he tried the too-stiff crank.  Laying her back down, he offered no hope.   “I won’t take your money.” 

I returned her to the barn to stand again as but a marker, a shadow cast by a memory. 

Some time passed.  Each time I went to the post office, I passed a temple.  It was clearly a place of the dissenters, heretics, perhaps.  Normally, I would have shunned it, but the mute cries of the TY’s pitiable form stirred within me desperate visions.  I called and explained, offering great sacrifices just to begin, asking no promise of success.  These remote and rural covenanters can hardly be as delicate as their priestly brethren.  He accepted my offer, with manly honesty warning me the TY might end worse than she began, scattered and broken, even cannibalized.  It was a risk both she and I seemed to accept. 

The first report came in after about a month.  The challenge was great and the Watchers of the Blue Smoke would deign to look upon the TY but for a princely offering.  I hurried in with my sacrifice and the covenanter smiled upon it.  “The guardians of the ports will be pleased, I think,” he said encouragingly. 

The summer wore on, and I thought of the TY in her state of suspended animation.  I imagined her upon the hills, vibrating with life and rampant as she had once been.  It should be time, I thought, but no word came, and I was left to wonder. 

Finally, on September 14^th, glorious day, the covenanter called to say the TY was ready to come home.  It was raining after a summer of drought.  It seemed so appropriate, a good omen.  I arrived at the temple, and there she stood.  I stepped across her, and the little heart screamed to life on the second kick, just like always.  

****

From a practical standpoint, the restoration was a stupid thing to do.  I could have bought a much newer and probably better bike for what I spent bringing the TY back to life.  It still has a couple of weak points – one being the bend in the exhaust where it meets the block.  Too much moisture for twenty-plus years just about had it rusted through.  They built it up some with a weld, but it’s still thin.  The other question is the oil injection system.  These bikes will run pre-mix, but Yamaha was at the forefront of an injector system with the separate oil reservoir.  I had it on the DT as well.  It’s a much better system, obviously, when it works.  My mechanic warned me that this one was sticking a little and might not give full flow, so I’ll run pre-mix as well was keeping oil in the tank until we see how it goes. 

The bike runs great.  I have been climbing hills and trying out some obstacles.  I jumped a landscaping berm I have along the fence.  My wife said that is not what those are for.  These bikes are geared low and slow and are great for beginners, so I look forward to getting the grandkids on it now and then.  I haven’t done much in the way of wheelies yet.  I’m still getting my balance back.  Maybe I’ll post some pictures if I get the hang of it again.