Will This 48yr old FREE Bike Get me 253 miles Home?

last week Craig got a free motorcycle from a stranger in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and it had not ran in over 3 000 years and Despite All Odds oh no and all the naysayers this is even more almost impossible he got to run and smoke out the entire neighborhood in the process but now he's got to ride this rusted out death Mobile on the world's most dangerous Highway the killer nator that's not what it's really called but it does have a lot of potholes and it's pretty awful but before Craig can do that he's got to fix this this this this this this and definitely this and get a drink of water and go to the bathroom and he probably has to eat something somewhere in between there so as you can see there's still a ton of work to get this thing ready for the road getting it running was one thing now if we just have more work to do as you notice there's no gas tank the gas tank was completely rusted out so we have to improvise a gas tank we don't have any front brakes the tires are a little iffy and we're missing the bracket for the throttle cable now that's a really important piece and what that does is it actually holds the throttle cable in place so that when you twist the throttle things move and it works so we're gonna have to figure that out as well there's also a bunch of other stuff that we need to do to get this thing ready for the road most of which we're just going to act like we never saw so we're going to tackle the two obvious problems first the gas tank and the throttle cable linkage those are two things that without those we're definitely not putting any miles on this bike once we have that done we'll see what happens so I got out my trusty tool pouch and started doing what I do second best wrenching on stuff can't forget to tighten up those carburetor boots because an air leak could mean the death of this bike a little gas in there and with a little whiff of the old fire spray some throttle twisting and a prayer it was back up and running getting me excited for this ride home titling hey look at that magic Dan come here and look at my throttle bracket fix I fixed it oh man hot dogs I ate a mosquito around now I feel pretty good had to get a little excitement build up this morning we have the throttle cable kind of fixed just don't tell my mom I did that and now uh gas tank we're gonna put a gas tank on here hopefully we can make something work we're gonna take some laps around this parking lot before we hit the open Highway all right Craig let's see your gas tank fix it better be a gas tank oh my gosh you'll be happy Dan it is an actual gas tank they're good well let's see here there throttle still works do you have any Honda parts you can throw on it yeah I know right oh blasted what are you reaching I'm trying to get my straps Mama didn't raise no dummy tank straps the only straps I use when strapping down the tank obviously kind of don't want to mess up this tank what do you mean you don't want to mess it up it's messed up no it's not this is a perfectly patina dt250 tank huh I ain't going nowhere you just need a zip tie to hold that all together so far so good beautiful here's the deal guys I've been doing this a long time don't do this at home there's six million things wrong with this whole thing but I'm a trained professional or at least that's what my W-2 says but no really guys like be safe when you do this okay now we need some fuel Rod oh wait a minute I don't even know if I need fuel line because there's a line right here look at this Dan look that fits right on there Craig something feels wrong after everything that happened yesterday too many things are falling into place today hey you need a win every once in a while all right let's close this because the air filter was gone the air filter is a foam filter that's been rotted away for years so I cleaned out the air box and none of those pieces got sucked up into the carburetors oh we got to put these side panels on because it just looks horrible without them I'm so excited to try to ride this thing good to see here put that on there we should also cut these zip ties because so they're not flapping around scratching you well yeah we just don't want to look like a bunch of hacks I don't necessarily trust this oil injection system so I'm mixing my fuel bypassing the the oil injection these systems are actually really solid and it'll probably work if I perched it out and whatever but we're missing the cap for the oil tank and time and all that stuff bypassing that putting oil right in the tank because we want to ride now I don't know if this tank actually holds gas or if the petcock works but you were so proud of this tank all right what do we got here Fellers gas on okay this one yeah I don't know you don't know what that hose is this one yeah no it's probably a van or some that might have had a vacuum operator petcock on oh okay I don't know we'll see so far it hasn't stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do so I'm not going to worry about it at the moment all right here we go okay I have at least two gears and squeaky breaks so those are so good I don't think he's gonna live [Applause] okay obviously it's not running great but it's running good enough for us to put some miles on it I'm excited how old does it stop slowly did you figure out what that hose does yet nope all right hopefully we don't find out later violently we should be all right we got the two main things sorted out that was getting a gas tank on it getting that throttle cable bracket on handle that with some zip ties and ratchet straps and whatnot the rest are just going to act like we don't know about horrible advice what do you guys say let's ride let's ride and so I set out on my 300 mile journey home on this extremely questionable bike here we go and we're off oh man this is gonna be a fun ride boy this thing is uh really fluctuating on the idol it really wants to climb and hang on the high idle and what that means is it's running really super lean which makes sense because there's not an air filter in it because that was gone we have turn signals we have lights guys I can't believe this bike's running we'll see how long it runs that was so much fun I gotta say I'm a fan of Two Strokes there's just something about getting on an all two-stroke motorcycle an old two-stroke street bike that is it's just so much fun and if I can just keep it from blowing up we'll be good what a gem oh boy oh boy gotta stop gotta stop gotta stop gotta stop gotta stop gotta stop gotta stop I can't stop brakes do not hold me on this hill at all my tachometer stopped working there's a thing called cover the clutch and whenever you're on the bike that's sketch you always want to cover the clutch and what that means is keep your hands on this clutch and if anything starts going awry man you just grab that thing for all it's worth and hopefully it'll get you out of trouble foreign I can't stop I can't I'm all on breaks that's full break I got I gotta do something all right we are literally less than a mile into this trip and if you know anything about Pittsburgh this city was built on a hill it's all a hill everything's downhill so we came down the first big hill and the brakes didn't stop me they barely slowed me down so I gotta do a little finagling here because that's not gonna work in a city full of Hills I think what we're gonna do our first step is we're just going to tighten up the rear brake a little bit see if we can get some more action out of it and if that doesn't do it we're gonna have to take more drastic measures you just tighten it down it's that easy we're just gonna take this adjuster nut here and we're gonna turn that in a little bit and now hopefully that'll give me a little more pressure on the brakes one more spin for good measure there we go and Blake is not dragging yet so let's take a spin here and see if that's any better oh it feels better already oh yeah I can lock them up now okay game on oh man dude that would have been bad so what I had to do to get out of that situation is I just shut the bike off I had it in first gear and then I used the clutch to just get me into that parking lot so I didn't hit this corner without any brakes that hanging idle is an issue but we'll get through that so now that my first brush with that death is over I decided it was time to go for round two and really test what this bike can do okay so our first stop on this epic germy journey is Canton Avenue Canton Avenue is the steepest street in the country and here we go I'm getting some funny looks up here our goal was to take the bike up the steepest road in the country but I didn't really consider what was going to happen when I had to come back down the hill not having front brakes oh my gosh you're squeaking again this is awesome this is sketchy all right we made it we didn't die now for my next trick we just conquered the steepest hill in the country up it and down that's both ways and that was exhilarating this is going to be a fantastic trip oh man we just cruising oh man we're gonna go through a tunnel that is awesome man I hope it doesn't break down in the tunnel hey if it breaks down into the tunnel just get up behind me and push me the rest of the way through oh oh wow look at this we go under a tunnel then over a bridge hey there's the stadium that's where the sports ball teams play there's the river this is Three Rivers here [Music] foreign oh no another tunnel Squirrel Hill let's get squirrely his Idol's hanging it's almost like cruise control I haven't been on the throttle for a while and I'm still going 50. so the Idol's hanging because it's like super lean it's just gonna cause a hanging idle and a high idle oh this this is sucking vacuum I bet you I can if I close this hose off down here I think it'll run better yeah oh cool Bridge what's happening I don't know I might be running out of gas oh no this thing's shutting off okay shutting off I'm out of gas the bridge yeah I got it on reserve and we're back up and gone but we're gonna need to find a gas station wow that was that was close I didn't want to run out of gas on that bridge that would have been bad disaster averted Craig oh should we run V power Nitro that just makes sense I don't know I think we're just gonna run this so what's the deal here I got a two gallon tank ish oh shoot I hope I left enough room for oil we'll see what happens two gallons a little glow glow glug whenever I mix right into the tank like this I always turn my petcock off because the oil has a tendency to migrate right to the bottom so you turn your petcock off stop that shake it up good then turn your petcock back on oh man I can't fit anything else in there that's for sure okay so what I learned on my journey is this is in fact a vacuum hose so we probably have a vacuum leak Quick Fix we're going to fold this over on itself and zip tie it like that nailed it all right now the bike's going to run amazing no more problems none all right shake this up oh boy I got gas spilling out turn that on hit the road again Craig man that started right up I barely pushed the button it's getting bad gas mixed up we hit the road and the bike is running better than ever I can't tell if I'm getting extremely lucky with this one or if it's the beginning of the end and you two stroke guys know what I mean a dollar car wash guys stop washing my truck oh I love these dancing guys jerky we should stop in for jerky at Steel City turkey featuring turkey but today only guys this just goes to show this thing has been sitting for 37 years in a garage what I gather is the fellow that owned it bought it new in 75 and then somewhere in the mid 80s started having a family and the bike just sat and it sat for 37 years stories like this are all over the country bikes like this are all over the country you guys you gotta find yourself one of these bikes and dig it out of that garage or out of that barn and get it running I'd probably spend a little more time getting it ready for the road than I did but this just goes to prove like you can do it turned out to be a great day fellas the rain held off we got skies of blue clouds of gray slight breeze I got a wedgie now just to be clear sir everybody's on the same page I did the exact bare minimum to get this bike to start and run and then ride it like the bare minimum tell me what you would have done different in the comments try it number 19 the pickleball Club that's funny I'm losing power and I can't tell if it's because we're going uphill I don't know if this thing's gonna idle now it's like idling low oh come on okay you doing okay yeah the bike's not running as good as it was I don't know if I'm experiencing uh the beginning signs of a soft seizure but we're gonna keep running it until it doesn't run anymore yeah I don't know it's just not quite running as well as it was [Music] come on girl I am definitely losing power come on that smells great it burns more oil off I don't know it feels almost like it's getting a little tight in the motor it kind of feels like I'm down the cylinder let's find a spot to pull in maybe we'll check spark plugs see if that'll tell us something oh I'm losing all power here fellas I'm done I'm done oh shoot okay we're gonna turn in here something's going on [Music] I don't know but it it's definitely oh boy that's looking like it's uh pretty hot we may have roasted a cylinder what does that mean it means uh we we burned up the motor Let's uh tell you what we're gonna do we're gonna let this cool down for a minute and then I'm gonna pull out the spark plugs and we're gonna see what we have going on and uh yeah that's where we're at all right fellas as you can see we got some smoke coming out of the one exhaust pipe it's for the right cylinder and look at this look we got oily spooge here oh we got oily we got oily and that is dry what does that mean well it means it's not oily is what it means we're gonna pull if we're gonna pull a spark plug out though see what we can see I was really losing power uh it was definitely down at least a cylinder almost started feeling like it was getting a soft seizure so the Pistons were just starting to get tight on the cylinder walls I don't know we're gonna see what we're gonna I don't know oh boy what happened that is it's a charge that is lean as can be that's starting to burn okay well I see the problem what there's a hole in the top of our piston uh uh all right so here's the deal we got a hole in the top of the piston and that was probably caused when I was heading up that one big uphill once the plug starts nibbling away at the top of the piston and creating little imperfections those little imperfections are thinner and just get hotter and hotter and hotter made a hot spot blew a hole through the Piston unfortunately now we had molten aluminum going down into the motor we are dead in the water right now guys dang it I was really having fun riding this bike so that's it fellas that's the end of this ride unfortunately and that's a bummer because I was really having a lot of fun but we have a hole in one of the Pistons and I think we have a hole in our gas tank because it's dripping gas on this side fortunately we gotta call it we got to pull the plug but you know what I'm calling this a victory we dug this bike out of a garage it was sitting for 37 years we got it to run and we rode it over 50 miles to where we're at now that's a win I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I did we're having a lot of fun don't forget to subscribe and check out this video right here I know you're gonna love it foreign

Channel: The Bearded Mechanic

Views: 518,454

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Id: 09X3To898WU

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023