Registration Day

I guess, when you bring a motor vehicle into California, you have to register it, apply for the title change, pay use taxes, etc. right away. This was out of state and not registered, although I did have a valid title from Hector who ran out and got the title in his name before shipping it out for me. I had to get the VIN verified before registering it and they had to see the bike intact to do the VIN verification, so I had to rent a van, load it up and bring it to AAA. There was a little hiccup where the inspector didn't want to step up into the van to look at the numbers and the odometer, but she got someone out there who would and everyone was very helpful in dealing with a 1967 motorcycle where the numbers differed a bit from what they might have been used to...and now I have California plates for the bike! One day, I might look for CA plates from 1967 and buy those and get the registration transferred to those, but at least I'm legal.

We cleaned up the carburetors today, soaking them in a kerosene wash and cleaning them with scrubbers and wire brushes. We still have to clean them a bit more...we'll boil them in lemon juice as the acid apparently cleans them up well.

 

                 Before                                    After    

Tomorrow we're going to add fluids and new spark plug cables, clean it out a bit and at some point in the near future, we're going to see how it runs!  That was fast, eh??

Once we see how it runs, then we take it all apart, figure out what needs to be sent out for repair or bodywork, what gets replaced, what gets re-plated, re-chromed and repainted. We start hunting for replacement parts and cleaning up pieces that get re-chromed and re-plated. Every bolt gets cleaned with a wire brush and we "chase the threads" with a die to make it work better before it goes to cad-plating. Then they come back shiny and perfect!  :-)

It's very satisfying, I have to say. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I got to mow the grass. Part of it was that I got to drive the tractor — yet another vehicle I got to drive! However, that wasn't the whole reason I liked to cut the grass. I started doing it before I was allowed to drive the tractor. Sometimes they were power mowers, but I even liked pushing the little push mower! To me, it was the satisfaction of starting out with a messy looking lawn, with dandelions and weeds and grass of all different lengths. A little time on the mower, and it looked beautiful! Neat and straight and best of all, it smelled like cut grass. I still love the smell of cut grass! Taking a dirty sticky bolt that doesn't turn well and making it work perfectly and look beautiful is very satisfying. Even better if it's a whole part like a carburetor and with a little time and care, this device as complicated and simple as it might be, regains the ability to mix fuel and air to make a motorcycle run. Complicated and simple because this is what was being used in 1967 and yet I am so impressed that people figured out how to make this work and then to manufacture it! The complex electronic fuel injection these days is more versatile and efficient and I'm sure much less satisfying to fix. I wonder if a car that was born in 2010 will still be around 43 years from now. I suspect that the software used to fix it will be out of date, but Giovanni Battista Venturi's (1746–1822) "Venturi effect" will never go out of style!

Oh — so we did soak the carbs in hot lemon juice.


It smelled like Thanksgiving!