Author Archives: Jim Harriger

and now, for something completely different…

On Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 19th, I helped a bud­dy get his (unique) motor­cy­cle down to Down­town HD in Ren­ton for a Vin­tage Bike show. Focus was on dirt bikes, and motor­crossers, but all sorts of inter­est­ing things came out of the wood­work. Here are a few of the pic­tures I took. Grab a tasty bev­er­age for … 

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Nearly ready for paint, prep, and parts-gathering

Well, with a few days off over the hol­days, I’ve got­ten the 305 Dream to the point where I don’t believe there is any­thing unsal­vagable here, and it won’t take an exor­bi­tant amount of mon­ey to put this thing back on the road in nice shape. The last few hours of work have been to get … 

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The engine begins to reveal it’s secrets

Well, I now have the engine out of the frame, and the cylin­der head and both side cas­es off. The news isn’t all bad. Most of the engine looks in fine shape inter­nal­ly, as you can see here: obvi­ous­ly, this engine has been sealed up, and has the low mileage indi­cat­ed by the odome­ter (5129).   …

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Part way through disassembly…

Well, I am part way through the dis­as­se­bly of our Hon­da 305 Dream project. Some has gpne pret­ty smooth­ly, a few bits are being obsti­nate. One of the easy parts was the cool alu­mini­um carb cov­er: the right hand engine cov­er is being obsti­nate, the screws are rust­ed and only 4 have bro­ken loose so far, … 

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Getting It Home

We have friends, very help­ful friends. The kind who have bots that cruise Craigslist for inter­est­ing motor­cy­cles for sale. And then post the best ones to mail­ing lists with a plain­tive “Who’s going to buy this one?” append­ed. Yeah, those guys. So on a not so sun­ny Sun­day we went off to look at a … 

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Event Report: Walker Valley, October 3, 2010

Anoth­er Sun­day in the Pacif­ic North­west, it looks like so many of it’s brethren, damp, over­cast, and dark. But it’s not rain­ing, so it’s not as bad as it could be. I put the rest of my gear (cof­fee, lunch, the few near­ly for­got­ten items) in the truck, snug down the tie downs on the … 

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Day 8: The Scooters of Oaxaca

A few days ago, I gave you a taste of the motor­cy­cle scene here in Oax­a­ca, at least those that are pressed into worka­day ser­vice. Today we look at scoot­ers here in Oax­a­ca, a species per­haps even more numer­ous than the work­ing motor­cy­cle. Frist off: in the above-men­­tioned dri­v­el, I men­tioned that every man­u­fac­tur­er here … 

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Oaxaca Day 3: the utility motorcycles

There are a lot of motor­cy­cles in Oax­a­ca, and the vast major­i­ty are work­ing motor­cy­cles, not recre­ation­al rides. Here are a few of the bikes I spot­ted today, includ­ing a few brands you prob­a­bly haven’t seen in the US. Every man­u­fac­tur­er rep­re­sent­ed in Mex­i­co has a 125 sin­gle, they are the work­hors­es of the city courier … 

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