OK then :)

My brother back in the UK has a somewhat disturbing fetish for early Goldwings. His goal has always been a first-year release in Red, which he has been unable to find over there. We hatched a plan decades ago to do R66 together, but with one thing or another, never managed to make it happen. Now he's retired the plan is to make both of these happen, so we went on a hunt and managed to find a good condition low mileage Red '75 that had spent the last decade+ standing in a dealer showroom on a plinth. That was delivered to a friend's shop a few months ago and we've been nibbling away at it ever since. The plan is to do a functional restoration over here so it can be ridden reliably, and then ship it back to Blighty for my brother to a more detailed, complete restoration.

Frozen brakes front & rear, decade-old petrol & oil, it had been wheeled into the dealeraship and never started since. It would start by using starter fluid but wouldn't run. We evicted the mice from their homes in the airbox and exhaust system and replaced their primary source of food with a new air cleaner. The fuel was revolting, it stunk up the shop so badly we were forced to leave for a few hours. The petcock didn't work so we thought we needed a new one - except that didn't work either...Turns out there are 2 steel tubes inside the tank that connect to the petcock and these were completely blocked; through a combination of wire brushes, pipe cleaners and compressed air they were finally cleared out and now both petcocks work just fine :) The corrosion in the fuel tank was horrible, so that's been soaking for a while in various nasty chemicals, but it is slowly coming clean. The carbs are completely gummed up and clogged - the only fuel flow was coming out all the wrong places - so they have been sent out to Goldwing specialist to be rebuilt - we blagged a 2nd set of '75 carbs from ebay in case these turn out to be unsalvageable.

When we removed the carbs we could see that the intake valve stems were covered in rust, so the next step is to remove the heads and give them to Rick@Harry's Machined Parts to have them babied. Once they're off we'll pull the cam belt tensioners and replace the pulleys with ones that are less than 45 years old ! The tensioners are NLA, but a trip to NAPA or Eastern Bearings will identify something dimensionally suitable - they actually look very close to 4G63T cam belt idler pulleys, so that will be my first stop since I've got a box full of them.

Suspension is in surprisingly good shape - the chrome on both the forks and the shocks is in perfect condition, the fork bottoms do not have the level of corrosion one would expect at this age, and the shock shafts are perfect. The shocks work smoothly and quietly and exhibit the same complete absence of anything vaguely resembling damping that I remember well from back when the Goldwing was launched - hard to lose damping if you had none to start with. The forks will be getting new bushings, seals, oil etc, but again, remarkably good condition for the age. The tyres are OEM size/brand/fitment - based on the mileage (and the amount of cracking) they could be the original tyres.

Originally my friend was going to do most of the work and I would liaise between the 2, however finding myself suddenly retired I will be getting more closely involved - of course perfect timing, right when gas jumps to $4.50/g and he's 60 miles away...

So that's where we are so far. Quite lucky there isn't the usual hodge-podge of seized/broken/cross-threaded fasteners. Not often you get that lucky with a 45 year old machine ! The paint job is in excellent condition with sufficient patina to give it character. There's a specialist in detailing vintage cars nearby, he wants to detail the bike so it should look pretty good after that.

In the mean time I have oil changes, tyre changes and a fork rebuild to do on my bikes, so my brother will have to take a back seat for the moment :)

Actually this probably should be a different thread seeing it has nothing to do with buying an 1190...