Second - The Green Hornet

Now the question of what bike to get as a 2nd bike came up. I continued to monitor ebay and the cycle trader. I was thinking about getting a bigger one for me, and was looking mostly at Honda and Yamaha 125's. The Honda Elsinore 4 stroke was a definite candidate. It's low end power was appealing to me, but I was concerned about having to maintain two different brands of bikes. The Yamaha 125 Enduro is very simlilar to the LT2, and shares many parts, and so I thought about getting one of those.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it would be better to get two bikes that were the same, so that they would ride comfortably together.

Then, as I was looking for some parts for the Yellow Hornet, in one of my many Yahoo searches, I came across an ad for a 1972 LT2 with extremely low miles, on a service called Monkey Ads. Hmmmm ... it wasn't on Ebay or in the Cycle Trader. It was in Tucson. Arizona. Hmmmm ... It still had the original green paint job in good shape. I was concerned still about registering it in California, but since the Yellow one had gone so smoothly, and I recognized this as a cherry little bike, I gave the guy a call.

He was asking $900 as I remember, but confessed that he had recently replaced the clutch and that it slipped and he didn't know what was wrong, so he knocked a $100 off for that, and another $50 if I would pay in cash, so I got the bike for $750. I got up early the next morning and drove out to Tucson. When I tried the bike, it rode good, though a little rough, like the carb was gunked a bit. I didn't notice any problem with the clutch, it had great compression and pop, and it was noticably quieter than the Yellow Hornet, without the piston slap, rattling in the gears, and with the factory silencer still in place. The key did not work to shut the motor off, so the guy just told me to pop the clutch to stop it.

When I got the bike home, I really began to appreciate what good shape it was in. The carburetor was misadjusted -- the air screw was all the way closed -- and when I opened it the factory specified 1.75 turns, the bike woke up! Wow. It was way better than the Yellow one. The only thing I ever found wrong with the clutch was that the adjustment screw for the push rod (in the LEFT DRY side of the crankcase) had not been set or tightened. And the key not working turned out to be a connector that had become unplugged, and was an easy fix.

This thing is pretty darned cherry. The oil pump works great, so there's no premixing needed. Original paint job. Original chrome air cleaner. It's tight and quiet (for a 2 stroke), the horns and all lights work (after I scared up a 6V flasher), and after a bit of time at the DMV, I got it registered and also insured as street legal in the state of California. I took it out for the first time to Corral Canyon, and more recently we took both bikes out to Sequoia National Forest for a little riding, and the Green Hornet never faltered!

Next - The Hitch Carrier ...