GETTING UP TO SPEED

After approximately six months of staring at classifieds of old motorcycles and dreamy cafe racer builds I decided to take the plunge and begin my own project.

While I have ridden dirt bikes all my life I have never tackles a project such as this. The key criteria for my build were:

  • Cheap,
  • A basic platform to begin with, and
  • Cheap
I had originally envisaged an old Honda CB project but this did not fit the 'Cheap' criteria. I decided a nold thumper dirt bike would be the ideal candidate.

After many nights of looking at other builds on the net of XT's, TT's, XL's and XR's, I decided the XR was the one. Not only were there a few floating around locally for sale, they were also cheap!

So without further adieu, here is the rough gem, the beast, the bullet proof XR600.


A 1996 (apparently - yet to be confirmed) XR600 picked up locally for $1,800. Km's unknown however ran well. For a nineteen year old bike it was in pretty good nick. Never the less, it still needed some TLC. Cracked front rim, missing decompression cable and a dodgy tacho just to name a few. The upside is these parts will all to be replaced as part of the build.

It would also appear the garage needs a little clean up!

Time to strip this old thumper down to see what I am dealing with.

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