About a week ago, a young man in a local FB motorcycle group posted some pics of a very sad Seca II. I contacted the seller, who wanted "a couple hundred" for it.
After talking a bit, I discovered a lot. He learned to ride on this machine. He put 4ooo miles on it (now showing 44k). He described a "starter" problem that wasn't the starter at all - what I know to be stripped idler gears - so he had been push starting it for awhile. When I investigated in person, I discovered a trashed rear shock, severly leaking forks - so bad I thought the fork lower was painted black - carbs that didn't like idling, front brakes so soaked with fork oil they were at best a suggestion, and a poorly-aligned rear wheel with a most unlikely nail in it. But hey, the chain and sprockets are new, and it is basically complete. We struck a deal for considerably less than "a couple hundred". Title and everything.
The sorry state of repair certainly provided an anxiety-provoking first year of motorcycling for that guy. Fond memories of my dumpster CB750 some 24 years ago solidly resonate.
Looks good from 10 feet away though...
I remember considering the Seca II back in 1998 when I bought my first new bike...
My girlfriend and I have been looking for a project bike. She rides a 1993 Suzuki GS500. I have a 1996 Suzuki Bandit 600 that I bought as a dealer leftover in 1998 for a great deal, and a big tourer/bagger - a 2014 Honda CTX 1300. I've worked on those bikes and numerous other bikes over the years, including a few CB750's back in the 90's. Adding one more small 90's bike to our fleet is perfect.
Of course, we have some work ahead of us. In addition to the starter idler gears, fork seals, brakes, and goopy gas tank repair, there is the matter of making it look good, too. I've already read a number of excellent posts on these fourms. I will ask for help. And probably parts.
I'll be selling some of the parts I'm not planning to use - the fairing and headlight assembly and gauge cluseter at least.
I have plans. Good plans. Turns out, a few of the reworked Seca II inspiration pics I found via Google are "radare" projects, whose handle I recognize from some of the helpful posts on XJRider! I discovered the source article on ADVRider just before making this post.
