What Damage was Done to this Forgotten Yamaha Motorcycle?

Well, did I get myself into a pickle? Here's the deal. Dan and I are just a couple dudes trying to make all this work, and Christmas snuck up on us, and then I didn't realize how busy the post office gets along with everybody else in the world. Long story short is, we have a bunch of new merch coming, and we were hoping it was gonna be year in time for Christmas, and it still might be. However, here's what we're gonna do. So I got some cards printed. Has a nice picture on the front, has a nice little note on the back. Since our merch isn't here yet, it is stuck on the mail donkey. We're gonna be pre-ordering the merch. Now, we are supposed to have it the week of December 15th, so I can't promise getting it turned around and to your loved one by Christmas morning. What I can do, though, is ship you these cards. So instead of getting the actual shirt or sweatshirt, you're gonna get a nice card that you can wrap up and give to your loved one. I also have something else that is really awesome, and I'm super excited to share. I didn't even open it yet. This is exciting, Dan. Check it out. We got the new Bearded Mechanic shop aprons. They will also be in stock super, super quick. This is actually, we got a pocket, flashlight pocket. We got some branding. These are made with a fire-resistant coating on them, so whether you're grinding in the shop or torching that axle off or even cooking burgers at home, your apron's not gonna catch on fire. These things are super awesome. I'm pumped. Guys, that's where we're at. Thanks for letting me do a little housekeeping as we come into the Christmas season. Let's see what we got going on with this bike and get to the video. We bought this bike back in November of 2023. It was sitting in a guy's garage for, I don't know, 10, 15 years, and we bought it with the idea of getting it running and riding it home. I don't really remember why we didn't get that accomplished, so let's go back to the Highlight Reel and see if we can figure that out. Tank needs clean. There's a lot of rust in there. Found a garden hose here, ran a garden hose out, so I'm gonna hose that out. I don't know what else to do. What's the worst that can happen? Oh, yeah, that'll get us all the way till it stops. Stop. Craig, you made it out the driveway! I made it out the driveway! So we loaded the bike up and brought it back to the shop, and I thought, you know what? This is a really neat bike. But how much money can we make if we get it back on the road and try flipping it? Look, here's the deal. What? That was 685 days ago, 683. I don't know. And this bike has done nothing but sit since then. You see, here's what happened. Why do we just stack stuff? Every time there's a flat area, we stack stuff on it. Oh, this is where we hang our extension cords, I guess. Mm-hmm. You're gonna get rid of my extension cord hanger. Well, here, let's just hang it on another bike, right? What the heck? Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that later. So the plan was to flip this bike, and honestly, guys, I had all intentions of doing that. We put fresh tires on it, went through the carburetors, I don't know, fresh plugs, oil change, yada yada, whatever we did. I don't even remember if I'm being perfectly honest. Flashback for a second and see if you can figure out what all we did. We have a brake light? Yes. All the lights are working, the horn's working, oil's changed, air filters are drying, so we can oil them, tires are coming, chain is lubed. And with the new set of tires installed, it was time to move on to more important stuff, like which lower fairing to use. Then, back to that pesky gas tank. I cleaned out the petcock and installed new diaphragms, along with new fuel line, fuel filter. That's what we did to this thing. So then we took a bunch of glamor shots, wrote up a description, hit publish on the old Facebook marketplace, and pretty soon emails were coming in. So the following day, I thought, well, I'm gonna ride this thing to work, because we went through all the effort to get it riding. When I turned the petcock on to let fuel flow, the carburetors overflowed. I don't know, sticky flow, bum float needle, I don't know what was going on. So I did what any self-respecting motorcycle mechanic would do, and I turned the gas back off, parked the bike, and it has literally been sitting since that day. 685 days ago. So today, what we're gonna do is discover it again for the first time. You know, we'll peek in the tank. I already know what the tires look like, because we replaced those a couple years ago. We're gonna probably have to pull these carburetors apart again, see what's going on in there. Yeah, would you believe the battery's dead? Fresh battery, probably gonna have to pull these carburetors, get them freshened up, do whatever else it takes to get this thing up and riding. You see what's happening here, fellas, and fellat, is we got some bikes. We do? And things. There's bikes in here? Yeah, we got a couple bikes in here. And to be perfectly honest, they probably all need just a little bit more work. Gonna work at Revan needing that, and I want a couple bikes sitting here in the shop that we can actually hop on, fire up, and go ride, because there's a lot of fun riding to do, and when you just got broke bikes, it's no fun. Anyway, let's get to work. This is a 1987 Yamaha FJ 1200, pretty cool bike. Now, these weren't green originally. This would have been a different color. Forget what colors they had, maybe a red, maybe a black, I don't know, but they didn't have this green. We got a full set of Kerker exhaust, and I do believe it is a complete Kerker system and not just slip-on, so I'll have to look. We'll dig into that here in a bit. But the bike is complete, it is intact, it is a nice bike. Let's see what it looks like in the tank after sitting. No, that's not the key, what's this key for? What the Harry? Uh-oh, there's too many, that'll help something. Well, I'll be dead. Okay, anybody wanna buy a Yamaha FJ? First sale, cheap. Needs a carb clean, probably needs to clean out the tank, don't have the key for it, have a good weekend. Well, now that's just dumb. All right, let's see if there's something else we can figure out how to make work, like the seat. Wow, it's just, it's loving everything I'm doing. There we go. Oh, I figured out why the battery's dead. Wait, wait, wait, did you start cannibalizing this bike to fix other bikes? I hope not. Okay, well, this one does the helmet lock in the seat, that's good to know. This one also do the ignition, also does the ignition. See, that one does say Yamaha, I have a feeling this is the one. Does this work in here? Oh, it works in there too. Great news, we got three keys and none of them work. Wow, let's just, that spray I put in there, we're just gonna let that chachas choo-choo for a bit. We don't need to open that. Let's see if this thing will start or puke gas or do something like it was doing. Oh my gosh. What? Did you find the battery? Yeah, look at this, hold on. I've been looking for this for about, well. Since you parked the bike. Since November of 2023, and I found it, look at this. Man, I wonder where that thing went. Dang it, this thing is, I forgot this thing's missing an air box. It's got pod filters. You don't like pod filters? No. They look so neat. Yeah, so cool. See that red-handled thing down there? Oh my gosh, you lost a tool? Yeah, that's my good fuel line clamp that I have been looking for for the last two years. So apparently what I did is, because this thing was puking gas, it probably just upset me. I threw that on there to make things stop and then I ripped the battery out and parked it. Maybe if you unclamp it, it'll like depressurize the inside of the tank and you'll be able to turn the key. Well, what I'm not liking is, look at that fuel filter. See how nasty that is? Yeah. Yeah, that's probably what the inside of the tank looks like. Should we try to fire it up? Yeah. Should we? Yeah. I mean, it's got awful gas in it. A clamp on the hose. And it's got a clamp on the hose. Just unclamp the hose and let's go. Let's go, he says, let's go. Battery that can slide in there. Hopefully. All right. I may or may not have cracked my arm bone. You drew blood. I did draw blood. The blood doesn't hurt though. It's the bone on the inside that hurts. I dropped the motorcycle on my arm a few minutes ago. Which as some of you may know is ill-advised. Yeah, don't do that. Now my arm hurts. I must've known something was up though because I got a carb repair kit that was sitting here and it says FJ 1200. So I must've ordered that at some- You're just trying to investigate like yourself. Yeah, I must've ordered that at some point. Detective Craig is on the case. Hey-o! High beams are on. Yeah. Look at that. Those are lights. We got winkers? Yeah, I see lights on. Are the winkers working? Yeah, you have both of them. Both winkers. Look at that. That's a cute little horn. Let's hit the go button. Well, you got to unclamp the hose, right? Do I? Oh no, that's not good. I got paint bubbling. Uh-oh. Yeah. There we go. Lift off. There it is. Yeah, look, man. This was the red one. Here, show a picture. Look how they masked it, my boy. This is a cool one. Shame. If you spin around a couple more times and say go juice and look in a mirror, it'll- So what? All right. There it is. Go juice, go juice, go juice, go juice. Hey. Listen, I'm Kirkers Rorker. Why is it stalling out though? Well, because we're trying to run it off of, it's not even gas. It's like muddy, rusty, old, rusty varnish. Let's pull this off. This is why you want to grease those while you put them in. All right. This is really cool. Right here, you can adjust your dampening for your rear shock. Yo, look at this. So I don't know exactly how this works. This says pull, but here's a knob. Here's a knob. That does something. I don't know. But look, look back in here. Can you see that chain? Look, that thing that says pull with this little second knob comes down through here to this gear and there's that little chain on. It runs over to the top of the shock and at the shock collar, it's rotating the preload ring on the shock. That is way cool. We're going to have to investigate that a little bit. I didn't know that that's how they did that. That's really neat. All right. Anywho, we're taking the tank off. In a sense, we adjust suspension if we can't ride the bike, right? What's this bike's name? I don't know, but I feel like we should name this bike. Fred Jones. Guys, if you have a good name for this bike, put it down in the comment section and let's see if we can name it. I think that would be fun. Maybe some of the bikes we're messing with, we name. Flappy James. I kind of like Jane. Jane? Something with a J. Fanny Jane. I got a lot of stuff to do, so let's let it up to the comment section, see if they come up with any good ideas. Yeah, like I said, I had every intention of flipping this bike and moving it on, but when the carbs started puking and it just probably wasn't right, I couldn't pass something like that on to another fella. Yeah, so this is one of those Petcocks. The way these work is, so we have an electric reserve. So the way this works is here, you have a switch up here. You can turn reserve on, off. That switches the Petcock and then puts you on reserve. Let's investigate this here quick. See how gross this is. I mean, look at this fuel filter, guys. Like, it is pretty gnarly. You're not gonna run a bike off of that? No. Cleaner stuff was coming out of the other end of the filter, luckily. I really screwed the proverbial pooch on this one, damn. Now will this thing come off? Oh, forgot those were in my lap. There we go. Oh yeah. That's 1,200 cc's of Yamaha Fury. Good work, Mr. Yamaha. Good work. That's our vacuum for our Petcock. Petcock! Oh, t-shirt idea. Petcock! Let's pop this off too, since we don't need to fire this thing up anytime in the next few minutes. Okay, that's unhooked. We have to unhook the bottom sides of our cables. There we go. Nailed it. Now we got a set of carburetors. We need a J-Pan. Mikuni. Mokuni. Mikuni. Mokuni. From Japan. Made in Japan. Oi. Eek! God bless you. I think what's going on, Dan, is I'm allergic to dirty carburetors. Huh. Dan, you know what? Tell me, what? I didn't clean anything up from the last project, so. So it's a day that ends in one. I'm just kidding, Craig. Sometimes you clean up. That's really elegant cleaning up you're doing right there. That's really great. Now you're gonna have really fun finding stuff later. Yeah, that won't come back to bite me. Oh my gosh. Well, there's your problem. What? What happened? It's growing stuff. Oh! What the? We cleaned these out. Yeah. Two years ago. That fast? That fast. It's gonna just grow a fungus? Yep. How wild is that? What did you do to let a fungus grow among us? It's what I didn't do, Dan. Oh. And what I didn't do was use ethanol-free gas, and I probably did not put, since I didn't use ethanol gas, I should've used some sort of stabilizer, and I didn't. We got goo and schmoo all over these carburetors. Gonna take a little work. Here's what's gonna happen, because I've been realizing, guys, I've cleaned a lot of carburetors. Cleaned a lot of carburetors. I don't mind cleaning carburetors, but I cleaned a lot of carburetors. What's going on is, every time I have to do this stuff, it just slows everything down and slows everything down. So I'm actually gonna throw these float bowls back on, and I'm gonna drop these carburetors off at my buddy's shop. It's kind of like my Mr. Miyagi's old-school, old-timer guy. He was actually a Yamaha mechanic at dealerships back in the 70s. He knows about everything there is to know about making stuff work. Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything. So I'm gonna drop these off at him, so he can go through them, get them cleaned up and dialed in for us, while I figure out some of the other stuff that's going on with this bike. I still wanna make sure all of our fluids are good. It's been sitting a while. I'm probably gonna be pulling brake fluids and swapping that out. I wanna see what those wires are. Yada, yada, yada. We wanna get this thing back on the road, and we wanna get it back on the road safely. And I'm guessing I just had a hung up float. Honestly, that day that it started leaking, if I would have taken a hammer handle and started tapping float bowls, I could have probably gotten it to stop, but I didn't. I was just kind of fed up with it at that point. Okay, so I'm gonna button these up. I'm gonna drain them out, so they don't puke fuel all over. All right, button these back up. Oh, you know what else I gotta do? Figure out how to get that gas cap open, so that I can clean the tank, because seeing what was in that fuel filter, this fuel system is gonna need some attention. Okay, I have a rack of carburetors I'm gonna send down the road to my buddy. He's gonna get these all dialed in for us. I got enough other work to do here. Okay, so while carburetors are out getting cleaned and re-jetted for the pods, I need to figure out this gas tank. I need to figure out a way to get fuel to the tank. Next step. So, I think first thing we wanna do is, let's clean the tank off a little. Okay, that's cleaner. Who do we got? What do we got? That's paint flaking off. That's a shame. We need to get this open. So there's our sending unit. We got our peckhawk. Let's see if we can get into the top. Oh, I wish you guys could smell this. That's great. Oh, there we go. Okay, that was easy. All right, let's get you in there for a peek. See, there's the sending unit. That's the float right there. Okay, it's not awful. So what I think I'm gonna do is get this drained, and then we're gonna put some evaporust in it for a couple hours, maybe overnight, we'll see, and get everything cleaned up. This here, I do need to address. Gotta get this working too. Okay, next I gotta get all that old fuel out so we can get some better stuff in. This tank is now clean. Actually, it came in over the weekend. That's not true. Greg came in over the weekend. Ah, there's still a little stuff in there, but we got it as clean as we could get it. I also took the peckhawk apart because this here is actually a vacuum-operated peckhawk, and it plugs in because it has the electric reserve on it. So that is clean and rust-free now. This is our sending unit. This was a little gnarly, but that's all pretty good now. I don't know if it still works. We could probably test it if we wanted to. Here, let's see if we can do this. So if we go to ohms, ohms. Ohms. Oh, there we go. About 100 ohms there and seven ohms there. So our sending unit is working because all that is is a potentiometer. It works off of resistance. Okay, so that can go back in the tank. Like I said, the tank is about as clean as we're gonna get it. It's soaked in evaporust for a few days. It has been rinsed out a bunch. It's been dried for a day or two. Why am I spraying this? I'm talking to the camera, for crying out loud. It's been dried for a couple days, been blowing it out. I got almost everything out that I can get out. So, I think we're getting ready here. I'm gonna give it one more dousing of this. I don't know. Still hear some rattling. A little bit. I think a fuel filter will get the rest. Where'd my flashlight go? All right. It's a lot better than it was. All right, let's put the sending unit back in. This is always like a puzzle. And I did mark this before I pulled it out so I knew where my ultimate goal was. I got a mark here and a mark here. Just like that. Get this tank in. And I have the battery on the charger. And then our carburetors are gonna be done. Hot glue's all they use at the factory. So, that's all I'm gonna use. We're gonna stick this thing back down. There we go. Put this back on. Okay, so I think that tank is gonna be ready to go back on. Carburetors. Picked up the carburetors. You know what? We gotta put the lid back on too. That's working now, right? Should be. I put a lot of penetrant on this thing. Should be working. Added a part. Had it clean. So, it should be fine. Hey, hey, it's working. I do believe. Does it? Can you open it again? Here, I'll be the judge of that. Which key is it? Probably the one that says Yamaha on it. Oh my gosh, it works. I'm really excited to have a bike like this ready to go on the road. These are always comfortable cruising bikes. Great bike to just hop on and go for a ride on a Saturday morning. Hold up, the FCR's ready to go on the road too, isn't it? It is, but this is a different bike. You know, it's, hey, it's twice as many CC's. So, it's gotta be twice as good. Oh, twice, yeah. And the handlebars are up as high, higher. I don't have to lay down as far. My wrists won't hurt. I'm not getting any younger, Dan. I just mean, I'm generally happy that we have multiple, you know, road worthy bikes. So, our goal here, or what we're trying to do here, wrapping up the year, is getting a bunch of these bikes that are just not quite there, there. Now, this bike is running pod filters and Kirker exhaust. So, these mains were opened up and the pilots were opened up. Fuel screws are at two and a half. It's got a 120 main in it and a 40 pilot. The needles on the third clip, there are adjustable needles in here. Now, we never did really go through and rebuild these carburetors. I think we gave them a quick bath. I don't remember what we did, if I'm being honest, but they were completely disassembled, cleaned up, put back together, and everything should be good. We have all new O-rings on our T's, on our fuel fittings. I'm excited. Let's get these things in the bike and we're going to put that tank on. Take that, box. All right, this is my pull. Means this one is going to come down on the back side. I wonder if I should heat these boots up a little bit. Jeez. Cool, I'm liking it. Beautiful. Okay. Air filters. These things are clean and oiled. Can and pod filters. Do, do, do. I think what we should do next is hook up our carb sink, hook up our IV bottle, get some gas to this thing, and fire it up. Do a carb sink and see where we're at. Do you like it? Okay. Here's our first battery we're going to put in. For the fuel tank vent. All right, that's charging. There's two blacks and two reds. One is feeding, one set's feeding this, which I guess is an old school battery tender. The other side's feeding this mess here, which I believe is running up to here. And this audio thing and those switches. Not necessary. Audio thing? It's either audio or heated shield, or now it's like heated shield. What kind of audio? Like a, just like a beeping? Whatever that is. Like a warning beep? That plugs, maybe it was for like a, I think it's for a radio? Or like a GPS or something. Okay, so we should do fuel off the IV so that we can check our sink. All right. Okay. So we're going to pop all this wacky stuff off. Fuel, we need fuel. Where's your fuel? I don't know, Dan. Where'd you put your fuel? Isn't this fuel? Yeah, but I'm looking for the IV. Oh. Oh, right here. It's right here. Fuel in the bottle. Put fuel in the bottle. It's like a, it's like a country song backwards instead of drinking from the bottle. Oh yeah. Putting some back in the bottle. All right. That should get us started. Before getting the dog back, and the kids back, and the wife back. All right. Let's shoot some fuel through this thing and see what happens. Oh boy. There it's coming, there it's flowing. Okay. Let's turn the sink on. Let that calibrate. Man, this could be the best this bike's ever ran. Well, since we found it. We're about to find out. Let's fire this thing up. Whoa. I can smell it. Well, I mean, we really can't get much closer on the carb sink than that. What does it say? It's between 68, 69, 70, and 71. There's a flashing back and forth. 69, 68, 70, 72. I guess maybe we could. We're going to try to bring these. These two are matching pretty well. See if we can get them to come together. Doesn't have a real fuel smell to it coming out of the exhaust. It's more like it's just cobwebs. Man, it sounds good though. Let's take the digi sink off. Cause that's all dialed. Pop that off. I got to put that vacuum line on. That other vacuum line runs to the tank. Not to the tank. It runs to the petcock. Those get capped. And then let's throw this tank on. And then let's see how this thing rides. Tank. So this just gets slipped up in there. Now we got to hook up the petcock. This is probably supposed to be over here. This is fun. This is like a puzzle. This is just like a puzzle. Love your puzzles. Love my puzzles. I think men or some men are just wired for that kind of stuff. Just wired to figure out puzzles. We want to be problem solvers, fixers, maker betterers, maker betterers. Also want that fuel tank to sit up there where it needs to be. Let's see if I can jam some fuel line up there. Okay. Okay, Dan, okay. Okay, you okay now, Craig? I'm more than better, okay. You okay there, Craig? You see that movie Fargo? Is that the one where like the lady does this stuff to the guy? I guess. She was so mean. Who was so mean? That lady. That lady? Why'd she have to do that? Is it because she was lonely? Not sure that I agree with you 100% on your police work there, Lou. Are we talking about the same movie? I don't know. Like the pregnant police woman? Think of the one where like a guy crashes his car and this lady takes him in, but like holds him hostage. It's like Deliverance. No, that's the one with the canoes. Deliverance. No, that's all dudes, yeah. What was that movie? Fargo? Oh, that was the guy who like planned like a kidnapping of his own wife. I really, she put like a two by four between his ankles and hit him with a hammer to like break his ankles. Oh, I don't remember that. I don't, I don't think that was in the movie. Might be thinking something else. All right, well, let's see if we can find the plastics and the seat for this bike. Okay. Let's do that. Man, how good does it feel to be clearing that shelf off? Dude. Yeah. We've got Busa plastics on there yet and that's it. What's this? Hey, that Busa, you're next. It's a shame that these aren't red and white anymore. A little grease, helps them slide on easy so you don't break them. Helps them slide off easy the next time too so the next guy don't break them. Cause that next guy might be you. You don't want to break them. And you don't want to break them. Now let's see what we can do. There we go. Been a while since this bike has been back together, back together. Cool. You want to hand me that seat there please? Let's see here. Let's seat here. Let's seat right here. Holy cow, crack. I like a bike together. That's a whole bike. Just like that. No, it wasn't so hard. I don't know why I waited so long. Funny you had a tool lost just sitting in that bike for like a full year. No idea how long I looked for that tool. Dude, it sounds really good. Fuel gauge isn't working though. Fuel gauge isn't coming up. Oh. Should come up. You know what this thing needs Dan? A quick wipe down and a ride. Oh, and a license plate. You agree? I agree, yes. All right, let's do it. Wipe and ride. Wipe and ride, wipe and ride. Man, I've been looking forward to getting this bike riding for a while. Is he going to come in here? I don't know. I'm going to beat him wherever he's going. Great day for a ride. A little chilly. I do have pretty fresh tires. So we'll take it easy. Why do I keep taking this road? It's always just gravel. It's funny. I feel a lot better pushing this bike on this road with the loose gravel than I did the FZR. Just a little more comfortable. A little more upright. I feel like I have better control of the bike. Oh, this is cool. I like this out here. Haven't been out here in a while. Let's take a minute and go back to talking about the merch and shipping in time for Christmas. The hoodies and the t-shirts are supposed to be to us the week of December 15th. We will be turning around and shipping orders out that same day. Guys, we are going to do everything we possibly can to get you your gifts in time for Christmas, but we can't guarantee it's going to happen. So like I said, we have the cards printed. Those will be getting mailed out as soon as you place the order and they should be getting to you in plenty of time to wrap up to give to your loved one. You just have to be a little patient until the actual merch gets to you. We have a lot of really fun stuff coming up and we're going to be making changes to the website pretty frequently for the next few weeks. We're going to be adding a bunch of new fun merch and as well as some products that I am super, super excited about. So don't forget, go to thebeardedmechanic.shop and keep your eyes on that over the next few weeks. Things are going to start happening on there and we got a lot of cool stuff planned for you guys. Thank you for the great support over this year and we really appreciate you guys sending all the emails asking about merch. It makes us feel loved. Let's finish out this video. I bet you this bike hasn't ran this good in 15 years. My buddy Dave went through the carburetors for us. He's an old school Yamaha mechanic and I got to say, he nailed it. Now we got some heat in the tire. Finally, Craig. Hey, sometimes it just takes a little bit. I bet you this bike hasn't run this good in 15 years. I think we nailed it. It is spot on. Runs fantastic. Sounds good. Handles good. I did go down that road with all the gravel on it again. I don't know why I did that. But I am super happy with the way this turned out. Finally, another bike we have in the fleet that we can hop on and go for a ride. Guys, thanks for watching. We are going to keep knocking some of these out and we got a lot of other fun stuff going on. Find yourselves a bike, start wrenching, start learning, having fun. Have a great rest of your weekend. We'll see you later. Good job, Yamaha.