The DT

I already mentioned the DT 175 that I picked up at Christmas time, but let me give ya a little taste of the work I did on it before it became usuable.

First things first, it was seized up bad! After I pulled the seat, tank, exhaust pipe, and carb, I finally got to the head. the first glance at the cylinder almost made me blow chunks!! (not really, but it sounds alot more dramatic that way eh?) Anywho, it was pretty bad. There was rust and corrosion all over everything. I soaked it in WD-40 but to no avail. After a full day of soaking it and trying to pound it with a block of wood while heating it, I lost my patience. My brother and I put a hammer right on the piston and started pounding. It pmoved ever so slightly, but eventually it was far enough out that we could get at the wrist pin. This released the cylinder and piston from the crankshaft so that we could work on it on the workbench. A few more good solid hits to the piston and it was broke free.

Now came the task of cleaning everything up. The piston was wire brushed and teh cylinder was wiped out as best we could. The crank was full of rust too, se we took it to the carwash and blasted it with water, then cooked it witha torch to get all that water out of there before reassembly. I had to build a base agsket for it, had to file some chucnk of the cylinder wall that became existant when I got a little carried away with the hammer, and had to clean up some threads that we buggered up in our extreme engineering practices.

By about 2 in the morning, I had done about all I could do on the engine. The carb was clean and put back on but the kickstart was broke in the inital attempts to break the engine free. With that said, the rear wheel was seized so we couldn't even push start dern thing. The bed called my name and so I bid the bike adieu till the next mroning.

After waking up, we were able to get the brakes pulled apart with only moderate damage to the hub. We disconnected everything down there so that it would be possible to push start the bike. The test run came about 11 oclock or so. Believe it or not, it ran! It didn't start right up, and it ran really rough, but it did run and we were able to cruise around the church parking lot a little bit. After a few more hours and a few more parts and dollars, it now runs to a fairly good degree. Once again, I still can't get the pics off my camera, so when I do, I'll post em. See ya!