I've always wanted a Sporty and I came across one for a reasonable price a few weeks ago. I've got an FZ6 for street riding and a KLX250s for offroad excursions, but I didn't have a traditional motorcycle and I had made a little money off a recent bike flip, so what the heck.

These are the craigslist photos:





When I showed up to check it out, it was pretty dirty, oily, greasy. It had been leaking out of the rear rocker box for some time. The wheels were corroded and it just needed a major cleaning. On the way home I stopped at the local carwash and hosed it down with some high pressure. That helped tremendously.

Here she is after unloading it:





I quickly set to relieving this bike of all of the aftermarket stuff, highway pegs, bags + brackets, shield, sissy bar, gremlin bell, etc.

I did some major deep cleaning, polishing, and took care of some rust on the rear fender:



The exhaust pipe had its baffles gutted, I didn't want that, so I ended up getting another pipe from a fellow member on advrider



The front fender was crusty and dented, so I drilled the rivets out, cleaned up the brace and painted it. Now I have one of those fancy fender braces



I think there was a little badge on the factory risers. It was missing, so I found something to put in it's place:



I painted the sissy bar black, ditched the harley eagle and the pad and put it back on with some stainless hardware:



I had ordered a gasket set for the leaky rocker box and it came in, so I tackled this:



The same day, a stock seat came in that I had bought off a member of chop cult, it looks so much better than that big cushy one:



Mechanically, I changed the engine and primary oil, re-oiled the K&N in the S+S air cleaner, re-set the carb to factory settings and got it idling good (still need to tune it on the road, but after I get it plated)

Yesterday, I decided to try the plasti-dip on some stuff:






Today I decided to try wrapping the upper fork tubes. I saw some rope at the local hardware that was black with red and yellow speckles in it which match the colors of the bike, so I went with it:



I had some left, so I wrapped some on the sissy bar. You never know when you'll need a hunk of rope.



Finally, I am waiting on a set of bars from another member:



and a set of newer black sportster mirrors. The ones on this bike are oxidized and rashed. Plus I thought I might try inverting them like so many do nowadays. In order to do that, I got a set of clamps coming from Ebay.



I'm really enjoying slimming it down from what I started with. I also really like the swapping that happened before I owned it. It's an 883C, but it had the rear shocks, exhaust, and mid controls of an R. I wouldn't have minded if they would have swapped over the brakes, too, but hey... So, that's why I'm calling it 883R/C.

Pretty much all of the stuff that I pulled off the bike is for sale, as well. PM me if you're interested.

 

Love the black and yellow paint! Looks great. You've definitely cleaned it up nicely.

 

Looks like your off to a good start, but i'm not feeling the rope-sorry. Keep up the good work.

 

I went for a nice ride yesterday, seemed like a nice spot to take some pics:







I stopped at a local military surplus store and picked up a small molle bag to strap to the ignition cover (since there is no room anywhere for even the smallest set of tools.)



I also needed to grab some hardware for the license plate to replace the zip ties, while I was at the hardware store, I decided to grab one of the 1/4-20 ***** to use for the seat bolt. There is room under the seat for my registration, so that's where I'm keeping it, but I want to be able to get to it relatively easy and not have to go finding a screw driver.



Since I had swapped the gutted stock pipe for the non-gutted stock pipe, I wanted to re-tune the carb. I followed the directions from the S&S sheet, but I don't have a good way to set the idle with no tach. I set it to what sounded right. The previous owner had the idle set a little low. Anyway, I'm getting a cough from the carb once in a while, and it is also dieseling occasionally. I had read that the dieseling can be from an idle set too high and with too rich a mixture, but the cough is supposed to be from too lean a mixture... When riding it, it sounds great and run great. I also replaced the plugs, the original ones were really black, which is also why I felt like it needed to be retuned, it was probably running way rich. It's hard to read a new plug.

 

Looks great, nice work on the resurrection.

What year bike is your new seat from? Does anyone know if it will fit a 1991?

Welcome and good luck on the rest of your work.

John

 

Nice job. Looking good.

 

Not sure the year, I'm pretty sure late 90s or early 00's, but it should fit yours too. I'm pretty sure it would fit 87-03.

Sure you don't want my old seat? it's for sale.

 

It's a curse enough having the old "Wonder Bread" pillion seat, so I'll respectfully pass. That is a nice replacement for what you had for sure.

John

 

nice job saving bumble bee - it looks great

 

Without dual front discs, it doesn't deserve the "R".
Mid controls came on base model XL883 (& many others).
That exhaust only came on '02-'03 883R,
not '05½-'13 883R nor '04-'09 1200R.