R90/6, where to start?

A friend of a friend of a friend dropped off an R90/6 for me to get the lights working. The story goes that this bike sat for over ten years and by the looks of it, maintained during storage. It looks pretty good for it's age.

The first thing I noticed was the center stand was finished, loose and broken. Next thing I noticed was that the front forks dive until the bottom. While doing a quick check, fuel lines are rotten and some of the rubber bits are rotten as well. A little closer look and it has a clunk in the rear end.

Let me categorize that further: In fifth gear, you can turn the rear wheel almost 60 degrees one direction or another and you get a very distinct clunk. Deep sounding as well. I'm pretty sure that it isn't just the u-joint and based on how much the u-joint can turn before the clunk, I'm thinking transmission.

I haven't done anything to the bike, it's not mine just to tear into it and find out what is going on. The flip side, I doubt the owner wants to spend any real money on it and I don't think the bike is safe to ride or even remotely reliable.

Where do I start? Tell him to take the bike back? If he says "go ahead" and look for the problems, it could hit serious money very fast. Offer to buy the bike and restore it giving him the rights of first refusal?

Unless you operate a shop that does this kind of service and have insurance to cover your work, I'd give it back and tell him why. It doesn't make sense to me to take that risk in the event something goes wrong or there is yet another problem that goes unnoticed that causes a problem later. I'm betting he'll appreciate your honesty.

Why not start by telling the OWNER of the bike what you just told us.
Talking to someone who is not the owner will bring you nothing but one great big headache.

dieselyoda said:

I don't think the bike is safe to ride ...

Click to expand...

Tell him so and that he has to fix that first or else you're not touching it.

Clearly you understand it better than he does ... and that makes you the expert facing liability.

I did have a great conversation with the REAL owner of the bike and told him matter of fact that I didn't want to just fix the electrical knowing the rest of the bike is a big issue from a safety standpoint. I made a legitimate offer to purchase the bike at what I thought was a fair price at $1800.00. I also told him that my quick guess was the bike would be close to $5000.00 to make whole again at my labor rate which is pretty much beer money.

To my surprise, he wants it fixed right and the money isn't really an issue. He also threw a curve at me. This bike was crashed. Then came another curve, he has two more R90/6's at home, waiting for the right guy to restore them as well.

For my American friends, the issue of liability is pretty much a non-issue in Canada as my province has a Consumer Protection Act which oddly, also protects service providers. Had I just gone ahead and fixed the electrical, I would be responsible for that repair only. Professionally, I have had very expensive repairs, $$$$$.$$ leave my shop to only burn to the ground or blow up and unless negligence is proven, no recourse exists. My last example was an auxiliary heater for keeping the hydraulics warm and my guys and I debated getting rid of it because we thought it was a terrible POS made in a country where they don't deal with our climates. The customer was told we wanted to remove it, he declined and his $200,000.00 excavator did a fine job of melting all the snow within a 30 foot radius.

Still though, I have this bike and I want to give it the TLC it deserves but I really don't know where to start.