With
the weather being half decent last Sunday I dragged the Dnepr out into the
light to have a better look at it and to start breaking it down to get a better
look at things.
My original plan had been to replace obviously
worn and damaged parts, but essentially leave the machine as it was. Well,
the bad news is that after this weekend I'm not so sure that I'll get away with doing that. It looks like there will be a lot more work needed on this
particular machine than I had anticipated.
Taking
the bike apart was a bit of an eye-opener, and not in a good way. First things I
removed were the non-standard tank, seat and mudguards, and it looks like they'll
all need replacing as they're full of holes and none of them were properly attached
in the first place.
Rusty
fasteners are to be expected, but what I found was a mix of imperial, metric
and some weird Russian pitch, as well as chewed-up self-tapping screws and a copious
use of cable ties and electrical tape where it couldn't be seen. There were
also an awful lot of cheap washers used to pad things out and compensate for
the fact that nothing fitted properly.
The
metric and Russian stuff I can understand, but the imperial stuff and the
self-tapping screws were obviously what the previous owner had lying around his
garage. Its not that nuts and bolts even cost that much, for goodness sake.
This
looks like it might get expensive. Oh, caveat emptor.