That Sinking Feeling

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.