Hello all,
Just thought I would introduce myself. My name is Jim and I am the new owner of a 1970 350 GTO in very rough shape. I found my 350 by accident while at Vintage Motorcycle Days this year. I was with a bunch of other old motorcycle nuts and we were sitting in the pits post racing talking about bikes that got away. You know - those special bucket list bikes that you either owned and regretted selling or missed buying by ten minutes (or worse $10 dollars) that you still wanted to own. I mentioned one of my biggest regrets was backing out of a deal to buy a B-stone 350 GTR roughly 13 years ago. I had won it on Ebay for a hundred bucks and change and it happened to only be 15 miles or so from where I lived at the time. This was when Ebay still had non-photo listings and when I turned up to collect the bike, it was rougher than I had imagined. The seller had been entirely honest in his description but in my mind's eye the bike looked nicer. So I apologized to the seller telling him it was more that I could tackle as a project and offered to pay the listing fees so he could relist. He was nice about it and let me out of the deal very easily all things considered. Keep in mind this was when internet resources for old motorcycles were not as well developed as they are today and I was genuinely worried about finding parts to fix the GTR up. Of course in the years since then I have regretted passing on the GTR as I've brought rougher (more expensive) motorcycles back from the brink.
So I mentioned at our beer drinking, bench racing session that I still wanted a Bridgestone 350. One of the NYC VinMoto guys told me he had a friend in upstate NY that was looking to sell a 1970 350 GTO and would I be interested? The bike is mostly there, disassembled, and pretty rough but the asking price was low. Now I know the most expensive motorcycle you can get is a non-running free one that "just needs carb cleaning and a battery" followed very closely by a cheap basket case that "just needs to be put together". So my first inclination was to pass but I remembered that GTR all those years ago and said I wanted it.
So for the princely sum of $200 I am now the owner of a collection of parts that should yield most (if not all) of a 1970 350 GTO. What's not rusty is corroded or missing. The wire harness is missing. The seat is a flap of vinyl attached at one point to a rusty piece of swiss cheese masquerading as a seat pan. A previous owner wanted to build a cafe racer and apparently this involved cutting out (but keeping) the battery box and one of the two foot-peg mounts on the frame. Not sure if the foot-peg mount is in my box of parts or not but I will find it if it is. What particularly worries me is the left cylinder has the inner exhaust stud (and some of the fins as well) broken off. And from reading some of the posts here it sounds like cylinders are hard to find. Oh and being from New York state, there's no title to speak of. That I have a good shot at tracking down from a previous owner and of course that will have to happen before I start any real restoration work.
The really sad bit is this GTO has only 2,694 miles on it so it had really had a hard life. It will definitely be a challenge to get this one back together but I think I'm up to it. My missus can't decide if I have masochistic tendencies where project bikes are involved or if I just really like getting tetanus shots. Time will tell....
Jim
