That sounds great, I will just add to this as I go. Thanks!

Project Update 5/29/15: I plan to post reasonably frequent updates to the progress I am making. First, let me explain what I have done up to now… Unfortunately I don’t have pics for the following, but future updates will have pictures.
Last fall my Dad and I rolled the DT from out from behind his shed and onto my trailer. I brought it home and staged in the on-deck circle outside of my shop until early April, when the 6 foot snow drift it was under melted away.





My pressure washer was broken, so I gave it a quick rinse and thorough air blow down. I vacuumed out most of the pine needles and rodent infestation then began dousing in WD-40.

First the basics, compression, spark, fuel. The motor was seized, but it broke free easily. I pulled the exhaust to have a quick look at the cylinder wall. Certainly some light rust visible, but not enough to tear the motor down yet. I gave the lower end and cylinder a good fogging oil spray down. Gave her few kicks to check for spark, nada. Next, I pulled the mag cover, to find a damp corroded mess. However, I’m pretty happy about how good the main bearing feels on this side. I doused with WD-40, and moved to the carb with low expectations. Much to my delight, carb internals were almost pristine. I’d like to think I had the foresight to drain the carb way back 15 years ago when it went out to pasture, but I’m pretty sure I just got lucky. I’ll be going through the carb a bit later. Only thing I needed to order so far was the small O-ring that seals the emulsion tube to the bowl.
Pulled the flywheel, cleaned up some of the mess with scotch brite and air hose. Points were junk, so I decided just order a new point / condenser kit. I had to extend to wire leads from the coils in order to solder to the new condenser. Reinstalled flywheel, set the point gap (I’ll check timing later). Gave her some test kicks and have a healthy blue spark. To put the finishing touches on the ignition I went to the shop to buy a B8ES and plug cap. The kid at the counter, looked at me funny. Then I remembered that I was getting old, and not every other customer was fouling plugs on a 2 stroke anymore. He had to go out back and look. He did dig up a cap, and I settled for a BR8ES.

A few years ago I picked up a small ultrasonic cleaner. With a good metal finishing solution it turns old jets into jewelry. Even though the carb was decent I cleaned the jets and float bowl with the ultrasonic. Sorry no pics for this. Put the carb back together and installed on bike. Bought a new throttle cable and as the Ebay seller warned, trim cable housing down 10mm (this was a pain, need new method if I ever did this again). Almost go time! I put the pipe back on temporarily, attached a small gas bottle, gave her a few kicks and away she went! Ahh the smells and sounds of victory. From my years of working on old Yamaha air cooled motors, the piston slap didn’t faze me one bit, just added to the nostalgia. I have a video, but have to figure out how to share it!

Project Update 6/2/15: I don’t seem to have any clear systematic approach to this project, I’m picking and choosing my battles based on time and how dirty or clean I want to stay at the moment. Here I decided to start assembling the head light. I’ve been collecting bits and pieces from Ebay. I’m struggling to get the bezel on? Any tips?

THAT STUFF LOOKS PRETTY GOOD! Keep the pic's coming.

Update: Since the original wheels are in tough cosmetic shape, I planned on having them powder coated black. However, when I spooned the tire off I found a rotten mess. I descaled and cleaned up, but found rot holes in the bead. If this was the last front wheel known to man, it could be saved. But with the availability of an OEM replacement on Ebay, I won’t be saving it.

Update 6/15/15
My replacement front wheel showed up (Ebay). It's in excellent shape so now my plan to powder coat the wheels black is on hold. I'm not even going to re-lace this with my new spokes. Just going to polish it up a bit and run it for now. The next big mission is the forks. Initially, I though it would be a pretty straight forward fork rebuild with the exception of having to track down one replacement inner tube. However, once I disassembled them I realized both tube were bent pretty bad!! Not something I had planned for. Ebay to the rescue again with some good luck mixed in. Before I even disassembled my forks, I bought a complete set thinking I only needed one inner tube. From the pictures I was sure there was at least one good tube. When the package arrived, there was a drum role playing in my head as I unwrapped them. Another big score, complete set of forks in excellent shape. It does't even appear that these were leaking but I will rebuild none the less. The question is, do I use as many as the original fork guts to keep as many components as possible in original form? I think I'm going to create a new topic to see what the world thinks about my new dilemma. When restoring an old bike, at what point have you removed so many original parts that it's no longer original? Anyway, my priority is to get this thing to great running and good looking condition. If that means removing original parts so be it. I may have time to restore the original parts at a later date.








Fork seal removal heavy artillery.

Just keep all the original parts but do all he upgrades you can for function.If you decide to sell it later...(why you would is beyond me}...you can offer it as original for the best price.

Update 6/25/15

Some good forward progress to report. Forks are all cleaned up and rebuilt. Although there is still a lot of work to do, getting the forks buttoned up was a huge step. New seals and dust caps from Pobits Ebay store.


Ready for assembly


Ready to go! Checked the manual to see what fork oil to buy. 10W-30! Hehe I have that in stock!

Next, onto the steering head. I couldn't figure out how to remove the steering damper, but a quick post to this site and DEET, Otaku-Mac, and Makotosun had me straightened out. Turns out the screw/pin that holds it in was broken off so I had to extract it. I will make a new pin up later. The steering head bearings still had old grease and seem to be in good shape. I managed to disassemble, clean and reassemble without losing any balls!


Broken pin extraction.


Ready for assembly.


Some of the plated parts and hardware can't be cleaned up good enough, so I will paint for now.

If you're interested in DIY Zinc Plating at home we got ya covered ...

yamaha-enduros.com/index.php/forum/forum...zinc-plating-process

How about a better look at that mill?

pntrbl, I did come across that forum, thanks. I would like to try someday, but with the amount of work still to go I'm going to skip that for now. Perhaps one of my kids can do this as a science project someday. Lots of cool stuff going on in that little process.

Here's my mill:

Update 6/26/15
Feels good to do some actual assembly. Went together smooth, had to use an o-ring on one fork tube in place of the packing rubber that holds the headlight ears in place.