It was actually AAA that first told me I would need the PNO in order to transport the bike to CHP. They said the same thing at two different offices. From what I understand, in California, is that if the vehicle is on public roads, or even visible from public roads, it needs to be registered or PNO. Frankly, I doubt if you would ever be stopped with a bike in your truck that didn't have a registration, but if I took it to CHP and it didn't have the PNO, I had a feeling they would deny even looking at it, and they could even write a ticket. With the price of gas these days, I didn't want to be making numerous trips to the DMV and CHP office, I just wanted to get it done in one trip.

That's pretty wild, guess I'm lucky enough to live in a rural part of the state where they are still realistic about these things. A couple years ago I had a bike with no plates, PNO or off-road stickers in the back of my truck. We had to unload it to run a kayak shuttle (needed the space to fit boats in the bed of the truck) USFS ranger left a note on it saying it needed to be loaded and not driven anywhere, that was quite kind of them in retrospect.

What Mark says makes sense by the law, if not common sense!

Sounds like you certainly made the right choice for your circumstances!

Some of you might remember the "orange stickers"?  In the mid to late 1970's even if you had a pure competition off road only bike you needed to register it in California to transport it legally over public highways.  Sometimes a cop would sit outside the gate at Corona Raceway writing warnings and then later on, tickets. 

For the most part though, the police never cared.  In the above story I think we got pulled over because the cop was suspicious of something...  and then the friend's Dad was being a jerk to the cop.

The DMV always did.  I learned early on that you never told the DMV an unregistered vehicle you bought had been moved...  even trailered...  until you went in a got the paperwork started.  If you said you moved it, they charged at least one year of registration as a penalty.  They used to give you a temp moving permit good for up to 90 days.  All that has changed.

Since the front brake shoes are supposed to arrive today, I pulled the front wheel. It turns out that the brake pads are still well bonded to the shoes. The pads also measure a little bit over 109 mmm, so they're perfectly serviceable, but 50 years old.

 I just used a floor jack to lift up the bike, and I found that if I move it back a little bit, I can get the rear wheel off with the same procedure. It makes a tripod of the floor jack, the kickstand, and one tire.

 And literally a minute after I posted this, the new brake shoes arrived. They're from 2FastMoto, and they have grooves to channel away water.

This was a pleasant surprise. After getting the tire off, the inside of the rim is not rusty at all, and actually has a coat of anti-rust paint from the factory. I used three large zip ties after getting the first bead off, because getting the second bead over the rim was difficult. Once I clnched down those 3 zip ties, it was fairly easy to just push it off.

Putting on that tire was a struggle, and a lesson learnied. I tried putting the tire on one bead first then putting the tube in, WRONG!

No way to get the valve stem in that way. So I put the tube slightly inflated into the tire, then put the valve stem in and put the nut on, then was able to get the tire on safely without pinching the tube. I used tire irons that I bought about 45 years ago, and a soap brush. When I do the rear tire it should be a lot easier!

 By the way the Kenda rim strips are wider than the stock strips.

So my rear brake shoes should have been delivered today by USPS as well, but about the middle of the day it showed that they had been sent a few cities away. A few hours later the tracking changed to "Missent". They actually had arrived at the post office a couple miles away from me, then they sent them off to another city. Oh well, they'll probably get rerouted and show up in a few days... I hope.

USPS got everything together and the rear shoes arrived today, so I've already got the tire changed out and getting it put back together. But I just wanted to show this fifty-year-old rear tire, there's a huge crack in the sidewall that I hadn't seen before. I'm glad I never took this up to any speed!

Just curious if you inspected your wheel bearings, usually when I replace tires on a bike I plan on keeping for awhile I do as you did and replace the shoes, rim strip and tube, I usually go ahead and replace the wheel bearings as they are inexpensive and not hard to replace, it just gives me peace of mind knowing I should not have any issues with anything involving the wheel itself. If it is a bike I plan on sending on down the line I minimally re-pack the wheel bearings with grease.

No, I didn't actually pull the wheel bearings out, but they seem like they're in good shape. Again, the bike only had 340 miles on it when I started working on it and it was stored inside a shed. They seem to operate very smoothly and quietly, and seem still fully greased. There was no sign that anything had dried out. That said, I probably should have pulled them out and looked at them, but according to the manual it mentions a special tool to remove and replace, and I didn't want to break anything today.

In any case, I got it all put back together and just went for a ride, and opened it up to about 55 mph for the first time. It's running great, and the wheels seem to be fairly well balanced.