1973 360RT Restoration

Here are a few photos of the chassis for the 1973 360RT I'm restoring. I think pictures without the motor, tank and seat allow the frame to be more deeply appreciated. It ought to be a pretty neat bike when its finished.

Looks great! How about posting some before pictures if you have any.

It's going to be a beauty!

Before pics is an excellent suggestion unfortunately there aren't any. Oh well, just imagine a 40 year old weathered dirt bike with missing parts.

Nice to see another RT. I had three of them down to two, 360 and a 250. Looks like you have some of the hard to find parts like the Cev brake switch and turn signals. How is your air box boot and battery box? Hard to find stuff.Let me know if you need any photos as my is all oringanl down to it's tires.You will have fun with it.

Thanks for the comment photoguy. I'll certainly let you know if I need pictures from an original bike, I like to get details correct when possible. I still have the photo of the battery and battery strap you sent me. I looked up the battery and at this point will be purchasing the same. I haven't been able to locate a battery strap so I'm planning to try and make one. Thanks again for that stuff!

I've got the battery box and its in excellent condition. The air cleaner boot was starting to show cracks around one of the clamping areas so I had Claussstudios.com make me a new one and it came out perfect. Clauss will be selling it but I don't know that he has listed it for sale on his website yet. My experience in dealing with him was very good.

The CEV brake light switch is original I just cleaned it up with Brasso. The turn signals are new, I acquired them years ago when I began collecting parts I was missing.

The 2-way switch on the handlebars is rough, the strap is broken but the switch still works. I thought I'd try to use a metal strap to fasten it since the switch is original and still works.

Somewhere along the way I lost the air filter element lid (not the air cleaner box cover but the element lid) and ended up using one off a 74 400 (the 400 that has the plastic air cleaner box that replace the aluminum dish in 74). The lid is round instead of oval but works great after welding closed a couple of bolt holes. I'll post pictures of the application soon.

Very Nice Crash. I have one of these bikes too. Mine isn't that nice. I rode it this past weekend for the first time and it was pretty cool. Mine is missing the blinkers and tailight and switches. Heres a pic from this weekend

disonny, glad to see you're enjoying your RT. Mud can be a fun place to ride but as you can imagine mine won't be seeing any mud. From the picture it looks like you also have a 75 - 77 GP.

It's actually a 76 360WR. I just bought it about 4 months ago. This was the first ride for either bike. The woods were great! The MX track was the muddy peice. Yours will be awesome when it's finished. I tried to go the total restore route but I just couldn't find any parts I needed. I have the airbox but couldn't find an air boot. I couldn't find blinkers or battery box and a few other things. So I made it a rider.
Would you know where I could find a speedo cable?

I don't know off hand where you could buy a speedo cable for the RT but it could possibly be built from scratch if you go to a speedo shop that works on vintage motorcycles. North Hollywood Speedometer had a hand in rebuilding my stuff. They specialize in VDO and have been around since the beginning of time. http://www.nhspeedometer.com/

My speedo cable housing is approx. 53 inches long. The shop would need a picture or part number of the drive unit and speedometer.

Here are a few pictures of the 360RT wiring harness I just finished rebuilding. Motor will be done in a few days, I'll post some pics of it.






Before Pics

Thanks. I'll take a look. Good job on the harness

Nice work on the harness. I will be doing the same to the 250 RT that I'm restoring. The harness I have is a mess.

Out of curiosity, what kind of terminal crimpers did you use to produce those sweet crimps in the second picture? I wired my replacement RT harness the other day, but I just soldered everything. I'm going to do it again from scratch, but would like to crimp the connectors like you did rather than solder again. Also, where did you find the silver PVC sheathing? I resorted to black from the yellow book.

GoVintage, the crimper I use is an Accel 170036 with an open barrel die set. The place where I got the terminals has a similar crimper for less than what I paid for mine. Heres the link if you want to check it out plus they carry terminals and the gray sheathing. http://www.vintageconnections.com/

Here are some more pics of my 360RT with the assembly further along. These old bikes with all this stuff can really be time consuming if you're set on keeping as much of the original parts as possible because they tend to be worn or corroded. For example horn in my case looks great but it doesn't work so I'll have to take it apart and clean it.

You sure do nice work!

Very nice!

Wow. Your bike is beyond amazing. I know how much time I have in getting my RT to just run (and I still don't have all the kinks worked out). I can only imagine the extra effort required to make it that clean. Well done.

Thanks for the vintageconnections.com link. That is quite a resource. I appreciate the tip.

I look forward to seeing your bike progress!

I am pretty much speechless! It's beautiful. Are you going to be able to get it street plated here in Kalifornia?