1981 WR430 Winter Project to ride vintage off-road events

Picked up this bike towards the end of the summer of '16

Unhappy with the "air shock" I replaced it right away... and recently did alittle strip down..

Some of the dirty parts...

some cleaned up and the shocks that will end up on the bike....







the old over-spray is gone now also....

Nice work. Love the "air shock". Elbow grease is the best thing a builder or rebuilder can use. Great attention to detail. You've got your work cut out for yourself but I can already see you are up to it. Keep the pics coming.

Air shock. I spit my coffee out.

I have the exact same bike, 81 430WR. It's such a fun trail bike. That model has the 35mm fork and a little less travel F/R. That keeps the puny fork from being too flexy, and it's low enough to dab your way through technical stuff. Fork works great, too. You're gonna love it. Eager to see your build.

Looks like a fun project!

So I actually found a little time to get some actual work done. (besides cleaning parts) throttle and motoplat all hooked up too. All gaskets from the cylinder back to carb are new. Carb was rebuilt and a new filter. Next I install with the exhaust, flush out the bottom end. oil and gas and see if she will start up and run...

View attachment 88581

The wire wheel is your friend.... keep it up, it's worth it!

Make sure you do a leak down test to make sure your crank seals are valid before trying to start it. It really sucks to seize a new top end because of over eagerness to get it running. I only mention this because I saw no mention of going into the engine.

You may find you will need to blow the spooge out of the expansion chamber when you get it running . I had to run my 349 Cota up and down my driveway(long) wide open in 2nd gear until the blue fog broke down. I took about 10 minutes to get it hot enough to burn out the spooge.

I have not used a wire wheel on this bike yet...

I have not touched the engine yet. My plan was to clean and rebuild the carb, find a missing filter and filter cage, then try to start it up. If it starts and runs, then I decide about repainting frame and other painted parts or rebuild the motor and go from there.

but I might do that if it shows a sign of running before I ride it. sort of want to see what I'm dealing with before I commit to a specific path forward.

Thanks for the advise.

No problem. Test for leakdown is cheap and worthy prevention. If you search back there is a thread about what you need and how to do it

I will, especially since I ran into another snag... The kill switch is in need of some repair.. with no chain on the bike, I'd like to be able to shut it down. Besides pulling off the sparkplug wire......

Started cleaning up some of the old wire harness and some other miscellaneous things

that wailing engine and no stop method other than a fuel tap or a spark plug cap can be mind (and motor) destroying..also consider what it will take to stop a wailing 430 when you put it in gear...youtube spectacular comin right up! dont have it or the pipe pointing at anything valuable!