Barn Find

Its amazing the deals you can find around here and the other day a friend of mine was wanting me to put a new motor on his riding lawn mower and we started to chat about price etc. We were going to barter something and at one point he mentioned he had an old 4 wheeler in his mother in law's barn and I said I would take a look at it to see if I wanted to trade my labor for the 4 wheeler.

Long story short we came to another arrangement but I asked him what he wanted for the 4 wheeler and he said $100 so I bought it. The motor turns over, the wheels and tires are good, the transmission shifts like it should, the body cladding is in perfect shape and it was a real bargain as I could part it out if I wanted for a lot more than $100.

You hear about these old barn finds but around here they aren't just tall tales as you can find some really cool things.

This was under a tarp in the far corner of the barn and when I pulled off the tarp I found a mid 1990s Yamaha Blaster 2 stroke.

It hadn't been ridden in a couple of years but nothing was seized on it and there was zero rust or damage to any part of the bike. Chris was home for a couple days break from his truck driving and helped me yard it out and load it on the equipment trailer.

Blasters aren't large bikes but they go like scalded cats and are a...well Blast!

Just a couple minutes with the hose reveled a pretty nice ATV. You can see the automatic oiler tank is missing and the ports are filled with epoxy so its been modified to just run on pre-mix; just saves me the time to do that mod anyway as the old automatic oilers were prone to pickup problems.

Muffler , frame, tires, chain, everything was there and in great shape.

Not even a tear in the seat or fade in the paint.

 

I need another project like I need a kick in the head but when opportunity knocks you have to answer and I am very happy with this deal. The riding lawn mower I am going to re-power for him is also extremely cool. Its an early 1960s Swisher 3 wheeler that looks like a small tractor and almost identical to one I had in Kansas City 20 some years ago. It will be re-powered with one of the Greyhound engines from Harbor Freight that are Chinese knock offs of Honda engines so that should be interesting and I will post pictures of that project when I start it.

The drought has been a spider heaven around here and this guy took up a place right outside our French Door off the family room. Thew garden spiders are very big and very cool and catch a lot of flies....they are your friend.

And on the same day as the spider picture this turtle came to visit in the same place. WE are smack dab in the middle of a Box turtle migration route and at certain times of the year they are all over and we enjoy them.

The summer garden is mostly played out but we still get some residual produce from it for home use. The fall garden is just coming on and will be producing shortly.

And finally, we put Chris to work running a friends tractor to load our trailer with fire wood. There was a big storm that came through here with 80mph winds which took down a lot of trees so we helped this rancher clear some of it and left with over a cord of wood. Good deal for all of us.