I've actually been a member of this forum since 2015, but have not been very active. In fact, until a few days ago, I had not visited in years and was actually surprised that my account was still here and still accessible. On that day, I was looking for info as to what happened to the Australian Yamaha IT forum (still wondering) and kind of got sucked in, so to speak.
I am a motorcycle mechanic, been working on them since I was a 12-13 years old (yikes, has it been 40 years already since then?). At first just my own and my younger brother's bikes of course, then started doing work for friends and neighbors, eventually I got a job at a shop in Tennessee in the mid 1990's. I am an American, but have been living and working in Papua New Guinea since 2002. Here I run a small motorcycle shop catering to the motorcycle and small engine needs of the ex-pat community living and working in PNG as well as the locals, though there are surprisingly few motorcycles in general usage by the locals, so not as much local business as you might expect.
So! I started riding in the mid 1980's in the Peruvian jungle (where my dad was an aircraft mechanic on bush planes used by missionaries), this is where the "junglebiker" moniker comes from. I started on a DT100, later, when I was 14 (still in the '80's) I bought a '74 DT250A from my dad. It had been languishing under our house for ages and needed a fair amount of "recommissioning". When I was 18 we moved back to the US where I had a succession of bikes, XT500, CB750, 2x KZ1000LTD's, one of which I rode from the TN/NC border to California and back again in 2000, various others, including The One That Got Away--a 1976 YZ400C which I built up from a non-rolling wreck which I gave $20 for. I wish I had never sold that bike. It was fun to ride and worked really well for me as a woods bike.
In 2007 I married an English girl who I met in Papua New Guinea, so I have a foot on each side of the Atlantic while living in the South Pacific, I guess you could say. In the UK I have an old Armstrong MT500 army bike, which is part of how I maintain my sanity when I am there and don't have anything else to do. Because PNG is close to Australia, I see a lot of Aussie market bikes and am pretty familiar with what kind of differences you can expect to find between US and AUS models of various motorcycles. My IT250J and my IT200S are both "Oceania" market models, each of those was a well-thrashed project when I got it, so I am very familiar with them and with the differences between them and similar US models. Once in a great while I will see a Japanese Domestic Market version of something or other roll through my shop, so I get to see some of those differences as well.
Most of what I do is maintenance, chains, sprockets, brakes, cables, wheel bearings, suspension bearings/bushes and so on, but I've also done quite a number of engine rebuilds--it is so expensive to get motorcycles into the country that it is often worth it to resurrect bikes which we would not bother with in other countries--this is why the average age of motorcycles I work on is probably well over 25 years old. Given the fact that most of the roads in my immediate area are dirt, most of what I work on are Honda XR's, Yamaha XT/TT, Suzuki DR, Kawasaki KLR's, Honda Trail 90's/110's, various Honda and Yamaha Ag Bikes and one old Sportster with long rear shocks, stiff front springs and knobbies on it.
The Norton P11 referred to under "my bikes" is a project bike I have in the US, as are my DT400's.
Although I work mostly on Honda XR's these days, I still very much enjoy the odd opportunity I have to get back to my roots and work on an old Yamaha 2 strokes. Hopefully I can be helpful here from time to time and hopefully you guys can help me when I need it. I had quite long threads over on the Aussie IT forum, detailing the resurrections of my IT's, I sure hope I can find some way to find that information again.
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