Great job, nice low idle

Saw this at the local Yamaha dealer. .

 
It was such a beautiful day today, I used the C to get to work four miles away (tools in the backpack).
Lovely moment sat at the traffic lights when I hear a voice saying "hello".
I look over to see a young kid in the passenger seat of a car with the window down.
He smiles and says "I really like your bike", then his dad chirps up and says "yeah, great bike".
Took me twenty miles to get home via some lovely country lanes, then went out again to have lunch at a cafe, not a bad day at all

These bikes bring out the nice in people. Had many honks going to the dmv for a vin check. 
 

Am I going to regret this?

I had decided I would not sandblast and repaint anything on this bike. I was simply going to tear it down, clean everything, replace all seals, gaskets, brake shoes, etc. I got it from the original owner, and they are only original once.

But I find it hard to put it back together with so much raw exposed metal from many years of hard use. For example, I think this bike has a story to tell, and I think it involved a barbed wire fence getting wound up in the chain, sprocket, swing arm, rear wheel…..

I'm going to stick to my original plan, but sure could use some encouragement to stay the course…..

EDIT
Sorry. I should have started a new thread instead of replying to my original post from when I acquired this bike… Feel free to pull it, or move it, or delete it,

 

Schu, I'm going through the same thought process. My CT-1 is much rougher cosmetically than yours, but I was just going to get it mechanically sorted out, and leave everything else as-is.

However, I somewhat buffed out the cases while I had them off, and just yesterday put a new chain on, and as I was putting the old chain guard on, which was about 80% rust, I decided to strip it down and repaint it with DupliColor DE-1615. It looks so nice, I'm really tempted to paint those fenders too... but the tank, headlight bowl and ears would need to be repainted as well, and for that reason, I'm going to hold off for now. Frankly, the rust on the tank, frame and fenders doesn't bother me that much, so I think I'll just leave it as is, and continue to get the engine running well, and I've also ordered new tires and tubes. But that chain guard was just one ugly piece of rust, and I could not put it back on the way it was.

By the way, I didn't want to go too far buffing out the cases, because if they were too shiny, they wouldn't look right on the bike.

 

I call bikes like those "Preservations" not "Restorations". Like my RT3 I got from the original owner. 

Plus 1 on only original once.

 Someday my shed will be somebody’s barn find

I volunteer!

I second that!!!