I am contemplating selling Buzz.

I am thinking about selling him for two reasons. First, we have a rather full stable of iron critters and could honestly use the garage space. As he’s not on the road, I’ve not had insurance on him since it last expired, but once back on the road, I would need to insure him again. Second, I have a VW trike that I want to run EFI and I need parts. The two most expensive parts that I need are the MegaSquirt controller and the exhaust oxygen sensor and there is one of each on Buzz, who is not really roadworthy.

The battery is dead at the moment from sitting since April. Once I service or replace the battery, the bike should be in at least a minimally running condition, meaning that it *will* start and run and go down the street. It does not, unfortunately, mean that the bike is in any desirable state of tune. It runs quite rich at idle and has a rather unfriendly throttle response. The throttle bodies I installed are far too large for this bike. In short, the injectors cannot deliver a small enough amount of fuel at idle while the throttle body itself cannot deliver a small enough amount of air hardly anywhere above idle. It runs, but not particularly well. It revs like a banshee, though.

I have a couple of ideas to address this problem. To my knowledge, there are no salvage four cylinder individual throttle bodies small enough to work with this engine, though there are several for twins and singles. These all would require a manifold to adapt to a four cylinder and I have in fact secured a potential TB and a spare cylinder head that I intended to use in the fabrication of just such a manifold and have discussed this manifold in previous posts. However, I have plenty of other projects, not the least of which is the afore mentioned VW trike, and that throttle body is nearly a bolt-on for the VW.

There are actually several options available to me, in no particular order….

1. Sell Buzz as is, hoping to recover enough for my EFI parts list. Considering he’s only barely a running bike, I would imagine that only someone specifically interested in taking over a MegaSquirt project would be willing to pay anything more than a parts-bike price for him.

2. Part him out. Potentially, this could be the most lucrative, but I really hate to do that to a classic bike with a good title and many miles left to run.

3. Reinstall the stock induction system (all was kept, just in case) and sell him as a working stock bike. This would likely appeal to the largest buying audience, but would also involve the fairly exhaustive list of carburetor tuneup tasks that were actually needed before I took them off, at least if I want any decent money for him.

4. Rob the parts I need off him, put the rest in a corner, put him back together as time permits and maybe sell him then.

I welcome any thoughts, suggestions and comments (or offers)….