The Hollow Victory of Purchasing Progress

Project cars and motorcycles are funny things to measure progress on. Keeping track of how close to done your blown-apart vintage is can be a heady task, and one I am typically pretty terrible at. This leads to getting overwhelmed easily when visible progress grinds to a halt, especially after a couple of setbacks and re-routes to the plan. The easiest way to force a second wind into the sails of a project? Pay up.

I’ve often said that a project will cost you more time than money. Anyone who has tackled a big project knows there is a limit to what time alone can do, though. The combination of time and money crosses off lines on the to-do list more efficiently. Doing one without the other for an extended period of time is a tough way to make progress, and often frustrating when it comes time to switch direction. Case in point, my 1988 Honda XR600R project.

This bike was purchased on a lark and a plan hatched shortly after. A close friend has been wanting to participate in a dual sport ride on the West Coast and my 600R purchase was the kick we both needed to lock in an actual plan. We are both building vintage big-bore thumpers and shipping them out to ride the event together. It’s not the ideal bike choice, but the event is not a race so we might as well bring out machines that put our own flair on the fun. More than anything, it justifies my irrational purchase and gives me a deadline for the project.

With the turkey still cooling on the table last Thursday, a soft ding kept my eyelids open for a second longer to read the text message on my favorite tiny glowing screen: “Happy Thanksgiving boys. Better be seeing you 12 months from now for Barstow to Vegas.” My initial two-year deadline was so casual I got caught out and will now be under a little pressure to get this bike completed, sorted, tested, and shipped in time.

Especially since the bike has been shuffled around more than worked on in the last few months. Other new and exciting projects came in and stole the relatively small amount of time and money I could sink into my fleet. Not one to break from a plan though, I opened my laptop and returned to my log of where I was on the project and what the next steps were. Well, actually I took a nap first. Let’s not act like a 20-minute nap is going to be the time that will derail this 365-day countdown.

Upon bringing myself back up to speed with a cup of coffee and note scrolling, I was pleased to find that previous progress stalled due to lack of funds. Pretty much any task I could do without spending more money had been completed, and when I last touched the bike, I was low on funds so progress just stopped. This was a roadblock I had happily since solved. Credit card in hand, I went out into the fields of the internet and harvested products with quick swipes.

A purchase of the items needed to prepare and spray Cerakote ceramic coating will enable the engine to be finished and broken in before painting the frame allowing me to double-check that the mish-mash of parts I’ve assembled will all play nice before making them pretty. Fresh plastics are a fun purchase but will wait longer to get installed. Just buying them locks in a few other items and decisions, though, like the overall color scheme and final look. I’m keeping it all vintage in the looks department but modern performance will be hiding in plain sight underneath.

A small but noticeable rush of excitement and daydreaming followed. But much like eating a Big Mac, the positive feeling faded quickly as the daydreams transitioned to a bloating feeling about all the tasks I just signed up for. This spending spree must be backed up with just as much real effort—maybe more—for it to mean anything.

The internals for the 600R’s engine have been mostly complete for months now. However, buying all the equipment to Cerakote the engine covers myself only helped me realize how much cleaning and organization I needed to do in the garage to rein in the momentum of other projects and shuffle my priorities effectively. Painting of this caliber will require a clean workspace, which I do not currently have.

At the same time, I’ll be finishing the engine assembly and test-running it in the frame before tearing the frame down for blasting and finishing. It’s a lot of big steps to tackle with little run-up, but with a project I’ve been looking forward to for a while it might not be so bad.

The progress that comes from having parts and tools in hand and seeing a transformation somewhere besides just my bank account balance is often more fulfilling and what I truly look forward to. With a lot of the heavy lifting and thinking already done, it’s time to just follow the plan. Hopefully that will only require a steady trickle of cash rather than a firehose pointed squarely at the ol’ Honda. The feeling that spending a bunch of cash gave me disappeared quickly but brought about an appetite to get back into the shop and back to work. Maybe not so bad after all.