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A Creamsicle Orange

81K views 399 replies 32 participants last post by  Lysdexic 
#1 ·
2000 Honda Rancher 350ES 4x4 (TRX350FE)

This bike was unexpectedly offered to me in a phone conversation over a week ago, while I was searching for cheap TRX350D parts bikes.

The man said it had been garage-kept since new and is in good condition. The motor ran, no sun/weather damage, never been in a crash, frame, chassis, bumpers, racks, plastics and seat are all good he said... The brakes all work, no cracks, no dents, no rips, no oil leaks, no broken or missing parts, not rusty, etc. He thought the electric shift and everything else electrical might still work on it too, but was beginning to sound (on the phone) more unsure at this point in our conversation, than he was to my previous questions.

"I don't know anything about it", he said... "this belonged to my son... (...) ... it has been parked here in my garage and hasn't been run for over 10 years now. It will need a new battery for sure. It still has the old gas in it. The tires look worn out, but they all still hold air. This is the first my wife and I have thought about selling it. Make me an offer."

What year is it, I asked? "I don't know. How do I find out?" So I asked him to give me an idea how much he wanted for it. He said "I don't know, make me an offer."

I can't make you an offer until I see it, I said.

"How does $350 sound to you? I'll talk to my wife."

Now, I'm not a big fan of ES bikes myself, but I'm guessing my mother might become an ES ATV fan if given an opportunity...?!?! :)

So, with an idea in mind of what I might do with an ES bike, I made plans to meet with the owner yesterday (Sunday) for a closeup looksee armed with a good battery and lotsa tools. Travel time was about 5.5 hours round trip plus about an hour of time in a dark garage spent on checking it over. More on that later...

This bike was thickly coated with garage grunge after many years in storage when I loaded it. Here are some pics I snapped with my phone about 20 miles into the return trip.... after a lot of the looser grunge had blown off. I power washed it when I got home and its beginning to look pretty darn good already!!!

I intend to disassemble this Creamsicle and freshen it up over the next few months in my spare time as a late winter project. Will post progress updates here... beginning with some better pics in a few days. :)
 

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#2 ·
Decent bike for the price, hope it was parked running. Wish I could find a deal like that.
 
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#4 ·
I have to say the color is unique , and keep in mind I do still have 3 450 parts bikes , two are ES and boxes of parts for the 450 , I think quite a few parts may be interchangeable from the 350 to 450 and if you need something that is the same , don't hesitate to ask -------
 
#7 ·
"I don't know anything about it", he said... "this belonged to my son... (...) ... it has been parked here in my garage and hasn't been run for over 10 years now. It will need a new battery for sure. It still has the old gas in it. The tires look worn out, but they all still hold air. This is the first my wife and I have thought about selling it. Make me an offer."
Great story and glad everyone left happy with the deal. I look forward to seeing it progress along....
 
#8 ·
Why a buy! A dollar per CC, wish we had deals like that over here! None runners are fetching £1000 or thereabouts just lately, prices have rocketed for some odd reason. Anybody would think Honda was going out of production or something lol.

Looking forward to the ‘build/repair’ thread :)
 
#9 ·
Great buy Retro!! That color pops!

I like these early Ranchers even the ES. My work 02 has been reliable 7000 miles of pushing manure. It looks great with a set of 12 in wheels. It had a weak battery this Spring and when I was out afield–hit the downshift button meaning to upshift she didn’t like that. A new battery and clutch adjustment made her happy agin

My complaint is the dipstick on one side and fill cap on other side of engine. Who thot up that one?
 
#13 ·
Thanks everyone! I got pretty lucky I think! Decent Honda ATVs don't usually sell cheap around here neither. Creamsicle with new tires and battery... and well maintained, might fetch $1700-$2000 around here! I see old clapped out bikes all the time priced even higher! The unique circumstances that led up to this opportunity are what made the deal possible. Nothing like this may ever occur for me again... but if it does I wish and hope for a "barn find" mint 300FW next... or in trade for Creamsicle? :)

I am not a fan of needless electronic controls (ES in this case) as you all know. If I were keeping this bike for myself I would convert it. But my elderly mother recently moved up here (nearby) in the great white north and converted herself to a full-fledged Yooper! So , I'll leave this one stock for her to putter around on for fun and for hauling her little gardening trailer back and forth to her flowering plants. She loves it the way it is... and since my chain saw and case happens to match the Creamsicle color, maybe she'll learn to enjoy cutting and hauling my firewood with it someday... :)
 
#19 ·
Yep, your buddy's bike is the exact same color too, for sure! But his is Cantaloupe while mine is Creamsicle... (much colder latitude) perhaps? :)

The color code sticker on mine begins with "YR" followed by some numbers. I may take a pic of it and post it up after this prolonged snowstorm system passes.

After I get Creamsicle freshened up, I'd like to see if I can swap the Foreman 450 handlebar headlight onto it somehow. Other than that possibility it'll probably remain mostly stock.

Just for the record, I wasn't interested in this bike at all initially... Ranchers aren't my preferred type of bike. It sounded like a bike that was still in very good condition (which is rare in this area!) for dirt cheap, but I was gonna pass on it. After I hung up the phone I started thinking more seriously about it though... searching for a use and purpose for it to provide me with a logical excuse to go buy it! I already knew I would probably buy this bike if I ever looked at it, so I wasn't even going to go have a look. :)

Then I began to think about my mother. She has an old Arctic Cat sled that she used to enjoy riding, but she is losing interest in that nowadays due to her age and cold riding conditions. I have noticed that she hasn't spent much time on that sled this winter.

Maybe she'd enjoy having an ATV more during the warmer summer riding months...? So I asked her a few questions to get an idea whether she might use an ATV or not. One of the things she mentioned she would like to be able to do, was tow her little gardening trailer around the yard. She likes to do stuff outdoors, even works hard at doing some of her yard work chores and gardening stuff. She said she can't upshift an ATV though, she hasn't enough strength and it hurts her foot. BINGO.

I called the man back and asked him about scheduling a convenient meeting time for himself. Loaded my tools & supplies and hooked up the trailer... Then counted out $350 and folded it separate from my other cash, into my wallet. It was a done deal already in my mind, provided it checked out ok.
 
#21 ·
I hope she likes it!! Thats awesome your mom will even get on a sled and quad. My mom wants nothing to do with them. I look forward to watching this thread. Retro you make your bikes cleaner than when they left the showroom floor.
 
#22 · (Edited)
Well, she is 78, but I noticed that she has slowed down a lot now that she lives nearby... she still does everything she wants to, just slower. Still wants to be independent and do all the things she enjoys doing outdoors without asking for help though. She will use her ATV a lot this summer me thinks, even for trail riding through the woods for fun, and for showing her visiting grandkids all the cool places she has explored.

I won't be doing a frame up resto on this one though. Just intend to tear it down far enough to get eyeballs on most of the major moving parts and clean and repack all the bearings, replace seals and bushings and any worn out/broken/missing parts that I find along the way. I don't care whether it is ever shiny or not. I just don't like to fix problems one at a time on machines in the order as they might occur.... that approach can cause me to become stranded somewhere and chasing occasional gremlins wastes a lot of my time.

I prefer doing complete teardowns to service everything at once to head off any potential breakdowns or failures that might be avoidable. I feel like I am saving a lot money and time on repairs and maintenance when I can clean and repack an old bearing that might last for many more years, if only it had plenty of good clean grease in it. In my view, it is just an act of taking routine preventive maintenance chores one step further.

I own and depend daily on a LOT of very old equipment. All of my durable and reliable old-school machines were torn down and serviced as soon as I got them, before ever being put to work. I do the same teardown procedures on every brand new machine I buy too! New machines need them the most! I simply repeat those routine teardown sessions on each one every several years. My repair hours and costs each year usually total very near to 0 hours and $0.00. I spend my time and money on thorough, scheduled (at my convenience) maintenance sessions instead...

Which means I worry less about anything breaking down when I need it the most. And I rarely have to scrounge for and spend a fortune on any obsolete parts. I NEVER buy any china stuff when it is an avoidable consequence. Being that I am a hardcore tightwad and a practicing cheapskate, this attitude and approach works the best for me.
 
#23 · (Edited)
It finally stopped snowing early this morning, so this afternoon I spent some time looking the Rancher over out under a bright sun for the first time. It is still pretty grungy looking on the tops of the plastic surfaces I noticed right away. I'm sure everything will wash clean and bright with some hot soapy water and a scrub brush though. One piece at a time...

I noticed in one of those roadside pics that I took the day I bought this, that a front rack bracket was bent where the left side top of the fender mounts through a rubber grommet. So first thing today I checked that out and noticed the front bumper and rack are bent (you'll see what I mean in the pics I'll soon post) in a little. Luckily the plastic fender wasn't found cracked or damaged around that grommet. The bumper and rack are made of light tubing so they should be easy to straighten back where they belong. No kinks or dents in either one, so no worries. I hadn't noticed any of that while I was checking the bike over in the man's garage.

I also noticed that several black plastic push pins are missing that hold plastics together in a few areas. I'll buy a package of 100 to replace them and keep the rest for spares.

One bolt (of two) is missing that holds the right foot peg down. One black plastic wheel cap is missing as well.

In the trunk I found the Owners Manual inside its compartment along with a new NGK spark plug. But the toolkit and the gear shift wrench are missing. Those were added to the parts list to be replaced as well.

It looks like a mouse began to build a nest inside the airbox, but must have abandoned it right away. The air filter inside was still clean and oiled, so maybe the little critter found a more pleasant living room in someone else' vehicle nearby. No harm done there... and no wiring or hoses were found chewed on the bike. Everything else on the bike checks out fine so far.

Next up, I opened the drain on the float bowl and let that empty out. It was still liquid, but a green and smelly liquid... So I unhooked the hose coming from the tank and slipped a short length of hose over the inlet nipple and stuck a small funnel in it. I poured some of my premium 32:1 chain saw premix into the funnel to fill the bowl, then opened the drain again to flush it out a bit. I closed it back up and filled the float bowl with premix again. I put a battery in it, then yanked the air filter and squirted a bit of premix into the carb... turned the key on and tested the shift buttons... R-N-1-N... Sweet!!!

So I pulled the choke and pushed the button and it fired right up! I let it idle for about 20 seconds (the hour meter rolled over to 500.0 hours as it was idling) then shut it down. It sounded pretty darn good to me, so now I can continue the rehab without worry or wonder about a gazillion "what ifs". :)

The reason I was not 100% confident with the motor until now, is because the hose on my old-school made-in-the-USA compression tester cracked open while I was trying to screw it into the 12mm adapter (already threaded into the head) in the man's garage. The angle I had to bend it around as I twisted on the hose was severe and in the cold air temp the hose cracked open. I had tried to hold the crack shut with one hand while the other hand pressed the starter button, but I couldn't make the hose airtight. The building pressure would blow off through the cracked hose. 55 lbs is as high as I saw the gauge go on a hit, so I used other simple clues (no evidence of oil or soot in the exhaust, it wiped clean and dry. The spark plug came out tan color too, no soot, carbon or shiny oil deposits on it) to form my opinion. The Odometer read 4,723 miles. The hourmeter read 499.9 total hours. I also had the man's word that it was all good. Now I am 100% confident that his word is good too! :)

Creamsicle is a gift me thinks!!! :)

Due up next: Pre-teardown PIC PORN. I am about 20% into the teardown right now, so this is the only pic dump you'll see of the "Before" condition of Creamsicle. I added a shot of the color code (YR-222R) sticker too. Honda calls it "Zest Orange" in parts fiche listings.
 

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#399 ·
You got a good deal , this cant-a-loupe Rancher popped up today on the local Craig's List for $1,100 and it looks rough

https://neworleans.craigslist.org/snw/d/2001-honda-rancher/6501927160.html
You got a good deal , this cant-a-loupe Rancher popped up today on the local Craig's List for $1,100 and it looks rough

https://neworleans.craigslist.org/snw/d/2001-honda-rancher/6501927160.html
I'm 4 years late but... people can ask for whatever they want it doesn't mean it's worth it.. it's only worth what someone will pay for it. you go by sold prices not by what someone else is asking online. 😘
 
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