The Hodaka Club Forum

Hello form Florida. - Just registered and testing out my posting skills. Been a Hodaka owner since about 1970 when I bought a 100b "Basket case"
Got it running and rode it for a few years until I bought a 125 Wombat. After I got out of collage, bought a brand new RED 125 Wombat in 1976. Road the local enduro races for a while. Was never any good, just had loads of fun. Still have that same bike today. Un-restored (cleaned up) Looks great, OEM top end. Goes to local vintage Bike shows. ( Riding into History) . Well, Yesterday I Could not resist a local "Barn Find" and bought a Thunderdog. #69 serial number. Mostly complete, turns over and has spark. Looks like I am going to have many days of fun restoring this thing. Now we come to the main reason for me joining the forum. I am sure I am going to have many questions on the restoration and I hope it can help me. Most of the mechanical Issues I feel comfortable with, as I have worked on and restored more than one bike. However, being that Thunderdogs in Florida are scarce as hens teeth, there is not another restored bike for me to look at. I am sure to have many "what is correct" questions. Thanks in Advance.
Cotton

Great bikes you have there im sure you will get a lot of help along the way.Thats a real low serial number on the dog
does it have the big hodaka decal printed on the tank or the smaller decal.

It would be the Larger Hodaka printed logo. It is mostly worn off and hard to see but you can tell it filled up most of tank. I probably will have to replace the tank with a Repo as the plastic is faded badly. The Fenders are in bad shape also and it does not have the side plastics at all. Lucky that some new stuff is available.

Im sure you will be able to locate all you need .there was some side panels and tank on ebay
the other day.Did you take any pics of the bike in its original condition.

Welcome Cotton, nice owning your Hodies so long.

On the Thunderdog there are several owners of them here. I myself have two Thunderdogs and on SL250(70A).

The tank can be restored, see the link to my project page below. I also have an early model as I have
the big lettering on the tank. I think Paul said those only came on the first 500 units,
Can tell you stories about trying to replace those graphics. If you decide
you want to get the newly available tank I would be interested in your old one, so I have a
beater tank for ridding.

Scroll near the bottom for tank pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/82indypc/1 ... Thunderdog

The fenders can be restored also, see pics there. Although I did buy a new set from Paul for show purposes.
Restoring the plastic just takes time and effort, lots of wet-sanding is the best method in my opinion, others
use steel wool etc but that cleans them up but they really only shine due to the oil in the steel wool, for a
little while anyway. After wet-sanding I then hit the buffing wheel with several levels of polish. Lots of
work on the fenders when you can get new ones for not too much $s. Tanks until recently were HARD to find
so restoring was the only option, which is why I did mine.

Welcome aboard and good to know another TDawg owner.

Speaking of Thunderdogs, just added another new one to my collection. Will test drive it this weekend. Its a little early but still may work good.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... SS:US:1123