Another Bike Choice Question.

I bought a 'project' Vision 550 for 200 bucks, with a spare bike thrown in for free. I figure it cost me about 1200 bucks and a couple hundred hours of labor to get it roadable. I had to buy a special spark plug wrench, and grind it down to get it thin walled enough to remove the spark plugs. I had fuel system issues from the start. Even though it would run reasonably well, it gave signs of running too rich when the tank was full, and went way lean at a little over 100 miles, when there was plenty of gas left in the tank. I had reached my limit as a troubleshoooter, and ended up selling it to a friend of mine for 800 bucks. He eventually got it sorted out, but it's still slow, heavy, and hard to start. I enjoyed the process of making one servicable bike out of two basket cases, but eventually came to the conclusion that I like riding bikes better than I do working on them. You have to ask yourself what your committment level is, and what result you consider acceptable. Financially, it makes no sense at all. If you enjoy overcoming obstacles, and can savor fairly ordinary performance for all your efforts. then go for it. Plenty of people restore cars that can't compete with modern cars in any rational way, but derive satisfaction from saving something from extinction, and God bless them. Lot's of machines would have become extinct if someone hadn't had an irrational desire to save it. Financially, it will never make sense, so you have to decide if you care enough about this machine to go through the flaming hoops that are inevitably coming your way.