!!! 1986 XL600R Adventure Bike Rebuild !!!

thanks! I'll continue my thread as I continue to put things back together. My XR650L triple clamp is in the mail, so that's the next big thing, as well as transferring the stator from the XL so the electrical matches up. My goal is to have as cheap but street legal and as reliable bike as I can get for less than 500$. So far I'm there.

What I did, was kick the bike over w/o the spark plug, multiple times. I had dumped a bunch of the engine oil into the cylinder head too, when I added 2.5 quarts of engine oil, (seems like steve said 1 quart into the engine and the other 1.5 into the tank?) through a valve cover cap - just liberally doused everything with oil. THEN I fired up the bike, and as soon as I could get it to run, cracked the top banjo bolt. When oil was pumping out of it, I knew I had oil pressure.

I bow to the experts tho, some have the pump primed with grease, some prime the pump through the external oil ports, before starting, etc. I did dump a liberal amount of oil into the pump as the engine was laying on its side on the bench too. I figured oil everywhere couldn't hurt anything! I'm not an expert on these bikes by any means, just a pretty good mechanic figuring out these particular bikes as I go. give me a VW diesel, or a 1997 Dodge minivan and I become an expert

Im thinking I might prime the oil pump and check oil flow to the head by cranking the motor with the starter motor, (XL600 RMG) before I even put the head on. Also read about soaking the oil filter in oil before fitting it to the clutch cover. Think it reduces the time for oil to reach the head after a new filter is fitted.
Also picked up a Suzuki GN200 oil cooler on ebay for $18 that will fit perfectly below the headlight behind the shroud.
I need to get my photobucket account sorted out and work out how to post some pics.

I think that's a pretty good idea. w/o spark plug in of course. and by head you mean the valve cover part of the head? A person could even install the filter and fill the filter holder while the engine is sideways on the bench, just before putting it in the frame maybe? will it run out the holes for the external hoses? I dunno... I'd love to get a oil cooler, maybe later this spring. Sounds like it could be very good for this engine and it's longevity.

I reread my own post. Here's what Steve said about oil:

"I put one quart in the frame and the other quart 'n a half in the left intake hole."

Dig the direction you're going with the colors. The orange details are looking nice. One suggestion I have is to think of a different option for the engine color instead of solid black. Having the colors broken up like you have is cool but the engine doesn't fit in too well being a solid black. It's too much of one color in one spot, maybe break it up a bit by having some natural finish on the engine side covers or head maybe. Or use a silver color somewhere on it.

We're already on the same wavelength. Go back to post #38 on page 3 of this thread, and you will see that I am going in exactly that direction.

Bottom of the engine and valve cover: black
Cylinder and head: bare metal

Thanks for the compliments!

-Christian

Well we're close. I'm thinking maybe use a different metal color rather than bare silver maybe, or maybe something even different from silver. I have a tone in mind but it's hard to explain so I did some photo editing myself to kind of show you the direction I'm getting at.

Dude... You're f**king hilarious! I had to show my wife (and explain) and we were both cracking up.







No, but seriously.... A gold engine? I'd rather give the bike away.

I finished the bag mounts today. The right-side bag was definitely a bit more complicated because of the exhaust; there were several small changes that needed to be made on that side. Here you can see both bags mounted, and the aluminum heat shield that I added to the bag to guard the plastic from the exhaust.

I also FINALLY (it seemed like a long time) received the cam chain in the mail today. I laid the new one out next to the old to make sure that in fact the old one had really stretched, and sure enough it had...



The old one is above, the new one below. At the left edge of the image the pins are lined up... at the right edge you can see they are not lined up...

I'm wrestling with whether or not to drop $200 on this helmet...



The color match with the bike can't be beat.... But I'm not too into branding and logos and such (like all the "JT" all over this thing)

I currently have an Arai motocross helmet that's a bit on the tight side, and a Shoei RF900 street helmet. Neither one are a great match for this bike.... but a helmet is a helmet. The Shoei fits.

EDIT: If the Shoei fits, wear it! HA HA!

I am going to finish the evening's posts with a question.... or two....

This afternoon the power went out (damn rural electric cooperative!) and so I decided to begin installing the wiring harness. No power required for that....

In the following picture



does anyone know what the 2-pin connecter in circle A is for? The wires going into it are black and green. I don't think I've got anything hanging around that plugs in there.....

And, the loose green wire in circle B is one of two wires from the AC regulator. There does not seem to be a female green receptacle for it anywhere nearby.... I studied the wiring diagram in the Clymer manual and it seems that this is just a common ground, so I am thinking of just connecting it with one of the other green ground wires nearby. Sound good? (As you might surmise I did not take careful notes OR pictures during disassembly of the harness... DOH!)

Over at the left of the picture you can see one of the problems I uncovered under the gobs of electrical tape which I removed... those two green wires were just twisted together and taped up. I would have soldered them and covered them with heat shrink tubing, but like I said the damn power was out. I will do that tomorrow.

the plug A looks a little bit like the rear brake light switch?

http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot

I hear you about helmets though. You can't find any middle ground with them. They're either like one solid color and very plain, or they have multiple colors and they're very loud. A nice simple two or three colored helmet with minimal logo's would be nice. Something that looks racy but not like you're wearing a souvenir home from the track.

Thanks. Not sure why I didn't think of that. My bike has never had that switch. For some reason I thought the switch would plug directly into the tail-light pigtail... but that makes more sense.

I guess it's time to go on eBay and get one of those....

Oh yeah....

WHEELS!



New bearings and seals, new tubes. Old tires, but they're pretty good.

And oh yeah, I figured out my green wire issue. It's that weird quad-receptacle thing buried in the wiring boot.... anyone who has been in there probably knows what I'm talking about.

-Christian

Yeah, wouldn't have known that but I am installing XL600 wiring harness lights etc. on XR600 bike, so just recently ran across that very plug going to the brake light switch on the XL600. Now I have to fabricate a mount for the XR since it doesn't have the welded piece for the switch to mount.

And.... nice! on the picture w/ wheels! very nice indeed.

I greatly disliked the rear brake light switch mount that was on my 84 XR that has an old Baja Designs dual sport kit.

So, I fabricated a better mount out of angle aluminum. No frame mods on my XR5 as there were already holes in that cross brace piece to bolt the switch mount to.

Photos:

Brake switch bracket looks good. Mine was all bent up, so I might do something similar to what you did.

In other news, I looked at the lower oil screen today....



Very clean. Much like most of the rest of the insides of this engine.

With the new cam chain in hand, I put the bottom of the engine back together, and also installed the cam.

The engine is mostly back together now... just gotta do the rocker cover. It's just sitting on the head in this picture.....



I devised a very good way to get the cam chain tensioner into place... but I forgot to take a picture. If I have time later on, I will do a drawing. It worked very well.