XS650 Special becomes a Vermont Backroader

[ferals5]

Originally Posted by bpeckm

There is a very active thread here on Old's Cool called XS650 APPRESH that has been "inspiring" to say the least....


one of our inmates in Australia does onehellluvalotta adventure riding on his XS650:

Hunter Greyghost aka BAZA on his very-trusty-indeed XS650:



You gotta love a bike than can run hundres of thousands of km in OZ with that kind of load... a monumental tribute to the essential ruggedness of the bike....!!





...yeah...he rides the thing LOADED!!!!

Ahh... you see Baza and overloading go together

Baza & Bev stuck near the top of heart break hill after an 'off' entering the '11 TTT rally

[hunter_greyghost]

Gotta build them right to make them work!!!!
Good to see another inmate who's prepared to do dirty work on their ride, think most XS650 riders have been down this road of discovery
MikesXS are good people to deal with, 650Central is worth looking @ too, Mike Morse is a top bloke who knows his XS's
Good spannerwork & keep project photos coming
Cheers
Baza

[bpeckm]

That's a classic shot ..... ....reminds me of my boys when they would see a puddle... we're all just boys at heart!!

[bpeckm]

Will didn't want the original tank to the bike... it was actually in pretty good shape, with no rust, a coupla chips in the paint.

Very different in size from his chosen tank, off a DT175 iirc...







So the decision was to strip the DT tank and try to do something in the bare-metal look...







...and with some wetsanding it ended up looking pretty good... it had some dents and dings (patina!) that show up more with the bare metal...





I used some metal-wash (dry powder mixed with water from Eastwood) in a spray bottle to keep it wet as I sanded... and it was truly amazing to see how long the metal stayed non-rusty! months!

[bpeckm]

Buddy keeps an eye on his domain....



He doesn't much like the smells that I make in the garage and shop, but he hangs outside, keeping the world safe for dogdom... all dogs walking to and from the park across the street are duly announced, and warned....

[pbarmy]

Have you checked out my buddy John's(SOS) thread?Very similar build.

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=843072

[bpeckm]

I bit the bullet and bought an inexpensive powdercoat setup.... the gun kit was about $100 on sale from Eastwood, and I found an old wall oven ($50) on the local Craigslist....and got it installed in the garage... yeehaw!



But, then in the way of these things, if you have a powdercoat setup, you have to have a blaster, and some media.... so a cheap blaster, a bag of soda, a coupla bags of HomeDepot sand (and a requisitioned sifter!), and we could do a proper prep....



...and of course you havta have the TUNES.....

[bpeckm]

Originally Posted by pbarmy

Have you checked out my buddy John's(SOS) thread?Very similar build.

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=843072

Ooooff... he has a lot more "builder" skills than I... I am just assembling bits and pieces to make the bike fun. I took a welding course, but don't have the facilities (nor would I begin to TRUST my own welds for something critical like a shock mount and swingarm!)

But, we both havin' fun....no bout adout it!

[bpeckm]

Got a coupla little bits p'coated, then went for the big guns....



We were finally able to get a set of rear ss spokes, so we got this done which gave us "inspiration".... (......damn! did WE do that??!!!)



When powdercoating wheels, the bearings have to be pulled, so all new wheel bearings (AND headstock bearings, AND swingarm bronze bushings).. so we did all the "weak points" that people report as the bikes age.....

[bpeckm]

Will went off to his summer internship, and I was left behind, once again, to toil in the bowels of the man-cave....

Got the front rim p'coated (yes, you can get a 19" rim into the oven... working VERY carefully, it just about fits on the diagonal....) and the wheel laced.... and the new tires mounted...

[bpeckm]

Got the soda blasting out for a light cleanup of the engine block and cases:



It came out "relatively better", as we weren't going for a showpiece...clean and workable.











...and it starts going back together into the now-painted frame:

[bpeckm]

...and the frame got painted.




(no pics!)




and the engine went back in.



so we resume:



The wiring harness, without the stupid-extra crap, was reinstalled, with some re-located parts...



...cut down the battery box, put in a new fuse box and terminal in an accessible location, hid the relays under the seat, and generally cleaned things up some....







and decided to build the new seat using the old seat pan... ripped of the foam, cut down the shape with the thought that I could always cut it smaller, so that little project began as well:

[bpeckm]

Powdercoating....

......assembling.......

This is FUN!





Had to come up with some way to support and hold the "new" tank in the right place....











....and the seat started to take shape to go with the tank....'

[bpeckm]

At about this point in the whole thing, some "interesting" problems had to be solved...

The DT tank is small, has a small tunnel, so wire routing was just done along the frame... BUT there was a conflict between the top motor mounts and the bottom of the tank, and the fuel tap was just wrong for the desired placement of the tank. I found another Yamaha petcock (have no freekin' idea what it's from, but presumed that the oval-O-ring and bolt placement was standardized among vintage Yammys, so I found one with a rear-facing outlet and tried that.

Also, the front brake master cylinder proved to be a "challenge" to get bled out, but that got solved as well.



Will didn't want a 2-into-1 exhaust, nor a standard low system, so we ended up with Hoos Racing 1-3/4" stainless headers. Nicely made, but not polished or fancified in any way.

With the headers bolted on, and a funnel-gasline for fuel "supply", I had the first chance to fire her up..... I checked valve clearances, turned on the fuel, and tried the electric kicker... pow pow pow... erratic, but she did fire!

[bpeckm]

I had quite a time with the electronic ignition: sometimes it would fire right up, others there was nothing... no spark. With help from the XS650 crowd, and some interesting methodology for finding the culprit, I determined that there was some sort of intermittent break or no-go inside the TCI box...













There was a lot of voltage- and continuity-testing, and finally got it figgered out... I wrote a thread on the troubleshooting sequence, which is posted on XS650: "How to Troubleshoot the TCI Ignition System".

An interesting thing that I used as a test-light was a 12V LED: because they react so quickly to voltage pulses, they can be used to read the "signal" at the TCI box output, a good thing to know when tracing whether there is a signal coming down the pike to the coils!






And this guy is worth its weight in platinum: a simple spark-indicator which hooks up in series, and flashes IF there is a spark... a LOT easier than pulling plugs and grounding them, and much less likely to cause coil damage than a dicey-grounding of a pulled sparkplug!