Little details and a little history

So all the little bits are trickling in.

Things like new springs for the footpegs.
$25 for a pair... good investment huh?

Lost count of what's been spent on fasteners, gaskets, and rubber bits. At least it's almost like a brand new bike.

Sorry to bore you. 

I'm waiting for replacement valve guides. I'll use that as an excuse for not doing the other hundred things I could be doing. The custom exhaust guides were 1/4" too short. Zach over at R/D is going to fix it up and get them here ASAP. 

Later this week, we might put the bottom end together... or wait and do the engine mounts first, before it gets too heavy to lift in and out.

It'll start to go faster soon...

In the meantime, here's a couple of shots of my other XS from oh so long ago. I think I built it for less than the engine in the 650.

Made almost everything. Had no money so had little choice.

Could have used some money for things like heat treating the 6061 T6 frame after welding. Despite the lack of funds, it turned out to be pretty unique. Not too many chain drive XS1100's around. The ones that are are pretty goofy because they just extended the output shaft, which means you have to run a teeny tiny front sprocket to fit. I made a gearbox that had 3 gears in it so I could move the countershaft back. This was before 3D modeling was around. Made designing things a bit more challenging.

Overall, it was pretty cool, but oh so much work. Everything was machined by hand, had no CNC access then either. Things like sleeving the oil pump, machining bigger spigots on the carbs so they'd fit the stock intake boots, lengthening the Gixer fork, all incredibly time consuming and could have been solved so much easier with a little cash.

Note the broken tach needle, thing used to buzz a little at 9k.

It's still sittng in the garage, hasn't been fired up for 6 years.

Maybe when the 650's done ... na been there done that.

Anyways, again sorry to bore you, we'll get back to the XS650 shortly, promise.

Pipes

Anyone got any other ideas on pipes for this thing?
I like some of these. There's that x pipe thing too. (see bottom)

How about this pipe work, there's some extreme dedication. Now that's a well fit pipe.

I've assumed that I'll be buying some 1 3/4" stainless and be building something on my own. It'd be great to find something off the shelf.

And of course, one of the coolest pipes ever. I still remember the first time I ever saw this bike, burned an indelible image on my brain.

A tip of the hat to this one as well. Whats most remarkable about this pipe, is which side of the engine the intakes on.    

That was a lot of welding and rework to get that intake out of there to show off this pipe. Guy's got some skills.

More mocking

So here are some snaps of the latest mock up.
Still thinking about forward lighting. The 7" in the picture is the most tolerable so far. Got an 8" and a couple of projector beams and a KTM triangle light thingy. I like the 7" because I can put the HID bulb I bought in there. It'll be stupid bright, good for my old eyes.

Almost time to start thinking about colours or colors. Kinda like the red and white livery that Yamaha used for DT's and MotoGP for a little while. Actually I think maybe YZ's were red and white for awhile? I also just like the bare steel, a lot. Problem is the seat section is glass. I guess I could attempt to replicate it from steel, but I'd like to maybe ride it this summer!

Now we need all new engine mounts. If we use the stock mounts we end up with a super short intake tract. According to Limey Bikes, he couldn't even use the gaskets under the intake manifolds with his RS's on the hornet bike. Therefore the thought is to have a nice long intake, that firstly allows me to unbolt the carbs without pulling the engine out of the frame, secondly long enough to make some low end grunt, cause its more fun. By tipping the engine forward around the main bottom mount, it also shifts a bit of the weight forward as well. So if we tip it forward like in the pictures, we have the appropriate location. But it means the other 4 mounts don't work. Anyways that's my problem, not yours.

As you can see the carb linkage wants to share the same space as the left petcock. This won't do either. Once again this is my problem, not yours. Pretty sure with a f--king day or so of work, i can move all that crap over to the inside of the other carb. Then the throttle cables can route down the backbone and right into the linkage. The accelerator pump will reside right beside it on the inside of the other carb. Looks like a good plan with my eyeballs. So much for my prepped in Germany Mikuni RS bolt on solution. Whatever. Come this far might as well... you know.

Looking at these pics also painfully reminds me we want to blast off that old floor paint and get a new coat of shiny epoxy down there at some point soon. Oh yeah and all those other chores that need to be done! F--k, almost forgot have to work as well to so I can feed my family... I digress.

Back to my highly honed procrastination/denial skills. Heard today somewhere that denial is now labeled as an addiction WTF? Its also time to get some 1 3/4" stainless bends in here so we can figure out what we're going to do for a pipe. Thinking left side high pipes or maybe a double wrap, both sides, over the cases under the carbs into a single can under the seat, not much else going in there yet. Like to buy  a pipe, but they all suck. At least the ones I've found. If someone knows better, enlighten me please.

Registration

Ha, got it.
Signed a notarized affidavit about who, how much and where it was bought. Broker almost requested an inspection but said they could sight the serial # and call it done.
Went home threw the frame in the pickup, drove it down there. Convinced them that the rest of it was being restored to stock like condition at some magical place far far away, it helped explain why I had a frame there and not a motorcycle.

Anyways left the broker with a shiny new registration for the bike. No inspection required, at least not until I get pulled over for violating a noise or speed law. I guess it just delays the inevitable.

Chuck everything?

So not sure if chucking everything was such a good idea. Went on eBay and spent 60 bucks to buy a worn out set of pegs and brackets. The ones I tossed were much nicer. Anyways the point here isn't the condition, just the fact that I owned a set not more than 5 months ago. Also noting that if I hadn't or weren't still so lazy, I could have put most of those parts on eBay and maybe made back $1000 or so.

Also of note from earlier posting. re: The paperless XS650 I bought. After sending ICBC the required 10 dollars, note from my mother and all the other crap they want, turns out the bike was never registered in BC. So this means, not only can I not find the previous owner to sign over the existing reg, I may also need to have an inspection done before they'll let me register it. F--k! It's so far from being a registerable bike, even when its done. The tiny signal lights, licence plate location, 110 decibel exhaust, fenderless tires etc. are not likely to make me any friends at the local inspectors shop.

Anyways, we'll see what happens. I've got a plan! I'll go see the broker Wednesday.

Engine stuff

Starts to get interesting here.
Continues to get more expensive here.

Problem attitude - Gone this far might as well put some good parts inside.

Whats this re-phase thing all about???? K Google helped me find my answer. Now my 40 lb crank has been shipped as far away from here as you can get, without falling into an ocean, crank is in Florida at Falicon. Whats it doing there you ask? Well children, it is getting re-phased to 276.923 degrees. Click the link if you don't get it.

Rephased

Shiny new!

So Falicon is replacing the rods, bearings and pins for us while they have it apart. They are going to weld it together re-phased then dynamically balance it for my new pistons and other reciprocating parts. These guys know what they're doing.

Some people cut apart the cam shaft and weld it back together for the re-phase. Megacycle will not cut it in half. They will grind it, weld it, then regrind it with bigger lumps in all the appropriate places.They'll even set me up with a slotted sprocket. Now the slotted sprocket is only for the 447 engines, but if you ask nicely and offer cash, they'll do it on the 256 sprockets as well. If you elect to not go with the slotted sprocket, the cam needs to be degreed by pressing the sprocket on and off the camshaft. Not a good plan at all.

Perfect work.

 Anyways now I have a beautiful new 250-30 cam to match my funny crank. Of course you need sparks to happen at the right time in this engine. So we acquired a Pamco ignition kit. obviously, the dual coil re-phased one.

Of course the cam needs something to lift. I was happy with the 1mm larger than stock valves and the 103Y spring kit with aluminum tops... but then someone mentioned 7mm valves... damn! WTF I need to stop listening. Anyways found a guy who would custom make me 7mm valve stemmed 2mm bigger diameter than stock intakes and 7mm valve stemmed stock diameter exhausts. He'd also make me new guides to fit the skinny stems, get us some kick ass springs and top it off with some cool titanium tops. He'd even throw in some seals and we'd be good to go. Soooooo.... after mulling it around and falling back on that previously mentioned adage, we've gone this far might as well ...

Mmmmmmmmmm Ti

Okay, following along here? So we now have 80mm pistons attached through new NOS rods and bearings on our re-phased dynamically balanced crank inside our 750cc cylinders. This is breathing through the 7mm stemmed, lighter, (wayyyy lighter), than stock valves, being lifted .440" up into the air by the re-phased cam pushing the new NOS rockers, sucking air and fuel through a beautiful set of RS Mikunis being lit by a kickass ignition... good right? Well good enough for some.

... But wait, the ports suck in these heads, and I mean suck. in a bad way, not the good way. The exhaust ports are way to big and horribly shaped with really bad core shift. Intakes are just about as bad and are horribly shaped. So I showed them to my friend Roger :). This is always a good idea. He can't stand crap, even less than I can. I shared with him some of the documentation I had dug up on XS flows and showed him the inserts available for "fixing" the exhaust ports. I gave him my new valves and guides and asked him to keep the bill reasonable. Well he ignored my request and fixed it his way. There is a lot of welding in those ports. The engineers over at Yamaha wouldn't recognize their own f--k'd up ports ever!

Roughed intake, no guide yet.

Welded and roughed exhaust, no guide here yet either.

Shrouding removed, seats roughed out.
Wish I had a picture of stock to show.

F--king nice ehh? Roger is impeccable as/usual.

So any guesses on what the little 650 turned 750 engine costs now? Don't forget the new clutch hub, plates, friction discs and springs. Don't forget the new transmission bearings. Don't forget the labour to bead blast all the cases and refinish them all with high temperature coatings. Don't forget the new timing chain and tensioners. Don't forget the $300 for the permanent magnet alternator so I can have some spark at low rpm when I kick it. You can forget the extensive welding, porting and valve seat/guide fitting work, Roger's paying for that :).

So how much?... 4k ish in the engine lets not add it up accurately K. Tracy has a computer and I don't think she really wants to know. One thing I'm leaving out of this so far is the freight. So far there is well over 2k of UPS/FedEx/USPS/Canada Post/Hong Kong Post/Royal Mail charges. Being on the west coast of Canada, and having to bring it all here, sometimes there then here a la crank and cam, adds up, big time.

New rockers good to go. Have to take care of those pretty cam lobes.

Fuel tank cleanse

Decided to tackle the fuel tank restoration today... duh.  I could pay someone to do this... but this way I know exactly how well its been done. Maybe not better than anyone but at least I can see the rust is all gone before the tank is coated. This was an all day job, but it was strangely satisfying. When i fuel up and see the pristine steel on the inside, it'll make me smile everytime.

There were a few paint jobs in this bikes past. I'm thinking there may never be another. Considering wrapping the tank instead of paint??? Got some cool flat colors going on these days. Could do a battleship grey or something like that. got a few dings to fill in. Might even head over to Rogers and see about that stud welder he has. Might as well pull them out rather than filling them in with Bondo.

All the way from Germany

Got a good delivery today!

Spent a fair bit of time talking with "people in the know". Michael knows of what he talks about. just read the link, you'll see. He is also a great guy who spent a good hour with me on the phone. Bought a bunch of parts from him and got advice and copies of documentation on XS650's that took years to accumulate. Everything from exhaust pipe lengths through to valve spring pressures. Very impressive.

During our conversation about everything! we touched on carbs. There are lots of solutions out there, but almost everyone of them involve modified 2 stroke carbs. These just can't be tuned fully. Michael says if you get the WOT dialed you'll be missing partial throttle or somewhere else. They just won't tune up perfectly. This includes the VM's and TM's

So taking that and running only really ends in two places for me that's Mikuni RS's or FCR Kehins.

So today the new Mikuni's showed up. mmmmmmmmmmmmm More nice things.

These are the real deal. Got an accelerator pump and everything. Topham in Germany provides the kit with a base tune ready to go for the XS or so I am told. Once again. like all the other nice parts, $$$. Got some K&N's to go with them. Still lots of modifications to do to them, the cable linkage needs to be moved to the other carb, that will put the cables in the center of the bike or otherwise they'll be fighting for space with the stock petcocks. Looks doable though.

Frame

Rake or not to rake???

If we run a bigger rear wheel, bigger rear tire, longer shocks, lower the front end 2", I think that will take away a couple of degrees of rake. This is far easier than cutting of the neck and re-angling it. Therefore, we will leave it, the neck, where it is... for now.

Got a couple of days in it though to cut off all the brackets, mounts and tabs that we don't require, this would be all of them. Sure we cut off 20 lbs or so of crap, much cleaner now. Welded on the seat mounts, done... for now.

Thinking we're going to be tipping the engine forward a little. this means we'll need to cut off the lower rear engine mount and re-weld it. This can't happen until we get the engine apart and back together and fit up the appropriate carbs. Rumor has it the carbs are a very tight fit to the down-tube.

Put Timken bearings in the neck, think we're going to try and bore the bores a little deeper next time the frame is near a Bridgeport. Don't like the way they project out of the bores. Everyone else seems okay with it, but think we'll fix that.

Got all new seals and steering stem nuts for the trees. New fasteners and a new leather pad for the dampener. Ordered up a new plastic knob and drawbar for the dampener set up. It is surprisingly effective at least in my garage at 0 mph. Don't think it'll be speed sensitive like a nice Ohlins unit, but I want to try it out since its such a visual period piece. Just made that up, (visual period piece), sounds made up but it is definitely retro.

Backend

Not much happening back there.
Wider 18" Excel rim with applicable Scorpion spooned on.
Stayed with the stock drum, as it'll likely be strong enough to lock when we're ready to go sideways.

Oh yeah failed to mention. My friends all kind of decided to build cheap dirt trackers so we could go out to our semi-local, up and coming dirt track north of the city. Cheap! f--k forgot that part. Now I have to learn to slide this thing with the added threat of dropping it when its worth more than my truck.

The aluminum swing arm is made in Thailand. I figured it was worth the risk. When I emailed to ask about fitting it to the XS, the guy said they shut down the shop for 5 days because Sepang is hosting the MotoGP. Can't be all that bad if they're hardcore MotoGP guys. It's a nice quality unit.

Anyways, all cleaned up, new shoes in there, all new bearings and hardware. New seals, axle, levers and custom wheel spacers. Added needle bearings and proper seals to the swingarm pivot. Not big huge dollars, another 1500 or so here, but nice light and tight.

Try to imagine a nice set of Ohlins on there as opposed to the ones shown. I promise, we'll do something about that soon.

Big Brake

So a good part of the reason I decided to spend so much money and time on rebuilding the front end rather than just buying an inverted solution off of Ebay (for a fraction of the price), was the cool front brake set up.

The stock disc carrier actually has two skinny little ball bearings of its own. It has its own hollow axle and is actually bolted to the front fork. I guess this was some sort of racing feature??? You could pull the axle and slip the wheel out leaving the brake caliper and disc still attached to the fork. So despite the fact that there will likely be a tiny bit of slop between the drive dogs on the disk and the hub of the wheel, there is a rubber insert which gets pinched in there, but likely it will still feel a little tiny bit squishy. Despite that, I thought the coolness of the set up was worth keeping. Duh...

So I picked up a used 03 R1 front caliper, the gold dot version. It's a left side so I can flip it over and mount it in the stock location in front of the leg. This also may do some weird things as the differential bore caliper will actually have the larger pistons leading, Yamaha intended it to be the opposite, but whatever, what do they know :). I think all their calipers are all equal bores now anyways. Oh yeah, you should make sure rebuild kits are readily available for your caliper before ripping out the old seals, 'cause I know that now.

Back to the disc. Now everyone knows a stock Ducati carrier will bolt to a stock XS rim and even the left side of the hub has a cover and under there is another bolt pattern that will bolt to a stock Duc carrier allowing for a low cost twin disc front setup. Simple! But as you have likely figured out by now, not a big fan of simple. Also, that is only applicable to the late XS's not the "early" ones.

So okay going to keep the stock carrier and chuck the stock disc.

This is promising. the carrier has a eight hole pattern, thinking I can make up a simple aluminum sub carrier, bolt it to the stock carrier and add a standard floating disc to the set up and be done. Trouble is try to find a eight button floating disk anywhere on the planet! Odd numbered buttons are all the rage.

So more intensive searching finds me a the door of a manufacturer in Sweden. ISR makes beautiful stuff. Guess what though... its not cheap, but he uses eight buttons on his disc. Guess the Swedes aren't as concerned about staggering the load??? So anyways figure while he is making the disc, might as well have him do the sub carrier as well. So we did up a quick SolidWorks design and sent it off to Sweden for a quote.

So for 2500 SED or... $500 ish dollars we are good to go.

A custom caliper bracket/adapter, all new bearings, seals, axle, all new fasteners and a Speigler brake line added in and we have a stupidly expensive 330 mm, not 320mm, front brake for our 40 year old bike. Now lets hope we have 2 finger stoppies, assuming we don't fold the little 34mm fork in half :).

Also, in case you haven't noticed the trend here, the picture above contains over 2000 of my hard earned dollars. this is Canada, and those are after tax dollars. So for you Americans out there thats like 3000 of your hard earned dollars, well close anyways.

Not the final hardware, might do a little pocketing on the bracket as well.

Like so.