A thread about my “new” ‘81 Bobber.

I bought my first Xs650 6 years ago. It was a ‘75 that hadn’t ran in years. I cleaned the tank, threw a pamco system on it, Honda rebel shocks, rewired it, cleaned the carbs and got it running but never got it on the road before I had to sell it. Had the option to buy it back a few times but it never really worked out.

Fast forward to 2020 and I got the itch to pickup another bike. Found a cheap ‘79 locally that apparently just needed some electrical work. Turns out it needed a lot more but it was a 1 owner bike so I snagged it.

I started working on that but wanted something to ride in the mean time and stumbled up an ‘83 locally that wasn’t getting spark. Brought it home figured out the ignition box was bad. Wired up a GN250 box thanks to a thread on this forum and it started right up.


Browsing Facebook market I stumble upon an ‘81 bobber that also hasn’t getting spark. I figure I’ll take a look at it as I’ve always wanted a bobber and it was close by. Turns out it had a broken ground, a flat battery, and a broken reg/rec wire. Sorted all that out and it fired first kick.



Sorry for the long introduction but that brings us up to date. I figured I’d start this thread to update my progress on fixing up the bobber, asking questions, etc. Plus I haven’t seen a bobber build thread on here in awhile.

Hi Chris:

Well, you've got the makings of some nice bikes there - congratulations and welcome, from Canada's sunny southern coast in Windsor, Ontario!

Pete

What's your plans for the bobber? Just get it reliable or full teardown?

Here are a few more photos of the bobber from the day I brought it home.

I wish I had taken photos of the wiring nightmare on this bike but I couldn’t help myself from just tearing into it. So I just have some in progress photos. This is my first time fully rewiring a bike from scratch so bare with me!



I fitted a toggle switch for the headlight in the side of the oil tank. My old bike had a switch for the headlight so it’s not on during starting which I liked so this was my take on it.



Fitted a neutral light in this crossbar. The PO had some little bulbs siliconed in place for neutral and turn signals which looked terrible.



This switch used to switch on some underglow lights for the bike but I repurposed it into the new kill switch.



I had a set of Hughs upper mounts laying around so I threw those on.



As it sat tonight it’s fully wired minus horn and turn signals. I’ll be adding them as time goes on but for right now I really would like to just ride it. I’m waiting on some woven split loom to come in the mail to wrap all the wires and fully tidy it up!

Jim said:

What's your plans for the bobber? Just get it reliable or full teardown?

Click to expand...

a little of both. For now I’ll get it reliable and use it for the rest of the riding season here in PA. Come winter I’d like to tear it down and redo some stuff.

I also have this wiseguy 2 into 1 intake and carb I’m going to be fitting to it at some point!

Got everything wiring wise don’t today. I may change the routing a little after I take it all down to wrap it in the woven split loom.

I took it out on it’s first voyage today and outside of an air filter rattling off because I didn’t tighten the clamp enough it did great!

So I got the single VM34 on and running pretty well. Definitely needs some fine tuning but I’m making progress.

Next thing on my list is exhaust. The setup I have now is just ridiculous and it also blast my toes with hot exhaust and doesn’t make for a very enjoyable ride. So let’s talk exhaust, length, diameter, baffles, mufflers, 2-1, whatever. I was always dead set on the Yo Mama exhaust from Pandemonium but something a little more performance oriented wouldn’t be bad.