5Twins keeps beating me to the punch!
Yes, essentially, you plug the new unit in to replace the two older units (the VR which is under the LH side cover and the rectifier which is mounted under the battery box). On the unit I bought, the wires were not inserted into the connector bodies - but that only took a few minutes. BUT - be very careful to match up the wire colours correctly or you could damage the components.
As for mounting the new solid state unit - your call but I would avoid
hot or
vibrating areas (not easy on an XS650 I'll admit) and make sure that the air can get to it to keep it cool. I posted a photo of my
el-cheapo mount below the carbs in my earlier message.
As for the Starter Safety Relay -
NO -
do not remove it and
NO -
I doubt that it could be replaced by a modern unit.
The SSR protects that
many delicate (and unobtainable) starter gears from clashing if you happen to hit the starter button while the engine is running. Some of the chopper guys who run minimal electrical systems remove it -
but - I would just leave it there and let it do its job. One thing to note about the SSR is that if it is dirty/corroded or filled with mouse sh!t (like mine was - somehow) - it will prevent the bike from cranking. All you do is remove the two tiny little JIS screws that hold the cover on - and clean in there with a toothbrush and some electrical contact cleaner.
Wah-La - you'll be back in business.
The JIS screws are another point worth making.
Everything on a Japanese
anything (car, motorcycle, camera, toaster) that looks like a Philips screw - is
not a Philips screw. It is a
Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) screw and it is sufficiently different from a Philips that it will be damaged unless you use the correct JIS screwdriver. They are readily available at low cost on the web - the best brand is "
Vessel" and they're identifiable by the pretty blue-green colour of the handles. If you're going to work on a Japanese bike - I strongly recommend that you get yourself a set of Vessel screwdrivers. Here is a linky to a UK site which has them for 34 UKP (seems steep to me - but oh well).
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/JIS-Scre...330113&hash=item27fd4dd36c:g:5ckAAOSwmCVY~LCG