I went out on a limb buying these brake lines. While the lines are very good quality, I Made a few mistakes on my initial order. The top line will work great and the fitting ends will work with the stock steel lines, but I rolled the dice ordering shorter than stock bottom line hoping to tidy things up. The bottom line would have worked with some tweaking on the routing but I am trying to keep a factory look going. I just reordered a replacement bottom line of 15” so I can route properly like a factory line. I also eliminated the 45 banjo bend in place of a straight one. The 45 bend put the line uncomfortably close to the fork leg. Will report back once the new line arrives.
I also tore apart the master cylinder for rebuild and paint. I ran into issues with the rebuild kits that are available for the early master cylinders though. Several dealers offer the kits with prices ranging from about $35 up to $85. The issue I ran into was the listed replacement pistons were different than what the factory had in there. Even my 75 factory service manual provided inconsistent photos.
http://www.mikoede01.de/downloads/xs650.de/xs-wsh-de/5_Fahrgestell.pdf
I searched as many posts in this forum as I could looking for answers. I turns out the new kit should work fine as several others have had good luck with them. Then during my search for replacement kits, our friendly resident restorer Bob...aka Mailman pm’d me that he had an unused kit that I was about to order that did not get used in his ‘72 restoration. A big thanks to Bob for offering it to me free of charge and shipped it right out to me. Since my piston was in decent shape I decided to use the seals and clips from Bob’s kit to restore mine with.
Now it’s been cleaned, stripped, sanded and taped ready to paint. Once painted I’ll reinstall the innards. I just need to decide on a paint kit to use.
When I tore down the master I ended up finding quite a bit of crap in there, so decided to go through the caliper while I had it down this far. The caliper was in really good shape, but once I removed the pistons I found quite a bit of sediment in the fluid. Everything else was in good order, so just a quick clean and inspection of seals and back together it went and just waiting for the new line to arrive to finish.