1976 XS650C Restore

Grease is the word! :eek: (And the judicious application of heat.)
Caliper bores looked better than I expected after the first pass at cleaning.
Still some more work to do.
The pistons looked good, one had some barely discernible pitting.

And I got the new shoes installed today as well. :)
 

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So it's things like this that make it take so long..
I spent most of the afternoon just cleaning up the fenders.
The front fender didn't look too bad but it had to come apart and everything got scrubbed, soda blasted, polished, underside coated with Boeshield, and reassembled.

Then 40 years of gunge had to be forcibly removed from the underside of the rear fender, it had to be blasted, polished, etc. etc.

Then I looked at the taillight.... So it had to come completely apart and every part, nut, bolt, etc. received the same treatment.
(btw, soda blasting works really well at cleaning up chrome.)

Meanwhile, the mail delivered the LED's for the gauges and new plug caps..

Finally ready to install the front fender and discover that my stainless bolt kit is short one fender bolt. Dammit!
Anyway, yeah, whatever.:wink2:
 

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I have a pretty good collection of stainless fasteners, mostly M6 sizes in various lengths. But the beauty of stainless is you don't need all the lengths, just some longer ones. You can cut them without fear of the cut end rusting and make any shorter ones you need. That's good and also necessary in some instances because Yamaha used some oddball lengths in spots. The handlebar perch clamping bolts come to mind. They're an odd length, something like 22mm.

As you probably noticed, many of the original bolts have numbers stamped on them. So do many stainless bolts. With the stainless, I file the numbers off, then buff, and get a nice chrome-like replacement .....

TailLightBolt.jpg


TX750RtRrSpacer.jpg
 
As you probably noticed, many of the original bolts have numbers stamped on them. So do many stainless bolts. With the stainless, I file the numbers off, then buff, and get a nice chrome-like replacement .....

Yeah, I polish the stainless but I haven't gone so far as to file numbers off.
But now I'm gonna have to! :wink2:

I bought a stainless kit for the whole front end, tree, gauges, forks, etc.
Included all the bolts, washers, acorn nuts, etc.
It was only $16, well worth it, imho, if for no other reason than it saves me the time.
 
G'day,
My caliper looks just like yours.
When you used heat did you use a hot air gun??
Why the grease??:bike::bike:

I installed a grease fitting and used a grease gun to pump in grease to force out the pistons.
I used a propane torch to heat the calipers a bit, just hot enough not to touch, but not more. A heat gun would be more eloquent.
(Protect the Yamaha logo or the heat will damage it and don't breath any fumes from the brake fluid or grease!)

I had the assembled caliper in a vise and it takes a bit of work to get both pistons free, once one pops loose you have to force it back in to get the other one loose then work them back and forth until they are both protruding enough to pop out the pistons with a bit of compressed air. A couple of C-clamps help with this.
Then I took the hot, greasy caliper apart, wrapped it in a rag, and popped out the pistons and blew grease all over my shirt...

I still need to finish cleaning the calipers, the seal slots need to be completely clean.
 
Looking very good, just need the juice box in there?
Bingo.
I pulled the battery box and rehabbed it a couple of years ago and had it in another box under the bench. I kinda forgot about it until this afternoon.

2M, yep, I'll hoist it up a bit for the wheels. Just waiting for new rear shoes.
Should arrive mid-week. It needs to be up on its own two feet!

The CL needs restored but it's in line after the CB550 behind it.
Too much wrenching, not enough riding...
 
I really envy the room you have. I'd have more bikes if I had more room, lol.
 
I really envy the room you have. I'd have more bikes if I had more room, lol.

Thx, I got lucky with the space.
The shop was built by the PO of my house.
It's not the space you have, a lot great work comes out of small spaces.

I'm actually going to thin the herd a bit soon I hope.
The 550 will get fixed up and sold and I think the XL250s is going as well.
 
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And now - Gauges!
The original gauge faces were faded and cracked and the PO had drilled holes in the plastic to reset the faceplate screws.
I found a nice set of replacement gauges but I wanted to keep the original mileage so I swapped the face and glass on the speedo.
That stainless ring was tough to bend!
Honda gauges have a thin aluminum ring.
So then I installed the LED lights and reassembled everything.
I used rubber weather stripping to replace the expensive rubber seals.
It's not perfect, but it will do. And it was cheap.

Also, while searching the forums I saw that there was some disagreement as to whether or not the trip meter knob was removable on the '76 gauges.
Well, they are.
However, oddly, on one gauge the knob unscrewed and on the other it just pulled off and pushed on, and was clearly designed to do so.
So I hope clears up everything. :)
 

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Got the new V-reg mounted, rebuilt the controls, blinkers, and the seat lock as well as cleaning electrics and wiring.
xs650c_rebuild_controls_57.jpg xs650c_rebuild_seatlock_58.jpg xs650c_rebuild_seatlock_59.jpg
xs650c_bike_progress_61.jpg

Got the headlight bucket back on.
It was a bit messed up, the "special" washers were missing from the inside blinker mounts and the grommets were mangled beyond repair so they had to be replaced. Fortunately the bike came with some spares that included another set of signals that still had the "special" washers.
I misplaced the header clamp nuts. Turns out M10x1.25 acorn nuts are rare and expensive.
I found mine but I'd still like to replace them with stainless for less than ~$2.50++ each!
Anyway, if it wasn't so damn hot I'd be able to work faster. Still might be ready to fire it up next week!
 
So, hung the wiring harness and hooked up everything. Dropped in a battery and turned the key.
Hey, everything works! Oh, wait, except the right rear blinker. Crap!
Long story short, the green line to the right rear blinker is broken somewhere in the harness and shorted to ground when measured from the back.

Sigh. Well I have another harness from a "B" that I can use.
It just pisses me off wasting time cleaning and repairing the original harness.
Really tempted to just buy a new one, I hate sketchy wiring.
On the plus side, the LED gauge lights look pretty neat.
 
- - - Long story short, the green line to the right rear blinker is broken somewhere in the harness and shorted to ground when measured from the back - - -
.
Hi Ranger,
oddly, that's a good thing. If the green wire had shorted from the front you'd have blown a fuse each time you signalled a right turn and got extremely miffed trying to diagnose the problem.
At it is, all you need to do is find the break and the short and do a solder & shrinksleeve splice on the wire.
 
Hi Ranger,
oddly, that's a good thing. If the green wire had shorted from the front you'd have blown a fuse each time you signaled a right turn and got extremely miffed trying to diagnose the problem.
At it is, all you need to do is find the break and the short and do a solder & shrinksleeve splice on the wire.
True, it could have been harder to diagnose I traced it about halfway back from the front and still no break and it's a pita to unwrap and rewrap the harness.
I'm more inclined to check out my spare harness tomorrow.
I'm waiting on new intake boots anyway, I thought I could get away with using the old ones. Should have know better. ;)
 
Well, I bailed on my spare harness and just ordered a new one. I made a mount out of Lexan for the VR.
Installed the new harness and got the rats nest plugged up.
btw, if you want to use an EP34/35 solid state flasher you need to switch the wires in the plug to this arrangement.
I added some juice and this time all the lights came on and everything checked out!
xs650c_VR_62.jpg xs650c_headlight_wired_63.jpg xs650c_flasher_wired_SS_64.jpg xs650c_EP35_SS_flasher_65.jpg
 
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