75 cafe build

[650hcs]

whats up yall, this i a 75xs650 i picked up a few months back, ive been meaning to start a build thread but have been busy so here's what ive done so far. I bought this little beauty for 8 bills in Kileen TX. and have been obssesed with it from that day. I think it had 9000 and some change for mileage, last on the road the year i was born 1981 wich i think is pretty cool, this bike sat in a barn for my entire life until a few months ago.

 

[650hcs]

First I went though the bike and took off all the stuff i didnt want,fenders,guages,seat,handlebars,footrests,tires, Iknow theres more but im having trouble remembering. then I got to work on the seat, I wanted a homemeade seat so went to the local metal shop and bought some aluminum drops for real cheap like ten bucks for three piceces of 1/8 inch alum sheet metal 12"x30" and cut it out to the shape of the frame using a jigsaw and a cardboard cutout of the frame shape. then I bent it to the shape of the frame using C clamps and a torch and a rubber hammer. I let it sit on the frame a few days and heated it up throughout the day and bent it more. Luckily my bike is being built at my job in a motorcycle repair shop so i get to work and drool over it all day.(I love my life)

 

[650hcs]

Then i went to a local upholstery shop and bought some foam padding and some fabric, I put the foam on the seat pan with spay adhesive and tried to upholster it myself and this is where it went to shit, so i decided to let a pro do it and found a great upholsterer in Austin Tx. a guy named Chris who owns Gratefull Threads. great guy with a gift for upholstering and he took my seat pan with the foam and put a 1/2 inch gel pad with a 1/4 inch pad of memory foam then wraped a strechy kind of leather looking fabric over it and pop rivrted it, I think it came out looking great and am really pleased with it. I might start making these to sell to other xs owners, thats how happy i am with it. Ill take some better pics of the seat finished on monday and post them for all to enjoy. P.S. I havent installed the seat yet it is just sitting on the frame in the pics

 

[650hcs]

I really like the look of the piggyback shocks but were unable to find the black monza ones on mikesxs because they were out of stock so I bought the orange ones and disasembled them and painted the springs with a special shock spraypiant that you can get at advanced auto parts and then presto changeo black piggyback shocks. Also I put a gold 530 x-ring chain wich looks alot better with the black

 

[650hcs]

for those of you wondering the other xs in the pics is a 72 my friend Willie is building, he is also the owner of the shop so we spend alot of time staring at our bikes during work hours and sneaking away to work on them. hes gonna start a build thread also.

 

[650hcs]

I took a rear fender off a 82 suzuki GS650 my dad aquired in a harley he bought, cut it down and used a rivnut in the center on top so i can just bolt it on and used the turn signals to hold it down on the sides. i used a small round taillight from dime city cycles and mounted it on the fender. Iam still not sure I like this look and might go with the axel licence plate/taillight setup. i also went with adventure tires 18"back and 19" front spoke wheels.

 

[SteveH]

Looks awesome !

Do you have the front fender for sale ?

 

[650hcs]

thanks steve, I dont have the front fender but my friend has got the whole front end of the 72 he wants to sell. hed rather sell it as a whole piece but if u make an offer he would sell the fender

 

[Cyclesandquadsxs72]

Hey buddy bikes looking great we need to get them done were missing great riding weather.

 

[650hcs]

Here are some pics of the seat on and off the bike

 

[650hcs]

I bought some carb rebuild kits online for my BS38's and when I went to rebuild them the main jets were completely stripped and now iam waitng for two parts carbs i bought on ebay to arrive so I can swap float bowls. besides the main jet problem the carbs that came with the bike were in pretty good shape i also bought some #132.5 main jets from mikes and will be putting those in the new float bowls, I hope this will be good enough. here are some pics of what the carbs look like now.

 

[650hcs]

The starter on the bike was sounding a little rough and initially thought I needed new brushes so I dropped it from the bike and disassembled it and found out it was just bad connections so I took some 600 grit sandpaper and cleanded up the connection plates were the brushes hit and put it back together and it sounds beautifull when hooked up to a battery with jumper cables, tomarrow i will reinstall it and hopefully it will work great.

 

[650hcs]

For the exhaust I went with the shorty mufflers from dime city cycles and some black exhaust wrap. the mufflers were a little smaller than the pipes so i went to mieneke and had the expand the inch and half opening just a tiny bit so they can slip over the pipes, then to fasten them to the bike i drilled a 1/8 inch hole though the braket and the frame and will put a rivnut in the frame so i can bolt it down through the hole in the braket and into the frame, i will probably cut the bracket down and paint it to try and hide it.

 

[650hcs]

heres some pics of the bike i took today, its coming along good and really starting to take the shape of what i see in my head.

 

[natek]

hey bro, what upholstery shop did you score your supplies from? Any info would be great!

 

[650hcs]

Capitol city upholstery supplies,it's on the access road off highway71 right before South 1st. Its behind the uhaul place after wallmart. Good place pretty cheap