So three years ago, this was me, proudly ( and foolishly ) proclaiming that I had finished my year long restoration of my XS2,
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Since that day, I have managed to put roughly 3600 miles on it, not really all that much. The first year was like being on a honeymoon, it was all smiles all the time, my bike ran perfect and looked pretty darn good ( if I do say so myself
). But since then , there has been a trail of tears leading from my garage. First my gas tank liner melted and ruined my gas tank so I sent my gas tank back for a warranty repair, which they botched badly. This led to me having to source a replacement gas tank and have it painted by
@Jim ( which came out brilliantly
)
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Then I realized that the melted gas tank liner had also ruined my motor and gummed up my carburetors, which led to me pulling the motor and rebuilding the top end
Again.
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Then once I finally got the gas tank back and the motor rebuilt, I had ignition gremlins that I couldn’t figure out for a long time. During this period, I replaced the coils but that didn’t help,
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and I finally figured out that it was my Pamco ignition which had failed. That led me to installing a Boyer Ignition, and that solved that issue.
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I also had a self inflicted problem, I had removed the brushes from the stator, and also the holder for the brushes and when I put everything back together, not realizing the screws were different lengths, I accidentally swapped locations and ran a screw into my perfectly good rotor, thus ruining it. Leading to me buying a rebuilt rotor from good ol Jim. It was a thing of beauty!
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All of this mayhem cost me nearly a year of riding time, it just seemed endless, one problem after another. So now it’s running good again, I’ve been taking mostly short rides under 100 miles on it.
And……..it now has a pretty steady oil leak coming from the right side cam cover, probably needs a new gasket. And my speedometer which recently has started bouncing a little, is now bouncing wildly and I can only presume it is near failure. Sigh……..
My other bike, my ‘77D has just been the picture of reliability and civility. I had to sort through a lot of stuff early on, but since then it just plows all day like an old tractor. And it has three times the mileage and has never had the motor apart,
and it still has better compression than I’ve ever been able to get out of my XS2!
So I ask you…..are these bikes ever really done?
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