MadeThatMyself
XS650 Enthusiast
DISCLAIMER: Armed with a bottom of the barrel flux core welder and a dream, I scavenged Craigslist to find an XS650 bobber project for my first motorcycle build. This is my story....
Picked this baby up for $1500 cold hard american cash. PO had it running (barely) but it was in need of a ton of work/finishing. It was love at first site.
PO did have SOME good taste. The TC bros hard tail was my plan from the start, so having one already welded on was a plus other than the fact that the welds looked like I could have done it (which isn't saying much). Tank looked like an aftermarket Sportster style tank which I liked.
The first thing that had to go was the $20 eBay "bobber seat kit". It sat way too high in the front and I had a special plan for the seat from the start as well...
I had an old Fox Vanilla R downhill mountain bike shock laying around the garage and always thought that would make a nice monoshock hardtail bobber suspension seat, so I found some rectangular steel tubing with the proper ID and came up with this design. I used oil embedded bronze bushings with shoulder bolts at the pivot points.
After mocking it up and sitting on it, I realized that I had too much leverage based on the upper mounting point. To correct that, I modified the bracket and moved the pivot point backwards. I also picked up a stiffer spring (650# I think?) off eBay. The old spring was 450# and had already been used and abused on the mountain bike. The new geometry and spring worked out perfectly. I got the seat from a company called La Rosa Design. I was really impressed with the quality of the seat for $50. It's not leather, but the seat pan was high quality, black powder coated steel. This was a 13 inch solo seat I believe, but they sell all kinds of seats with different sizes/designs/materials.
https://larosadesign.us/13-custom-solo-spring-seats/?sort=priceasc&page=2
I picked up some internally threaded ball joint rod ends as well as a Clevis rod end on McMaster Carr. Used some threaded rod and steel tubing to fabricate a brake stay and brake rod. Worked out pretty nicely.
How have other people gotten the brake rod to clear the hard tail frame and not rub? I ended up using a through bolt with 2 nylock nuts to mount the rod end to the inside outer face of the drum brake actuator arm. I'm not sold on this as a final design, but this can be modified later if I can come up with something better.
I had a YT12B-BS Yuasa battery in the garage that I bought for my Ducati Monster when I thought the battery was bad. Turned out to be the charging system, not the battery itself, so I figured I would use it for this kickstart only bobber build. I welded up a battery box and picked up a battery strap for a Harley from a local motorcycle shop. I used a couple latch catches I had laying around at work for the strap mounts. I drilled and countersunk the back of the steel before I welded it up so the inside is flush. I also cut a rubber battery box liner out of some 0.063" mat I had laying around.
I will continue to update by posting chunks of progress. Thanks for checking out my build!
Picked this baby up for $1500 cold hard american cash. PO had it running (barely) but it was in need of a ton of work/finishing. It was love at first site.
PO did have SOME good taste. The TC bros hard tail was my plan from the start, so having one already welded on was a plus other than the fact that the welds looked like I could have done it (which isn't saying much). Tank looked like an aftermarket Sportster style tank which I liked.
The first thing that had to go was the $20 eBay "bobber seat kit". It sat way too high in the front and I had a special plan for the seat from the start as well...
I had an old Fox Vanilla R downhill mountain bike shock laying around the garage and always thought that would make a nice monoshock hardtail bobber suspension seat, so I found some rectangular steel tubing with the proper ID and came up with this design. I used oil embedded bronze bushings with shoulder bolts at the pivot points.
After mocking it up and sitting on it, I realized that I had too much leverage based on the upper mounting point. To correct that, I modified the bracket and moved the pivot point backwards. I also picked up a stiffer spring (650# I think?) off eBay. The old spring was 450# and had already been used and abused on the mountain bike. The new geometry and spring worked out perfectly. I got the seat from a company called La Rosa Design. I was really impressed with the quality of the seat for $50. It's not leather, but the seat pan was high quality, black powder coated steel. This was a 13 inch solo seat I believe, but they sell all kinds of seats with different sizes/designs/materials.
https://larosadesign.us/13-custom-solo-spring-seats/?sort=priceasc&page=2
I picked up some internally threaded ball joint rod ends as well as a Clevis rod end on McMaster Carr. Used some threaded rod and steel tubing to fabricate a brake stay and brake rod. Worked out pretty nicely.
How have other people gotten the brake rod to clear the hard tail frame and not rub? I ended up using a through bolt with 2 nylock nuts to mount the rod end to the inside outer face of the drum brake actuator arm. I'm not sold on this as a final design, but this can be modified later if I can come up with something better.
I had a YT12B-BS Yuasa battery in the garage that I bought for my Ducati Monster when I thought the battery was bad. Turned out to be the charging system, not the battery itself, so I figured I would use it for this kickstart only bobber build. I welded up a battery box and picked up a battery strap for a Harley from a local motorcycle shop. I used a couple latch catches I had laying around at work for the strap mounts. I drilled and countersunk the back of the steel before I welded it up so the inside is flush. I also cut a rubber battery box liner out of some 0.063" mat I had laying around.
I will continue to update by posting chunks of progress. Thanks for checking out my build!
Last edited: