WEEKEND UPDATE!
I haven’t managed to take any job to completion in a while, but I’ve been working on several fronts at once.
CURRENT STATUS
Forks—waiting on one little part to arrive. Out of four complete fork leg assemblies, all but one were missing the little keeper that sits on top of the spring to keep it from going up inside the spacer above it. I bought one on eBay and am awaiting its delivery. Then the forks will have the seals installed and be put together. Everything is cleaned , polished and ready to go.
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Front brake system— This system has been a headache for me. I bought rebuild kits for the M/C and caliper.
The master cylinder was too corroded internally and the caliper pistons were rust pitted also. So then I bought new replacement pistons and they didn’t fit!!!
So to hell with it. I bought a new M/C and brake caliper, and I will be ordering a new pressure switch for the brake light to replace my mechanical one. I’m not so much of a purist that I can’t change that switch.
The wheels—Have been cleaned and trued, all the spokes are tight, and the last couple days I have been polishing the outsides of the hubs. Not an easy task with the spokes in place, but my original spokes were in good condition and I want to keep them. So....all the buffing had to be done with drill powered felt bobs and buffing wheels. Super tedious work. But they came out nice. They are now ready to mount tires on.
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My Seat—This is a book all in itself. I thought it would be easy to find a reproduction seat foam. WRONG!
I had an online source that only had an email address for a method of contact. When I emailed them the email address was no longer valid. So I looked for other sources.....for weeks....even overseas....nothing.
Then I found this, right here on our forum. A guy who made his own molds from an original seat foam and was producing brand new injected seat foams. Eureka! Just what I was looking for.
http://www.xs650.com/threads/seat-pans-seat-foam-and-complete-seat-assemblies-for-70-72.35168/
I contacted him and he told me he lost his molds in a shop fire! Back to searching. I then decided to research how to make my own foam seat, by carving retail foam. Boy was that an education. I read everything I could find and watched every YouTube video I could find. Conventional wisdom is you should layer foam sheets of varying densities and materials, essentially heavy stuff at the bottom working up to thin contouring foam at the top.
If you are thinking of this, here is a really good resource.
http://diymotorcycleseat.com/
At this point I had been shopping for foam and had my virtual shopping cart filled with nearly $100 worth of supplies on Amazon and was ready to proceed. Good foam is expensive!
Now cue the good guy music. Here rides Gary to the rescue!
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Gary knows everybody. He put me in contact with Mark Tomlinson of Marks 650 Yamahas
http://www.marks650yamahas.com/home.html
Mark just happened to have the last remaining seat foam made by the forum member Jones that I mentioned earlier! It’s the circle of life! Everything came full circle! I contacted Mark and it will be racing across the country next week to my waiting arms. Yay!
One more note on the seat foams. Forum member Cra-Z1 suggested I contact vintage cycle supplier HV Cycle and ask them if they could get a reproduction seat foam. They carry them for other Yamaha models. So I emailed them and a few days later they responded they could indeed order them for $125 shipped. They looked to be high quality too.
In preparation for my seat rebuild I have stripped the old seat down. The foam came out in crumbles, it was hard as a rock. I sanded down the seat pan and painted it. I have a new seat cover on hand , ready to go.
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Something else I have been working on is my rear fender. The underside of the fender had road tar and oil and dirt all caked into a 46 year old rock. I worked and worked to remove all of that crap and under it was some rust pitting.
I thought about just painting the underside silver or black, but then I decided to try a little experiment. I had a new spray can of Rustoleum clear. And I decided to spray that in there. I was trying to preserve the natural metal shine and prevent future rust. I don’t think it came out too bad. It’s not perfect but once you stuff a tire in there you won’t even see it.
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Oh and one more thing I was screwing around with. My crusty mufflers. Not perfect, one has some battery acid stains and the other has a lot of scratches, but if you stand 10 feet back and kinda squint, they look pretty good.
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So there you have it. All up to date. Big shout out to Gary this week.
My hero’s have always been cowboys, they still are it seems.
