My first bike

[Rabbid]

Just wanted to show my new XS650 located on the beautiful sunny coast of Southern California. Picked this 1979 up yesterday and cant wait to get started. After searching for months for a, decently priced, XS I about gave up hope of finding one locally(most bikes listed around here are $2500 and up). Then she showed up out of the blue on craigslist. No clue if the engine will turn over yet as the whole thing is in pieces but I have high expectations as pretty much everything has little to no rust/corrosion so I hope she was well taken care of by whomever had her before. The previous owner had never finished putting it together so Im just going to break out my wrenches and keep my fingers crossed that things go smoothly.

 

[Pandorasglocks]

Good luck and keep us posted! Looks like a good find, have to wait and see what the motor's condition turns out to be.

 

[cooltouch]

Hey Rabbid, welcome to the forum!

What part of SoCal? I lived in the LA area for over 13 years. Nice thing about SoCal is no rust. Much unlike where I live now -- Houston, TX.

Anyway, looks like you found a clean low rust/no rust example. Somebody's already done some work on the frame -- the passenger peg mounts are gone. I did the same with my 78E cafe project. Cleans up the lines quite a bit, I feel.

I see the engine has plugs in it. You can kick it over as it sits to find out if its got compression. Chances are it does. Chances are it'll start once you've got all the appurtenances hooked up.

So what are your plans? Put it back more or less to stock? Cafe? Brat? Bobber/Chop? Folks here are into all kinds so no matter which way you decide to go, there'll be somebody here at the forum who can offer some perspective.

 

[Rabbid]

Well, I'm going to have the engine soda blasted this week before I attempt to start it. Its still missing some parts (gas tank, kickstart lever) and i havent really looked at the carbs yet to see whats there and what isn't. The wiring harness connections and some of the electronic components have most of the corrosion so I may just redo it and simplify it to make things a bit easier to troubleshoot if I have a problem. I want to make it into a hard tail bobber but I'm kind of feeling it the way it looks right now so we'll see in a couple weeks where inspiration takes me. Im down in El Segundo by LAX.

 

[XSLeo]

Welcome to the board.
I think I would get the engine into the frame, Get enough wiring to make it run.
After getting it to run, if the engine runs ok, add enough wiring to get it to charge the battery and run the lights. Ride it to get a real good Idea of the engine condition.
If the engine checks out good then make the frame mods.
If you spend all the money and time rebuilding the rest of the bike, then find out the engine won't run. That can be a big dissapointment.
If your like the rest of us, You can't afford to do everything at once. If you get it together and ridable with what you have. You can ride it and as money becomes availible you can modify it.