BustedNuckle
XS650 Member
Hey there, Well i finally finished up most of my 1978 xs 650 cafe racer. When i bought for 1300.00 it was not running and the paint was terrible and overall just in really neglected condition. This is what i have done. Pulled everything off of it but kept motor in. Tore the carbs apart and did a deep clean, adjusted the valves (crazy tight), adjusted cam chain, set my points, did a static timing adjustment.. yes it was off!! I drained the oil and there was a liter of gas in it and must have been due to petcock seal, Sump filter was torn and i did a screen fix using piece of metal and JB Weld.. not a large amount of metal shavings. Compression test was about 150 per cylinder. I decided to do an oil change and try to get my carb adjusted.. yes the air mixture screw was way off. After a number of kicks i was not getting any success but then realized i forgot to apply choke. It fired up with a lot of coughing and weezing and back firing..i adjusted the mixture screw and it ran very nicely. The next day i went to the garage and checked the oil levels hoping that the gas had not leaked into the crank.. yes it did again and there was a big puddle of oil as well. I traced the oil leak to the clutch pushrod seal.
Well at least i knew it was running and so i drained the oil and made a parts list. I decided to paint the flat black bike and go with a charcoal colour. The tank had a lot of layers of paint and a little bit of bondo.. i took it down to pretty much metal and fixed as many dents and imperfections as i could ( i am new to body repair and painting) After a lot of work i was ready for paint.. just used rattle can and a lot of clear coats. It turned out ok.. not perfect but i was happy with it.
I changed the vacuum petcocks out for standard on/off/reservoir type and capped the vacuum barb. Changed my clutch pushrod from a two piece to a one piece and replaced the bushing and the seal ( grinded the outside edge to keep the seal from getting wrecked. New alternator brushes, valve and sump gaskets, starter button.. which had snapped off, clutch lever, battery.
Took it out on the road for a test run and it performed great until i hit 4500 rpm and then it would sputter and not go any higher. Thought that i would have to adjust the main jet but thought that maybe it was the cheap pods i had on there... took them off and went for a spin and sure enough went up to redline no problem. ordered some uni foam pods so hopefully they work well. Been a really fun project.