apt3customs
XS650 Enthusiast
WOW! Thats all have to say about my 83 XS650 Heritage Special right now. Been wrenching on this bike for about 2 months solid now, and just took the first drive with the new setups tonight @ 2:30am 
. Soooo much more power than it had before!
Started out stock and hadn't been run in about 6 yrs. Every seal was leaking and had a bad coil and dirty carbs. A 5 mile drive would lose about a half quart of oil. Got it running and rode it around for about 2 days to get a baseline, needless to say it was running pretty darn rough.
Picked up: pamco, hugh's pma, uni pods, all kinds of miscellaneous oil seals gaskets and parts, mechanical advance.
Stripped EVERYTHING off the bike, dropped the engine out of the frame, put all the seals in, cleaned the carbs and checked the jetting, checked out the top end, and cleaned the WHOLE bike front to rear (esp by the engine as there was mass amounts of crud there). Put the engine back in.
Proceeded to break things then, like my swingarm bolt, got a new one to put in, broke my kickstarter clip too, so got another new one to put in. At this point I decided I would stop breaking things and continue on with putting the damn thing back together. ; )
Installed the pamco with the ultimate coil following petes directions from his site, went in super easy no issues. Fired up in the first kick!! Got a base timing down. Ran rough at high rpms but i had the stator completely disconnected as i gave away my stator brushes earlier in the day, so I was running completely off the battery.
Then put hugh's pma in and that was a super breeze to put in as well. Got the basics wired up and fired her up again, got excellent charge right away and it also evened out the previous high rpm roughness. All the voltmeter specs looked spot on.
Buttoned it all up, made my own wiring harness to hook all the new do-dads up permanently and for a moment had to figure out why my headlight wasn't working, turns out to be the yellow wire that led to the stator originally, so I hooked that up to some various places and studied the schematics for a minute. Spliced it into one of the yellow PMA wires before the regulator. Hoping that works out, so far no issues but not much testing yet. Turn key no headlight, start engine power to headlight
so seems ok, worried about too much pma power to it though since its before the regulator.
Engine sounds a little ticky too, I have a vid of it uploading I'll post in the morning along with some pics of the bike. Stuck a rod to listen through next to the valves it doesn't seem to coming from there (I DID adjust the cam, set valves precisely, etc all in the proper order), I am thinking it was coming from the ATU and Im just not used to hearing the ATU do its thing as when I ran it before it was TCI based.
Last issue was the clutch, had the clutch cable routed a little funky so when I first put it in gear, the clutch wouldn't engage, straightened that out, but I think it still slips a tiny tad if I lay on the throttle hard so Im going to re-adjust that in the morning.
I'll post some pics and video as its a pretty clean bike now. Got some shorty shocks I ordered coming in, then Im done tinkering till the Ohio winter sets in. By then I'll probably open up the exhaust with some Gordon Scott pipes. Will probably do some minor frame modifications as well as re-paint the frame and polish everything on the engine I can as well as simplifying the electronics even further. Also figured I'd run this engine as much as possible until its time for a re-ring then do a 750 kit upgrade. But thats for future posts for this build thread.
Thanks Hugh and Pete for making some great products that breathe new life into these old, fun machines!
. Soooo much more power than it had before!Started out stock and hadn't been run in about 6 yrs. Every seal was leaking and had a bad coil and dirty carbs. A 5 mile drive would lose about a half quart of oil. Got it running and rode it around for about 2 days to get a baseline, needless to say it was running pretty darn rough.
Picked up: pamco, hugh's pma, uni pods, all kinds of miscellaneous oil seals gaskets and parts, mechanical advance.
Stripped EVERYTHING off the bike, dropped the engine out of the frame, put all the seals in, cleaned the carbs and checked the jetting, checked out the top end, and cleaned the WHOLE bike front to rear (esp by the engine as there was mass amounts of crud there). Put the engine back in.
Proceeded to break things then, like my swingarm bolt, got a new one to put in, broke my kickstarter clip too, so got another new one to put in. At this point I decided I would stop breaking things and continue on with putting the damn thing back together. ; )
Installed the pamco with the ultimate coil following petes directions from his site, went in super easy no issues. Fired up in the first kick!! Got a base timing down. Ran rough at high rpms but i had the stator completely disconnected as i gave away my stator brushes earlier in the day, so I was running completely off the battery.
Then put hugh's pma in and that was a super breeze to put in as well. Got the basics wired up and fired her up again, got excellent charge right away and it also evened out the previous high rpm roughness. All the voltmeter specs looked spot on.
Buttoned it all up, made my own wiring harness to hook all the new do-dads up permanently and for a moment had to figure out why my headlight wasn't working, turns out to be the yellow wire that led to the stator originally, so I hooked that up to some various places and studied the schematics for a minute. Spliced it into one of the yellow PMA wires before the regulator. Hoping that works out, so far no issues but not much testing yet. Turn key no headlight, start engine power to headlight
so seems ok, worried about too much pma power to it though since its before the regulator.
Engine sounds a little ticky too, I have a vid of it uploading I'll post in the morning along with some pics of the bike. Stuck a rod to listen through next to the valves it doesn't seem to coming from there (I DID adjust the cam, set valves precisely, etc all in the proper order), I am thinking it was coming from the ATU and Im just not used to hearing the ATU do its thing as when I ran it before it was TCI based.
Last issue was the clutch, had the clutch cable routed a little funky so when I first put it in gear, the clutch wouldn't engage, straightened that out, but I think it still slips a tiny tad if I lay on the throttle hard so Im going to re-adjust that in the morning.
I'll post some pics and video as its a pretty clean bike now. Got some shorty shocks I ordered coming in, then Im done tinkering till the Ohio winter sets in. By then I'll probably open up the exhaust with some Gordon Scott pipes. Will probably do some minor frame modifications as well as re-paint the frame and polish everything on the engine I can as well as simplifying the electronics even further. Also figured I'd run this engine as much as possible until its time for a re-ring then do a 750 kit upgrade. But thats for future posts for this build thread.
Thanks Hugh and Pete for making some great products that breathe new life into these old, fun machines!
Last edited:
