The blue '76

Ceed Klumper

XS650 Enthusiast
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Marina del Rey, CA, United States
In this thread I will document my ownership, since last Saturday, of my 1976 french blue XS650:


I found it on Los Angeles Craigslist, in Thousand Oaks, about 50 miles from where we live, which is on board of a 46 foot trawler in Marina Del Rey. I picked it up early in the morning. The previous owner, a man about my own age (I am 58), had owned it since 2005 and must have barely ridden it, as it has 4,800 miles on it and it shows.

The ride home was scary. The seller had told me that the fork seals needed replacing, but what he hadn't told me was that the fork oil had settled into and had well-saturated the brake pads and disk. So I barely had a front brake. And the tires, although still having plenty of thread, also had cracks along the sides from sitting and they were from 2006, so ...

Well I made it home safe and started inventorying. The seller had purchased new fork seals, gaiters and brake pads, so I already had those. Tires were put on the shopping list, as well as original Yamaha key blanks (there was only one key), rubber bushings for the speedo and tach, as the old ones were way past it and this made them vibrate quite a bit. New cables, dust caps for the forks, petcock rebuild kits, spark plugs, oil filters, and some more stuff.

So today was the day to start tackling the many (back) maintenance jobs. What I managed:
1 - adjusted the cam chain. It was out (actually in) by maybe 3 mm.
2 - lubed the (no doubt original) clutch cable. Unfortunately, lube started leaking out of the cable about halfway. No worries, I will install the new cable from MotionPro next time, I just wanted to see if the original one was still salvageable. The clutch does feel a lot lighter now
3 - adjusted the clutch. By the way the bike also came with the Yamaha shop manual and tool kit, and I was able to do most chores today with that very tool kit
4 - pulled the spark plugs. They were in only handtight! They looked ok and I put them back in a bit tighter
5 - replaced the instrument seals with NOS ones I found online, in my native Holland. Instruments nice and snug again. The old seals literally felt and looked like toast (see picture below)
6 - replaced the seals in the blinkers
7 - tightened the shifter pedal and the sidestand - both had a lot of play
8 - now for the biggest job: changing the front tire. I had never done this on a motorcycle before, only on bicycles. Had gotten rim protectors, tire irons and window cleaner, but man what a job that was. Getting the old crusty one off was harder than the new one on. It's also something that gets easier with practice, it seems

Rear tire, new fork seals and oil, dust caps, new brake pads, oil and filters change, new iridium plugs, ignition dwell and timing, valve clearances, petcock rebuilds, new gas cap seal, checking out the charging voltage, coils resistances, spark plug wires and caps resistance, compression, and likely many other things I forget now - all this is next in the coming week (as soon as the package from MikesXS shows up on Monday).

Can't wait to start riding it as one of my three commuting bikes (the other two being a 2016 BMW C650 Sport maxi scooter and a 2018 BMW G310R sport bike). My commute is about 8 miles each way, through Los Angeles traffic. Thanks to lane splitting it takes me 20 minutes when by car on most days it would take at least an hour and fifteen minutes one-way. Oh, that's another project: fitting narrower handlebars so I fit in between the rows of practically stationary cars, trucks, SUVs, city busses, Porsches, etc etc. There's hardly another bike on these roads, strangely enough.

My main idea is to keep the bike as original as possible, except for the handlebars. I even found NOS original grips that I will be fitting shortly. So no electronic ignition, PMA, drilled brake disk, new generation carbs etc. Instead, I will try to keep everything just as Yamaha designed and built it.

Foto of one of the crusty instrument seals, with its replacement:
20181013_115203.jpg
more to follow ...
 
Ceed,
That bike is really just stunning. I had a 1976 just like that, same color and everything, back in 1977. It was my first XS650 and one of my all time favorite bikes. Your bike has obviously been well cared for, the paint looks incredible.
You’ve really got a nice bike to work with. Good for you for keeping it stock!

So you live on a trawler in Marina Del Rey huh? Well that’s pretty interesting! Worth a photo or two by itself!
Good luck with your new to you bike.
Welcome to the forum, I look foward to seeing you around.
 
I agree, keep it stock looking externally at least. But some things, like that points ignition, will get old fast, lol. Used stock discs are readily available so an extra drilled full of holes would be easy enough to swap on. Keep the original original on a shelf in a box. Stainless brake lines are something else I'd look into. I'd also be upgrading the rectifier and regulator to save wear and tear on the alternator and rotor. There's many little improvements you can make to these bikes and still have them remain very stock looking. Oh, upgrade that type D cam chain tensioner to a type E before the cam chain gets prematurely all stretched out.
 
Thanks for all the comments! Much appreciated. Very nice, friendly community here, it reminds me of the El Camino forums that I belonged to while I was the custodian of the 1973 El Camino, that you can sort of make out in my profile picture. It was the very car used in the 'My Name is Earl' tv series about 10 years ago; red with a blue banged-up door and primered hood, 454 CI engine. But that's another story.
Will keep updating how I fare with the Blue 1976. Incidentally the reason I really wanted that year and color was that was the year I got my first ever bike, a blue Yamaha FS1, 49 cc 2-stroke moped, the smallest they made (so it was almost an actual bike, you could even peddle it down the street if you wanted to). Now I have the largest they made, and I believe their first 4-stroke.
@ 5twins, I really do want to see if I can keep also the internals original. I do know the benefits of more modern components and if things get annoying I will cave in, but I see it as a small challenge to keep it purring with the old stuff. We'll see. On the 50-mile ride home last week it did run very sweet and quiet, I will try to upload some of my helmet camera footage of the trip later this week.
Oh and living on a boat means I do all my tinkering in the street parking lot. Luckily it rarely rains here.
7874.jpg
 
Just accepted, many thanks for the nomination!

And today's update is that I changed the rear tire as well. Went a lot smoother than the front, now I know a bit more what I am doing. Discovered that the wire lead for the 'worn rear brake shoes warning light' was broken where it attaches to the brake drum plate, but luckily I found a NOS one on Ebay. Tomorrow my box of goodies from MikesXS should come in so I can redo the front fork seals and start riding!
 
Many of us used to peruse the parts diagrams at boats.net, buy parts from them too, but they've dropped the bike parts now and only sell boat parts. No matter, they are part of a large parts selling outfit and one of their sister sites, Partzilla, is still around. They have basically all the same stuff and the same prices so many of us go there now .....

https://www.partzilla.com/catalog/yamaha/motorcycle

Even if you don't buy from them, the site is an excellent reference tool. You should also download the actual old parts books too because some stuff isn't listed anymore in the current diagrams, or part numbers have changed. It's important to know old parts numbers sometimes, especially when shopping N.O.S. stuff on eBay.
 
Brief update - on Monday I started to take the shocks apart, to replace the seals that are leaking like seaves. Got stumped on removing that big allen bolt at the bottom that needs to come out to separate the inner tube from the outer. I can free it, but the piston or whatever it's called inside spins with it. These are the early 34 mm tubes, and the pistons inside them are not so easy to hold in place while undoing the bolt. I learned a lot from the tech posts on this, namely that there are about four methods to get past this hurdle:
- impact gun on the bolts - I tried that last night, but it didn't do the trick. I am sure this is the first time in 40+ years someone is taking these shocks apart, maybe they used thread locker at the factory
- metal rod, flattened at the end to about 10 mm, to insert from the top to hold the piston; picked up a 1/2 inch tube last night to try that, after work today but don't have high hopes
- using a broom stick to hold the piston while undoing the bolt (not planning on trying this, since the impact gun didn't work)
- the more sure-fire way, making a special socket from a standard 17 mm, grinding the middle part out so two sides are left that can firmly hold two indentations on the side of the piston (photo from the excellent tech post here: http://www.xs650.com/threads/how-to-rebuild-xs650-forks-install-lowering-kit.5537/):
100_5684.jpg

So if the flattened-rod method fails as well, I will fabricate this socket-tool.
What has surprised me is that such a tool is not already available, considering how many must have dealt with this issue. Oh well, we'll get there.
 
You might check out my thread - "Forking around with Lucille":

http://www.xs650.com/threads/forking-around-with-lucille.49710/

A friend and I made a really good tool for that job - but note that Yamaha changed the design of the inner rod several times and so that chopped-up socket tool is only good for 1976s (and maybe one or two other years).
34mm_Damper_Rod_Holding_Tool-2.jpg

34mm_Damper_Rod_Tool&Handle.jpg

Damper_Rod_Tool-engagement.jpg

The only really hard part of the job was getting the old seals out without (further) damaging the inside bores of the sliders. I guess my P/O had really muffed it because one of my sliders had a big gouge in it which I had to polish out using emory cloth.
 

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  • 34mm_Damper_Rod_Holding_Tool.jpg
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BTW - I just went over my article on the Lucille fork-job and made a couple of additional corrections so please refer back to it if you have questions. I am happy to continue improving it if anyone sees any more boo-boos that need to be fixed.

Pete
 
You will need the tool style that Pete made for your '76. The flattened rod won't work, it's only good for the '77 forks. What you'll need to know to make your tool is the width of the slot in it, which I'm sure Pete can provide you with.
 
What you'll need to know to make your tool is the width of the slot in it, which I'm sure Pete can provide you with.

Yup - here ya go (excerpted from the "Forking Around with Lucille" thread):

DIMENSIONS:
  • the overall length of the tool should be approx. 17-18" for it to function properly.
  • the slot in the end should be about 10.2mm wide x 10mm deep to properly engage the register in the head of the fork damper rod.
  • the maximum diameter of the tool cannot exceed 23mm for it to fit down into the inside of the fork tube (this is not a critical dimension - a bit smaller would be good).
  • NOTE: The surfaces of the tool - particularly, the outer diameter - must be smooth and free of burrs so as to not damage the inside of the fork tubes.
MATERIAL: The material is not critical but mine was made out of a 1" dia. bar of cold-rolled steel turned down to 23mm dia. Aluminium would also be OK, but it is harder to weld if that is a consideration.
 
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