XS650 trip to Argentina (old history)

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Patiperro

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Just found this forum, and I trust I am not violating some rule in posting this trivia.

I used to be a test-rider for Yamaha in the US when they were in Buena Park, CA.

In 1977 I borrowed a 1977 XS650 and rode it to the end of the road just a bit beyond Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego.

I just wanted to show a picture or two from those days, in case someone might be amused. Not clever enough to embed an image from my hard drive so I included two photos as attachments. The second one is from the end of the road in Tierra del Fuego.

Edited and added a third attachment photo with some XS650 looking features. It was a bit of a frankenbike since it had pieces from a Yamaha XS750 and from an IT175, a French Hugon fairing, a Lucas H4 headlight, and some other stupid stuff I don't want to confess to.

saludos
 

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Royboy said:
Wonderful old photos! What a ride that must have been. I absolutely love Chile, if I was thirty years younger I'd be living there.

roy
Click to expand...


I'm 30 years older than when I took those pictures and I'm living in Chile now. So there is hope.
 
retiredgentleman said:
The best part is the Canadian flag pasted on the bags.:)
Click to expand...

Well, back in the 1960s I lived in Kitsilano and worked in the mountains north of Vancouver (BC) and my grandparents were missionaries in NWT. But also the Canadian Yamaha distributor participated in my little project by supplying a KM speedometer for that XS650.

More recently, somebody else from Calgary was down here on a 650, though it was a Kawasaki KLR650 that he rode down Alberta to Santiago, Chile. I made a deal with him and arranged payment via paypal, then flew up to Santiago to ride it (and ferry it) down to southern Patagonia where I live now. Then I imported that bike formally into the Chilean system. Can't be without a few bikes in a barn. I expect to be running more tours on those KLRs (I have four now) to the glacier parks in Argentina and again down to Ushuaia as well as this part of southern Chile. That way you don't have to take 6 months off work to say that you rode to Ushuaia....
 
Here is another picture of that XS650 during that trip. This is on Ruta 3 in Santa Cruz province in Argentina in February of 1978. In those days most of the roads down here were this sort of gravel. And today most of them are paved. Let's see if I loaded the picture correctly....
 

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Would love to hear a few tales from THAT adventure Patiperro!

Central America in 77, wow, were there even roads all the way through in 77?
 
We like pics, any more you have to post go right ahead.
If you have them in your computer the easiest way I have found to post them is by clicking on the Go Advanced button just below where you write. This takes you to a place where you will find an manage attachments button. This brings up a window where it has several browse buttons, clicking on of these takes you to your pics in your computer. From there you select the pics and upload. Below the browse buttons you will find a list of formats and the max size they should be.
Leo
 
Are you planning on running those tours with the KLR's for yourself or are you going to get some enthusiast to come down and join you for a nominal fee - I think that sounds like a great adventure- thoughts?
Signed,
An interested enthusiast
 

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