The Bike, aka The Victim...

So, for a while now I've been looking for a cheap Yamaha XS650. Prices generally range from about $2000 for one in mint shape all the way down to $50 or $100 for one that has been sitting in a barn for 20 years covered in pigeon shit with the motor seized all to hell. Would be nice to get one at the higher end and therefore have a motor that is running great and probably would continue to run great with no major work needed for another 10 or 15 years. However, that would kind of defeat the whole purpose of not only getting something really inexpensive, but also the whole idea I had of learning everything from scratch by tearing the motor apart and stripping and cutting up the frame for the bobber style I wanted. No point in picking every leaf off my money tree to buy a good running bike and then start fooling around with the motor only to have it end up not running. I was really hoping to find one for under $600. I kind of picked that amount thinking to myself that if I spent $600 and tinkered around with it for a year or two only to end up having to bring it to the scrap yard because I totally F'ed it up, then I wouldn't really feel so bad. It was also an amount the left me a lot of room to spend money on other needed parts for the build down the road. Things like a solo seat, handlebars, a couple of new tires, paint.....etc.

One of problems is that a lot of cheaper Yamaha XS650's that get sold do so by word of mouth or by the buyer stumbling onto them. I've talked to a lot of people who got there's from just happening to see it sitting in the back of someones garage covered in dust, or noticing one leaning against a tree overgrown with grass in someones backyard.

I kept checking a bunch of online sites like http://www.usedsoo.com/ , http://www.craigslist.ca/ , and http://www.kijiji.ca/ just to name a few. I eventual spotted one. Dude wanted $500 bucks for it. It was right in my price range so I gave him a call. It was a 1983 Yamaha XS650SK. He said he had bought it from the original owner, who was a little old lady who only ever drove it to church on sundays. I grabbed him by his throat and pressed his face up against the bike and told him he better tell me the truth or I was going to use his face to polish the bike's exhaust pipes. Long story short is, after leaving the police station I went back to his house and he told me that he had bought the bike about 5 years ago and rode it for only a year. The year he rode it it ran pretty rough and then he started having problems with it not starting, to the point that it would not start at all. His friend had taken a look at it and thought it was electrical problems, maybe a short somewhere, and was suppose to help him fix it. Well, I guess his friend never ended up fixing it and it sat in his shed for the next 4 years. There was also a few other problems with it, like that the front brakes where taken apart and sitting in a plastic grocery store bag, because he tried fixing them and failed. He told me that he tried putting them back on again when I was on my way to his house to look at the bike, but again it was a total fail, ahhaa. Well, enter me with three $50's, thirty $20's, and five $10's and this 28 year old brakeless, broken down, non running motorcycle was mine! Man, I haven't got that good of a deal since I bought that "Shake Weight" for my wife. They retailed for 19.95 and I scored one at a yard sale for only $3. No more complaining from her about her arms being too sore. Check it out...

Anyway, I loaded the bike up onto the truck and headed home. My son helped me unload the bike at our house. The plan was to bring it to my friends garage where I am going to work on it while he works on a couple of his own motorcycles. Problem is, my friend Sneaky Pete was moving to a new house, so I would have to keep it at my place for a bit. First night I was already diggin into the electrical trying to find the short. Really wanted to at least get it started, which of course that night I didn't. Here's a couple of pics of that first day.