Fiddlin' with Brakes and Cleaning the Carbs...

Well, as you may recall, I mentioned that the front brakes came with the bike, except they came in a plastic bag instead of on the bike.

I guess the previous owner had tried to fix them on several occasions. Well, I took them all apart and discovered a possible reason for them not working. The piston was rusted, pitted and seized to the caliper.

I mean, I'm no brake expert, but I'm pretty sure it's kinda bad for your piston to be seized cause then it doesn't work. That's bad right? I had to hook the caliper up to a grease gun and pump grease into it until the pressure built up enough to force the seized piston and it popped out. I ordered up new some brakes parts and a nice new shiny piston.

I'm still now sure if I am going to run front brakes. Although, I kinda don't want to die either so the odds are I will put them back on.

Next I was onto the carbs. I was having some trouble pulling them off since it is such a tight fit in there. But then I realized my real problem. THERE WAS A FREAKIN KID stuck in there!!!! No wonder the last guy was having so much trouble.

The kid turned out to be pretty awesome so I decided to keep her and we named her Gabrielle. Once she was outta there I had no problem pulling the Carburetors.

The carbs were so dirty. Definitely NOT cleaned anytime in the past 10 or 15 years, and from the sponge wear marks I would say maybe they were only washed 4 times since the bike came off the line in 1983. It's actually one of my many talents to be able to look at a vehicle and tell you how many times it has been washed since the time it was bought up till the present, give or take 2 washes of course.
Being that the bike is 27 years old, some of the screws didn't want to come out, so I ended up stripping a couple. Wouldn't be the last ones from the bike either. Something about having metal on metal for a quarter of a century that makes it not want to come apart.

I spent over 3 hours trying all the tricks I garnered from the interweb to get the stupid screw out, including buying the stripped screw extractor kit from Canadian Tire that was guaranteed to work, but did not, and I mean did not as in not even close. Then I brought it over to my father in-laws and he got it out in about 5 seconds with an old chisel and a hammer. I guess my 3 hour fail and his 5 second triumph is the difference between my being an expert from reading something on the interweb verse his actual ability from experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going toss the interweb just yet, I need it for other things...you know...alone time things.

Eventually all the screws were out and I started taking the carbs apart. I cleaned and labelled everything in little baggies as I went.

Well, low and behold, no wonder the bike had been running so rough for the last dude. One thing I do know is you gotta be getting the exact mixture of gas and air through your carbs to the engine or it ain't gonna run worth a shit. You would not believe the freakin CRAP I found in the carbs. And I don't mean a little dirty gummed up old gas crap, I mean crap like some wee little miniature person actually climbed into the carbs, ate a couple of burritos, and then took a shit in there! EVERY hole that was suppose to have gas or air flowing through them was jammed full of garbage. This could possibly be due to the fact pointed out in a previous post that both air filters were riddled with holes, therefore filtering about...hhmmmm, I don't know, how about NONE of the air entering the carbs. I pulled out everything from branches and leaves to soot and tar! How the hell was any gas and air suppose to be getting through there?

Well, after cleaning everything out nice nice with poisonous/toxic carb cleaner, that splashed in my face twice, I had some pretty clean looking carbs. The outsides still had to be cleaned up of course, but for now all the important inside-a-mig things were nice and clean and ready to send just the perfect mixture of gas and air to the engine. I just hope I get it all back together right. Thank god for digital cameras.

The bike is now headin' over to my friend Pete's new house where he has a nice big garage and I'll be able to work on it out of the elements. Thanks for reading.

Trying to get it started...

Well, last update I was trying to get the bike started after it had been sitting in some dudes shed for over 4 years. After spending many hours reading up on some various trouble shooting techniques I started with the most obvious. I first flushed out the gas tank of any old gas and put some fresh stuff in. The old stuff was smelling rank. I cleaned the spark plugs and checked the gaps. I also cleaned out the air boxes, which were freakin disgusting and full of crap. They were also discoloured, ripped and full of holes. So much for making sure nothing gets through.

I checked all the fuses and found 2 that where blown, so I replaced those. I wanted to start with a known fully charged battery, so my friend Steve brought over a good car battery that we hooked right up to the bike. So with all that we gave it a try and guess what? It didn't start. So I decided to check all the wires and connections seeing as how the old owner said he thought it was a short or something. I checked most of the connections to make sure they were good and checked the wires for damage. I also cleaned out all the cobwebs, literally, i cleaned out the cobwebs.....
Well, after checking and cleaning most of the connections and inspecting the wires I found the two likely problems. The first was the front left turn signal that was broken and hanging down had some of the wires insulation broken and the bare wires where shorting out I think. I used some electrical tape to fix up the wires on that. The other problem appeared to be a wire I found that was partly stripped and had some duct tape on it like someone had tried to fix it before? I guess he was all out of electrical tape. It's the two blue wires coming down the side of the bike with duct tape on it and then going under the bike in this picture...

I wrote down the colours of the wires and visually followed it down under the bike to where it went, which appeared to be under the kick stand. I then did some quick interweb investigation. Turns out it was the kick stand safety switch and relay which prevents the bike from running, by disabling the starter and the TCI ignition system if the kick stand is not down, unless the clutch is pulled in, or something like that? I guess these kick stand switches, being under the bike for the last 26 years, get corroded and covered in grease and crap. It had a wire coming from the relay to the kickstand switch, and then a wire back up to the relay. I just cut them both and joined the two wires that were coming out of the relay and taped it up, therefore bypassing the kickstand switch. All these safety relays and crap will be coming off the bike down the road anyway. Well, after that we tried starting it, and the motor was turning over now but wouldn't start up. We kept trying and trying and after about 5 minutes it finally caught and it started! Ahhaaa, it ran pretty rough for a bit, but it was running and it was awesome! Later in the day I went and picked up a new battery, charged it up and threw it in. Then I drove it around the yard a bit and around the driveway. Thanks to my friend Steve who spent the day helping me trouble shoot and getting the bike started. Now that I know it runs it's time to start stripping it apart.

Doing it Side Saddle...

I'm off today so I figured I'd have some extra time to spend writing up a new post on my bike build. However, the wife says Chopper Charlie's got too much laundry and cleaning to do on his day off today, so he better not spend all his time relaxing and writing his blog. So for now I'll just leave you with this crazy Chinese dude riding side saddle down the highway on what looks to be an old Yamaha like the one I am chopping up. Crazy old man, better hope his front tire doesn't find a pothole. Def have to work on this skill when I get my bike on the road.

Should have some progress posted on here soon for all my Chopper Charligans.

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.

The Plan...

I've wanted a motorcycle for as long as I can remember. It just seems that other things often take priority over spending a ton of cash on a two wheel death machine. I always told myself that one day I'd buy a Harley. The problem is, spending 15 or 20 thousand on a Harley would more than likely not be happening anytime soon. I also wanted to customize any bike I got to a certain style I liked. I wanted little or no chrome, a hard tail section, solo seat, either some ape hangers or z bars, ditch all the turn signals, maybe even make it a suicide shifter. Pretty much lose anything that didn't make it stop or go faster. Something similar to the following few pics...







Another problem was that I didn't want too spend all that money on a bike and then start fooling around with the engine and changing parts and cutting up the frame when I had never before even attempted to fix or modify a motorcycle and knew absolutely zero about engines.



Well, not to long ago I stumbled onto a website called http://www.xs650chopper.com/ . I discovered hundreds of people building gorgeous bikes, and all from the platform of the old 1970 to 1983 Yamaha XS650's. From that site I discovered several more, like http://www.650motorcycles.com/ , http://www.xs650.com/ , and the amazing 650 garage at http://xs650temp.proboards.com/index.cgi. Almost a subculture of people building and modifying the Yamaha XS650 in every way imaginable.

I made my mind up. I had been dreaming of owning a bike for years and now it seemed possible. I could find an old rundown dirt cheap XS650 for under $1000 for sure and build my own bike the way I wanted to. And since there was this wealth of information and mechanical how to's on these sites, I could learn everything about the engine and bike as I went along. I would strip the bike COMPLETELY apart, even the engine and all the wiring and teach myself everything along the way. And, in the end, if the bike blows up, well, at least it didn't cost me $15,000.

In the following pics, all are modified Yamaha XS650's. Of course, I don't imagine I'll get mine as sweet as these ones, but even half as nice and I'll be happy.






Now, all I gotta do is find a cheap Yamaha XS650.