I bought my 81 750 Seca rat bike last year for 300 Canadian and a 24 of beer. Well I drank 6 of the beer after the sale so I guess it was only 18 beer. :)

It has low km on it but went down a little hard on the left side and broke the headlight, dented the tank, broke the mirror, rashed the exhaust (there was still asphalt stuck in the end of the exhaust, it must have spun around backwards when it went down), front fender, and even scuffed the computer console. It seemed to me that the front end was OK and the motor and everything looked sound, so I thought I would take it on as a winter project. Well we are almost into September and I am still working on it, mainly due to my schedule and my slow puttery nature in the garage.

I think it was sitting from 4 to 6 years in covered unheated storage. So I attacked the carbs first and put in rebuild kits and cleaned them the best I knew at the time. Then I went a little crazy on EBay and bought forks, XJ 650 headlight bucket and instrument cluster, and I sourced some aftermarket parts from a former mail lister. He did a stainless steel brake conversion, rebuilt the pads, and put a handlebar mounted brake cylinder on his, but then parted everything out. I bought shocks from MikesXS.com even though the rear ones were actually quite good. I took the rear end off and regreased the splines, changed the shaft oil (yuk) put different handlebars on, and then attacked the tires and wheels. I built a home-made tire changing stand and put new rubber on the old girl. The old tires were stuck onto the rim so hard I almost had to take an angle grinder to them. I saved 85 bucks by buying my tires in the mail and installing them myself, so I am rather proud of that, and tell myself that whenever I see me.

I mulled over what to do with the exhaust and decided to do something totally different. I like the looks of modern nakeds like the Honda Hornet, Suzuki SV, Kaw ZRX, so I decided to attempt to make a hillbilly exhaust and use a modern sportbike can, but retain the stock headers and collector. I bought two 04 GSXR pipes off of EBay for less than 20 bucks, since they are lacking a midpipe, are farily light and have four bolts to hold the midpipe on. I then proceeded to "operation mockup" which consisted of using Christmas wrapping paper cardboard tubes, and some nice green masking tape. Just like elementary school arts and crafts class, I drew, cut, taped in order to simulate what kind of midpipe I would need and where the heck the can should go. The shaft drive and dual shocks were a little tough to work around, so I am glad that I spent so many years cutting snowflakes out of the newspaper and practicing my coloring books skills. They were certainly paying off now! I am renting a house and I inherited a bunch of junk that clutters the garage, basement, and even the backyard, from the previous pig of a tenant. On the second day of my mockup, I was taking a break from arts and crafts, scratching my chin and staring at the rafters (I do this a lot) and saw an old muffler and tailpipe stuck up there. The diameter was a little off, but I thought I could cut and weld some pieces and possibly get the hillbilly bike on the road. I bought a wire-feed flux welder that runs on 120V and have been trying to learn how to use it, so the next two weeks consisted of sporadic cutting, welding, swearing, and lots and lots of grinding. I got the pipe close to where I wanted it and now needed to stick it onto the can somehow. The green masking tape would not work here-I told myself. I cut some metal off my exgirlfriend's old desk (thanks Jane!) and made a flange that bolts onto the Suzuki exhaust. All in all it turned out slightly below average, which is pretty good for me and made me ecstatic! The passenger pegs are a little too tight, so I will have to relocate them if I can find someone who wants to ride with me.
Right now I am running a piece of flat iron off the mounting of the old pegs to hold the can off the pavement. At least I have a spare if it falls off on the interstate.

When I had the mufflers off, I got the bike started by holding full choke on. It would not idle without the choke on. Now that I have the Gixxer can on. It will only start with the throttle WFO, and dies with the choke on. It won't idle unless you are holding the throttle open. At least it is making noise and sort of running, which is more than my close friends were predicting.

I am reading up on carb tuning, dinking around with the idle speed knob, and awaiting the YICS tool to show up, but I thought I made enough progress to actually talk about it.

Well, we got to see a pic of that! Your idle problem is that the sport can has made your mixture lean. You could start by opening your mixture screws about 1/2 a turn and see if it helps. If not , another 1/2 turn could do it but I wouldn't go any further without a colortune plug check followed by a carb sync. So, how well does that wire welder work for you? Major learning curve for someone with no welding experience?

Yeah it was a little tough. The wire feed flux is probably easier to learn on the stick, and I couldn't justify a MIG setup yet.

Newbie question since it still is not idling. Idle increase is CCW or CW turn? Doh!

I realize that most of you will hate the looks of this, but I am ugier than the bike.

Ugly, nah, it's a work in progress. I'll have to contemplate making my own pipe, probably next year. The big epoxy putty patch on the bottom of mine has worked very well, but rust never sleeps. I'd love to put a nice R1 end can on my bike, but mine exits from the left side, so every 4-1 pipe made is wrong side up.

nah like how it looks but never been a fan of the digital love the dual guauge set up on the 700's

i think it looks piss elegent,good job with available tools,keep us posted on your progress.

There are aftermarket exhausts for the Honda VFR that are left sided. Two Bros makes one. I had a Hindle aftermarket for my last sportbike that you could put left or right. It had the strap to hold iot but no bolted on brakets, so a person could go left or right depending on the collector, centrestand, etc.

I got a different cluster from a 650 (?) but I will mount it later on as the wiring is bizarre from the stupid computer.

I especially like the seat. Turn the flower shaped knob between the #2&3 carbs clockwise to increase and counter clockwise to decrease idle rpm.

COOL!

The seat is really wonderful. I am not sure if the red piping is stock or not, but it will hopefully be off soon. The seat was in good shape so I hate to spend money redoing it for just looks. (That last statement should be obvious I guess)

Thanks, that is what I thought but I was doubting myself. The bike wasn't idling well on its own and I was screwing around with the knob and lost where the original setting was, and then it didnt seem to matter what direction it went. I honestly spent about 30 minutes looking in manuals and the XJ CD and couldn't find it.