Fuel Tank liner(?) issues on new shiny '82 XJ750 Maxim

An update!

Got the final new valve shim in, synced and colortuned. All valves in spec, all cylinders firing with equal vacuum, smexy bunson blue burn at idle, all three colortune tests passed with flying colors. Glorious, purrs like a kitten, no vibration of note at all.





Relative to the former posts regarding cam chain tension: I've been running a spare valve cover for a while now while I clean up, paint and polish my old valve cover. After a few hundred kilometers with the new valve cover, there's no wear showing - whatever caused the wear on my original valve cover, then, is clearly something from a previous point in the bike's (pretty full, given near 80k on it) life and not ongoing. I imagine the tensioner had at some point gotten stuck for a while, but since come loose or maybe it did when I was checking it out as in the posts above, can't say. Either way, there's no wear on this valve cover, so it's not still happening. The metallic ringing @3000rpm persists, but I'm pretty much certain at this point it's a damaged header inner pipe. I'll swap out the whole system with my spare header/collector set at some point to confirm.

 

The original valve cover, after painting and polishing! Tomorrow, I'm going to bake it to cure the paint and clearcoat, then install it with a new valve cover gasket and donuts - that'll be it engine wise; shouldn't have to open it up again for quite some time.

 

nice job

 

Hokay! Was asked, so I'll post what I did here.

I've been through a few different tail light setups. I disliked the tail on the Maxim (I really wanted a Seca) from the start, and as I had a spare rear fender and all (it's important for me to maintain a box of "Make It Stock Again"), I set about hacking up the back end to get a sportier, cleaner, more aggressive rear. I didn't want to chop up the frame, though; I'm not after a bobber look - mostly just Seca-esque.

So, I cut off the rear fender where it meets the cubby behind the seat, first and foremost. Having removed the tail light, I ordered a neato replacement from Amazon which looked cool (dual rings of LED's with integral turn signals - this one here: https://www.amazon.ca/Motorcycle-Cu...24&sr=8-2&keywords=dual+tail+motorcycle+light ). While waiting, I just ran a couple strips of red LED's as running/brake. Once I got these, though, while I was pretty happy with how they looked, performance was inadequate. They were simply too dim to be safely visible in daylight. In addition, being LED's they tripped the "TAIL" warning on the CMS - this wasn't an issue originally, as I also had BRAKE and BATT warnings anyways - but as I resolved all the other indicators, I realized I could actually finally be done with that annoying blinky light.

So, staring at my Seca tails but lacking the fabrication skills to mount one on my Maxim, I decided to get creative with the cut off fender and stock tail light. This is the result:



What I did..

First, a warning. I have very nearly zero fabrication skills, and I was working with spare, already cut up parts. This is not pretty. It ended up looking pretty nice, but the road there was ugly. You've been warned.

I was holding up my original tail light, then I realized... I never use that cubby, and at the time I just had the dual-LED ring light bolted to the rear of it. I'd already drilled holes in it to hold the LED rings, so figured I was already heading down that destructive road, why not. I held the tail light up against the cubby, and realised while it was a bit too long, it could get the angle I wanted, and with some... subtle... modifications... It'd fit right in there.

So, this happened:




The top "clear" part was already cracked, but that didn't matter, it'd be inside anyways.



Turns out, if you hack off everything behind the bulbs, it'll fit just nicely.



They say those cut off wheels are for metal, but I tell ya, a cut off wheel on a dremel at full speed goes through plastic very literally like a hot knife through butter. Not even a tiny bit of cracking, just slices right through. Used up a few cutting wheels in the process (they get gummed up with melty plastic) but they cost literally pennies each.



Measured, traced, measured again, and cut out a hole for the lens to fit through. While I go the size vaguely right, I butchered the cutting horrifically. Not really a problem, though: I needed to address water anyways, so making a seal between this and the lens was going to cover that anyways.

 

Got the lens clamped in place, with some plastic so my sealant (sugru, but I'd imagine jb weld or anything similar and putty-like would work just as well) could be molded into the gaps without adhering to the lens. Pressed it in, smoothed it off, left it to set.


A final dry fit before polishing the lens, and sanding and painting the lens base+cubby (and it's worn denty-spot from the grab handle bolt).

The lens assembly can't slide out any more due to the cut in the cubby, and it can't slide IN because it's cut right along the line of the back of the cubby, where it will press against the sealant foam on the rear of my seat. Still, I ran some heavy gauge metal strapping from the mounting bolts on the underside of the lens assembly (the bolts that normally hold it onto the fender) to the bolts that mount the cubby onto the frame, because anything worth doing is worth overdoing... and nobody wants their tail light going wandering should they turn out to be wrong about what can fit where.

All in all, I'm really happy with how it turned out. Looks clean and very much "stockish" on the bike, solves blinky warning issues, is very visible, and reuses parts that were otherwise basically garbage.



Extra lessons:
* Dremel's are awesome.
* Aluminum Polish is fantastic for lenses.
* Wear gloves when cutting plastic with a dremel, as molten plastic + skin = a bad time.

Best of all? It cost basically nothing. After a few rounds of buying stuff any trying it out, simply using the original light ended up being by far the best option.

 

Looks good.
Don't ride in the rain, or you back will get soaked.

 

Nah; I cut the fender off a long time ago, have ridden in the rain many times since without any back wetting issues. The tail back to the grab handle is enough to prevent your getting wet. I was concerned about it, but made the whole summer storm season without any problems.

If you look, water coming up off the rear tire can at best go straight up, but not forward at all - the licence plate helps here too.

 

So, as my starter clutch failed (starter not turning motor, making a truly horrible coffee-can-full-of-nuts-and-bolts noise, I'm going to need to pull the engine, split the cases and fix it.

I've looked through the how-to section, but sadly there's no post there, and some searching has shown a few related threads(which have been read) but sadly no photos surviving. No actual guides on the process though, certainly not for someone with no experience in this sort of endeavour.

Is there a thorough guide to doing this for a guy who's never taken an engine apart before? I mean, doing the valves was the deepest I've gone that way.

Maybe a handy list of tools, parts and supplies needed for the job? I've got your standard wrenches and whatnot, but want to be sure I've got everything I need before tucking into the motor.

I've got a Haynes manual, but not a Yamaha service manual. Will I need the service manual, or is the Haynes sufficient?

@chacal - any recommendations here for things I should have to do this?

 

One thing that you might want to check when it's open is the chain guide which can only be accessed when the cases are split. They are known to fail, requiring replacement, so now would be the time to look.

 

Well, I was going to cds1984's post here , but I see his pictures are gone. It doesn't look like they point to photobucket, so maybe there is hope they will be restored. That having been said, I did this last year and was able to get through without too much trouble. I did buy both the haynes and FSM, but I used the Haynes much more. I would still recommend getting the FSM though, there were a few times when I had both out in front of the bike when I was having trouble comprehending what exactly I was supposed to do.

For the most part, there aren't too many special tools needed: You'll need torx drivers for the 6(?) of those that are in the engine, the rotor pulling tool, torque wrenches in both inch and foot lbs, and a clutch basket holding tool might be helpful, but I did without that. You'll need the gaskets for the clutch cover, alternator cover, oil sump, etc. and Loctite 515/518 for the case halves.

Like Matti said, the chain guides are known to fail due to age. I would absolutely install a new one regardless. I went ahead and just replaced all the rubber/plastic in there.

One thing that I would make sure to do (cds1984 mentions this in his writeup) is leave the rear wheel/brake on until after you have the stator, rotor, and clutch completely removed. You can use it as an anchor and makes the process a lot easier.

As always, the folks around here are an incredibly valuable resource. Make sure to ask questions if you aren't sure about something. I did take a lot of pictures when doing this myself. They were mostly with my phone, so they aren't super great, but they made good reference points.

Good luck!

 

Thanks! I noticed in cds's post he FULLY disassembled the motor, including the top end. Is that necessary?

Obviously, I'd prefer to not disturb the top end of that's possible.

 

Yeah, he went all the way! You do not need to remove the head to split the cases.