My 82 550 Seca project

I thought I would share what is going on with my 550 Seca project. I want to thank all of you for the help and guidance I have received in my bike's rebirth. I started it at the end of last month and have made a ton of progress.

I started with this:

By zombiehouse at 2010-08-24

First I stripped it of its ugliness and gave it a quick cleaning.

By zombiehouse at 2010-08-24

Next I acquired a wreck for parts and started putting her back together. I replaced the front and rear brakes. I also gave her some new tires both front and back. Ebay was also definitely my friend for this. I got a new ignition. Emgo ignitions are nice but the keys are crap. The tops broke off both while in my pocket. Also acquired gauges, swingarm, chrome fender and chrome shocks on Ebay. The wreck I got had a Supertrapp exhaust which was installed but unfortunately has a bent mounting flange on the number 4 cylinder which causes a bad exhaust leak.

By zombiehouse at 2010-09-02

Got her running on Sunday. I took her for her first ride in almost 14 years. Here is how she is looking now. I had to install my FZ600 exhaust due to the leak I mentioned before. A really big thank you to Bigfitz for all his help. She wouldn't be looking this good without his help.


By zombiehouse at 2010-09-27

Now I am waiting on side covers and tail piece to arrive. Won those on Ebay. Scored all 3 pieces for $13.50. I am also in the process of repairing my badly damaged tank. The white one on the bike is smashed on the left side. Pulling the dents on the original tank now. I mounted the tank on the wreck so I would have a solid mount to hold the tank while I pull the dents.

Beginning

By zombiehouse at 2010-09-17

Right now

By zombiehouse at 2010-09-17

 

Nice. Really bringing this one back from the dead.

 

Bike is lookin' good, difference between night and day. You could install the old tank for halloween and call it the Hellraiser Bike! :lol:

 

I had the same problem with bending flanges on my old Yosh pipe. I wound up making a tool to straighten it out. I wound up making a two piece that goes around the downtube on theexhaust and uses the screws through the flanges to flatten them back down. You are welcome to come over and use it if you need to.. I am in Riverside. Also purchase new exhaust gaskets, I think they were ten bucks for a set of four.

Sean

 

Thanks for the compliments guys. This bike has been through a lot with me. Dinoracer, I think I may have to take you up on your offer. I like the way the Supertrapp exhaust looks a lot better. Do you ride a 550 Seca also?

 

dino: do you have a pic of the flange flattening tool? Having the same problem.

 

Damn that's a big project...you're a better man than me.

Coming along nicely! Looks good. SuperTrapps sound great, had one like that on a GS750.

 

Once I get the right side cover, I am going to start making her look pretty again. Need some money before I can tune her properly. She still will be sitting for a while unfortunately.

 

Yeah the bike in my avatar is a Seca 550 at Willow Springs

 

Dinoracer, I was just looking at your gallery. What fairing and front end is on your bike? Years ago I saw a 550 with and early Suzuki Katana front end and a full fairing. The dealer couldn't tell me what it was off of though.

 

Zombie, I gots a stock 550 fairing if you might be interested. I need my 750 Seca tank pulled out and a 650 Maxim tank pulled out too... Interested?

 

I will take pics when I get back on either Saturday or Sunday. Its really not much, just something I made up years ago.

If it was the pink one, then it is off of a gsxr I think. I found it in bad shape and cut it so it would work. Really upset the guy that I was racing with. He used to draft by me :lol:
The front end is off of a FZ600. I went to the local salvage yard and asked about a different front end. He sold it to me for 75 bucks and got the rest of the bike. Wish I would have kept it, was only a rolling chassis though. Funny thing is, I spent 1200 bucks on a engine rebuild and go a half second faster on the track. I spent 75 bucks on the front end and went two seconds faster.

Sean

 

Robert, how much you want for the fairing? Mine is in bad shape but repairable. I would help you out with your tanks but I think you would spend more in gas to bring them here to work on or more in shipping to send them than what it cost for the stud welder. I got mine for $35 off Ebay.

Dinoracer, when you put on the FX600 front end, did you use the FX600 triple tree and bars too? How about the front wheel? This is a swap I have been considering.

 

Yeah I usd the FZ not the FX triple trees. For bars I just used clip ons. As for the front wheel, I believe that I have a front wheel from the Sr500 single, it had the 18 inch front wheel with the option for dual discs on the rim.

Sean

 

Sorry Dinoracer. FX was a typo. I meant FZ. Does the full FZ600 triple tree mount up or only the top? Will the 550 Seca front wheel mount up? I am thinking that the fender is a no go. I like the look of the clipon bars.

 

Still working on this baby. Finally got the BB size holes welded up in the top of the tank. Welding on a thin tank is not easy at all. Gonna hit it with a thin coat of Bondo tomorrow hopefully. Then it will be time to figure out what color I want it. Tail and side covers are shot in white primer right now. When the tank is done all that will be left is to adjust the valves and carbs.

 

nice repair work.. Zombiehouse is right, really bringing it back!
I'm a sheetmetal worker / welder, but never attempted a fuel tank.. did you flush it and then run car exhaust into it?

 

I drained the tank a few months ago and removed the cap, petcock and sending unit at the same time. Then I rinsed it with soapy water. It has been sitting so long I wasn't worried about fumes inside anymore. The hardest part about welding the tank was the blow through. Took a bit of practice to get the holes sealed back up.

 

yeah, and it's not like you can clamp a flatbar of copper to the inside of a tank to weld over! all you can do is turn the power and wire speed right down on a mig and hope for the best.. tig's the best way to go with sheetmetal.

 

I wish I could afford the TIG. I got lucky and got the MIG for Christmas. I am happy with the final results though. The holes are all sealed up.

 

Oh nice! wish someone would get me a welder! gotta put up with bringing one home from work, for now..

Don't forget to post pics of your handy work!

 

Hopefully I will have the tank finished this weekend. Ordering some goodies from Chacal so I can finally get this baby finished up and then I will start on my hardtail project bike. No way am I gonna chop this one.

 

Kinda frustrated tonight. I got the valve shim tool from Chacal and went to change my shims this afternoon. All 8 needed to be changed. I picked the shims up and went to work. Got the first one in no problem. Not one of the remaining shims fit in the buckets. I had gotten a 270, 3 265's and 4 260's. The 270 was the only one that would fit into the bucket. I got them from the dealer too. One thing I noticed was the the 265's and 260's were not marked like the 270. The 270 was marked Y270. The others were just marked 260 or 265. Anyone have any idea what could have happened? Could I have gotten shims meant for another brand of bike? This dealer sells Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda, KTM, Kawasaki, Polaris and Ducati.

 

What do you mean by "won't fit the bucket?" Measure them, XJs of our era use a 29mm diameter shim, no beveled edge(s.)

Dealer or not, it's quite possible they supplied the wrong parts, you probably did get other-than-Yamaha parts.

Quick Q (personal informal survey) do you know approximately how many miles on that motor with all 8 tight?

 

By "won't fit in the bucket" I mean that when I put the shim in it, it won't drop down flat into it. I told the parts guy that I needed 29mm shims. They don't have beveled edges either. The bike has 42K miles on it. Gonna take the 30 minute drive back over to the dealer today. Not what I wanted to do. Had planned on tuning the bike. At least it is nice out here. Gonna be about 80 degrees today.

 

When I had to change mine out, they didn't just "drop right in" (not all anyway). Even the "originals" didn't. Rolling the cam around ever so slightly provided the persuasion needed...

skillet
BTW pay no attention to me, I know nothing. My $.02 probably ain't worth even that :roll: ...

 

I tried that Skillet. $.02 is better than no sense. LOL. Took the shims back. Got ones that had the size preceeded by a Y. Also noticed that ones I was originally given had one edge beveled. Gonna go get to work. Hopefully no more problems.

 

"Hopefully no more problems." ME TO! That just REALLY SUCKS when you know what you want and tell 'em what you want and the guy behind the counter (that was probably flippin' burgers at Mc Donalds last week) can't follow through...

skillet

 

Got the shims all changed. Good to go now. The idiot still gave me one bad shim. My fault though. I should have checked them before I left. I was able to move one shim over so it all worked out. All in spec now.

 

Well I got the bike all put back together after the valve adjustment. Now it won't start. Thought it might be bad gas cuz it was kinda old so I drained the tank and put in fresh. Didn't help. I'm getting spark and gas to the carbs. The carbs were cleaned a couple months ago. It wants to start it just won't do it. It was running a few weeks ago. I just don't get it.

 

Did you put the carbs back on set up for the bike prior to the valve adjustment, or did you bench sync?

The valve adjustment WAY affected the carb tuning trust me.

Bench sync, idle screws 2.5-3 turns out; check the float levels using the clear tube method; be sure the battery is FULLY charged and install a brand new set of spark plugs, airbox boots need to be connected too.

 

Carbs were bench syched only. Screws out 2.5 turns. I will recheck it all tomorrow though. I hadn't fully adjusted the carbs yet because I didn't have the Carbtune or YICS tool yet.

 

Float levels? It only takes one way high or way low to really F* up cold starting, trust me.

BRAND NEW plugs, never used, ever, gaps confirmed?

Petcock on PRI, all 4 drain screws open until you get good gas flow into the pile of rags, see what crud flushes out.

FULLY charged battery?

"Choke" on, no throttle until it fires.

 

Thanks Fitz. I will try all that in the morning. I appreciate the help. I am so close to getting this baby finished I am getting impatient. That is why I stopped working on it today so I could look at it with a clear mind.

 

Well I got the old girl running today. Ran out of light, so fine tuning will happen in the next few days. Found one big problem that was probably a major contributing factor to the bike not starting. I had an intake manifold on the number 3 cylinder that was cracked over half way around. Luckily I had a good one on my extra motor. Now I will need to get one for that. She starts right up now and idles nice. I also have to fix a nasty oil leak at the filter housing. I was laying down a smoke screen when the oil dripped on the pipe. LOL

 

Re: oil leaks--

If you haven't done the tach drive seals, do it now. Both of mine failed within about 1000 miles or so of putting the bike back into service, even though the bikes had an 11K-mile span between them.

Having ruled out some sort of bizarre mechanical conspiracy, I figured it was because those seals live a really hard life, and once the bike is parked for a while, they dry out and then fail soon after being called up again.

It's not in the book: http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=19538.html

It's a good way to kill an evening. Get the parts from Len, the outer o-ring has a "D" cross section, something the aftermarket missed.

 

I'll take a look at the tach drive seals. Gonna need a few parts I am sure from Chacal for the other bike so I will order them then. I can't wait to get back in the wind.

 

Eat a bug for me. We're into single digits here, all I can do is sit on my bike in garage and make "vroom vroom" sounds. (Guys who live where there's a real winter do that...don't they?)

 

Some guys are just too easy put off.

 

Been in the 80's here all week.

 

Trust me Wiz, ice racing is BIG here in this part of the country. Both solo and side-hack.

We even have indoor ice races, held in a hockey arena. Warm spectators, beer, and ice racing. Can't beat that.

 

Was that warm beer, Fitz, ah, takes me back to the UK.

 

The British drink warm beer because they have Lucas refrigerators.

 

LOL , Good ol Prince of Darkness!

 

For the benifit of the un-initiated 'real ale' is served at the ambient.

 

you need to drink a bunch of it if your going to the desert to keep the flys away

 

Fitz what part of MI are you from. I feel ya on the "sitting watching the bike going vroom vroom" part. I love 'ole MI but the 9 months of the year riding weather can bite it - unless you have snowmobiles of which I have currently funneled all of my recently out of college money into bikes so I am not as fortunate lol.

 

It's actually in my profile:

Cows and Pigs and Chickens=CAPAC. (Local joke.)

Capac is at the "base" of the thumb (we like to call it the gateway) about halfway between Lapeer and Port Huron.