How did you get here?

Found this place when my step-dad handed my XJ750RH down to me. He is also a member here but I don't know how he found the site.

 

I found the site when I was looking for info on my 81 XJ750 Seca. Glad I found it tons of information here.

 

The Google led me here after my roommate bequeathed me his '82 XJ650. I've done a bit of restoration and tune up work on it so far, and once I have it mechanically sound I'll start doing stupid things to make it 'cool' I'm sure.

 

I found this site like almost everyone else...the 'G' word. I lurked for a good long time before joining...not sure why.

I picked up my 1983 XJ750 nearly 3 years ago from my former boss. The bike had been passed from 4 employees (and my boss' dad) before it came to me. It had been ridden fairly often, though it sat for a good year or two before I got it.

This site has been a godsend.

 

Barn find '82 XJ750 needed a lot of help and this was at the top of the internet search. You guys continue to be a huge help in keeping it running in top shape.

 

Lots of searching for anyone who will talk about a 33 y/o bike...

 

Found you via Google when searching for pictures of XJ Police version of which I have two. Always searching for parts or people with these bikes. Excellent site and forums. Thanks

 

How I got here is a bit of a long story.
I own my first XJ 550 seca since almost 20 years now.
I bought it in 1995 with something like 16k miles.
The five years after that I used this bike as my main form of transportation, which included three years of daily commute over 75 miles (return trip) and two holidays in Great Brittain.
By the yeart 2000 I wanted something bigger and bought a XJ900F.
As nobody seemed to want the smaller motorcycle and I had grown attached to it, I deceded to keep it as a back up.
The XJ 550 has by this time more than 56k miles and it behaved like it needed a restauration.
The method was simply to disaasmeble everything, look what seemed worn, replace an reassemble. The frame, swingarm and centre stand were sandblasted and thsan powdercoated in my employer's coating line.
During the restauration process I found the second XJ550 on the internet, which saved much cost in replacement parts. It had only 19k miles.
I more or less finished the restauration in 2008.

In that time I had tried to find information on these motorcycles on all kind of media. I ended up with 3 manuals (Clymer, Buchli (German) and the original Yamaha). And I started to find more sources of information on the internet. First the Dutch XJ900 club site, then the German XJ community and from a link on one of those sites on XJbikes.

In the mean time my children were born and the motorcycles took a back seat. Until I was triggered this spring by a collegue who was trying to revive his Yamaha TDM900 after 5 years, also due to children.

My own revival attempts followed the known paths: dead battery, bad fuel and after that is solved running but very poorly. On the forum I found the way ahead (valves first, than carburators) and decided to buy the parts I did not have yet from Chacal.

In the future I will search for the information needed to also revive the XJ 900 which is starting to look very neglected at the moment. And maybe I can help others with what I have done in the restauration process.

Joris

 

Hi to all,

my name is Jaap and live in the Netherlands. Always been a yamaha afficionado although I have and still ride another brand aswell.
Started on a DT 360, followed by two GS750, then a Seca, then a xj750f and after that I was anxious to buy a vmax... But riding one was not as much fun as I anticipated: low torque on low rpm's, to much all in once at 6k rpm and to small a gastank to do some serious riding. So... I bought a V65 Magna...
Still riding my third V65 since it's such a brutal and nice riding bike. The first one did appr. 120k, the second one was rebuilt to a survivalbike called Swamp (130k) and the third is still in front of the house.. ready to take me everywhere I want. Do all the work on these bikes myself, also the engines interior... Now this bike is bulletproof after some serious mods.
In the livingroom is residing a srx-6, my wife rides a fj600 rebuilt to QuickSand.. a desertlike survivalbike/ratbike, we sold a '73 tx 650 and bought my first ever yamahalove a '82 seca in nearly mint condition and only 30k on the clock. This bike has never felt rain so even the exhaustclamps are still as new...
The turbinesound of this bike really caught my attention so when I found one it/she? had to be bought..lol.
Have plans to rebuilt this one aswell to attend ratbikemeetings instead doing so with the fj/QuickSand.
My V65 Swampbike is deceased due to many miles and has been discarded.. snif.
I'm one of the two founders of rataplan-ratbikeclub (nickname JPi) and have been promoting this all through europe, with succes! Many nice pics on that site btw!

Anyhoew.. glad to see xj4ever is a nice site with much info so will be here frequently I guess.



The bike has a small smoke windscreen now and the krausers are also aftermarket. They were still lying around from my previous xj750f so fitted perfectly.
There are more items changed so will post a recent pic soon.

 

Referred by a board member on a different site

 

I'm in the UK and have just bought an XJ700 Maxim X water cooled, and info in the UK is very limited, I also own a XJ900S Diversion and think these bikes are very underated. In search of info for the XJ700, I came across this website and pretty sure I'll be dropping in on a regular basis

 

Found this on facebook. I just wish there were xj owners in my area ( yelm washington)

 

Search engine was Google. Don't remember the exact wording, but was looking for Carb cleaning information on my 81' xj550. And phrase the lord, I stumbled onto "the church of clean ".

 

There's a couple guys north of you near Tacoma and Kent - check the Hotspots tab.

 

Just got my "new" 1982 seca. I was trying to find a service manual, either through a google search or linked from themotorcyclemedic.com. I am amazed by the amount of info here. I searched online for weeks trying to find info on tach\speedo replacement and found nothing. Then i found xjbikes, and within minutes, I was reading a how-to from a guy that has done exactly what I was thinking of! Now I'm gonna immerse myself in xj info 'till I drown! Yay!

 

googled "Yamaha XJ650 Forum"

 

Googled "1981 yamaha xj650 carb boot repair" when I was looking at buying my '82 XJ650RJ Seca off Craigslist. Found a link to this site on the second page of the search results. Used Chacal's VIN guide to find out that the bike was incorrectly listed and look up parts availability before I purchased the bike. Amazing site, amazing people! Thanks, SnoSheriff!!

 

yup, good old Google for me, too. I got a clapped out bobber project and figured I'd see if there was a forum. My, how i was surprised at this community!

 

found this forum via google when I was searching for bike forums

 

Hi, came here looking for help and useful information as I have recently bought 1981 XJ650. doing some mofidications, will let you all know how it goes soon. cheers!

 

tripped over my cat in the dark, hit my head on the keyboard and viola, here I was

 

lol nice one

 

Bought one after a couple beers with an old friend and figured I better see what I got myself into. Found this site first.

 

Bought an 81 XJ650 a few years ago and joined this forum, I was all about the build then lost steam. Over the past two months I have been lurking the forum and kicking ass with my build! Thanks for all the great posts and guidance, this forum certainly helped shape my bike

 

First of all, Thank you for this site.. This is my first day on here and just by reading some post a lot of my questions and some ideas I've had have been fulfilled...I found your site via google searching for the VIN breakdown..

 

Hello everyone. I was just doing a search on tank rust removal. I have a 79 XS1100 I know its not a XJ but there is so much info here I had to join.

 

Just bought a 1981 xj650 maxim, plan on turning into a badass bobber/cafe hybrid, just googled 1981 yamaha xj650 and this forum popped up. glad it did!

 

Chacal's VIN guide was the first thing I stumbled into. And now when I have questions about my bike I be sure to include site:xjbikes.com in my search.

 

Welcome to the community. We're uhh... gonna need to see lots of photos of it.

 

Welcome to the forum Geezer Ryder. Nice bike you have there! I too found a low mileage bike in Utah. It is an XJ1100 with only 3600 miles! Apparently some people buy bikes but never ride them.


Will be cleaning this one up for my wife. She put a clam on it as soon as she heard how many miles it had. She is defiantly a keeper...The wife and the bike.

 

this site was passed to me by my father, as i have his bike now and still looking for parts to restore it.

 

I'm pretty sure I just typed in "1982 seca 650 parts" on yahoo and searched through the sites it gave me.

 

Bought a 1980 xj650 because it was the first road bike I rode with my father (which was his) on the tank with and brother and sister on the back. Then I googled xj650 and got this site

 

Bought the original (?) XJ Owners information repository (ON CD, shipped THROUGH THE MAIL), lol. I'm not even old enough to say such things, but it did happen. That was in 2004? Then eventually made my way to the website. This is probably an insanely stupid question, but who was it who was selling those things anyway? Was that SnoSherrif?

 

Google on the third page. Was checking how to distinguish between a maxim and midnight through vin numbers. Was very interesting so joined.

 

I found this site on Facebook, from the Yamaha Maxim-X 750 community.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yamaha-Maxim-X-750/187448248001035

They also suggested www.Maxim-x.com, but that site seems legacy, not active.

 

I got here in the midst of searching how to get my bike fixed up. I appreciate that there is so much knowledge and so many resources here for repairs/maintenance. Can't see that there are many other places to get a lot of this. (E.g.: Not really any other competing forums for XJ's)

 

Hello! Oi here. I bought an XJ750K Maxim last weekend, and the guy I bought it from said he got some outstanding advice from this board. I thought I'd check it out. So far, I've spent about 3 hours scanning the threads. I've learned quite a few do nots, and dos...So, it's time well spent! I'll get a little past the point I'm at now on my project to start posting things about her. Thanks for the info! This is an amazing resource for all things XJ!

 

I a considering a 1982 Seca XJ 750. I am a tad hesitant to get a 32 year old motorcycle. So I thought I'd check the forums and see what people have to say.

Took it out for a spin tonight. Goes great. Needs a new battery. Stripped down a bit, no mirrors or turn signals (registered as an antique). Has extra hard bags and rear middle luggage bag, and wind faring. And an extra motor that was apparently working. He got it with the extra motor. He repainted it (but not the bags...) and replaced the handlebars so it's more of a cafe racer feel.

$1700.

Anything I should be thinking about with this? I'll check that he has title (forgot to ask)...

Do you have to tinker a lot with these? I have an old house that is my project. I just want a bike that goes. Should I consider this or look elsewhere????? Thanks for any input!

 

Replying to myself... found the Information Overload Hour... going throught that...

eta-awesome info in there

 

It's a 33 year old machine. There will be work. It will be somewhat enjoyable work, for the most part. The work will make you love your ride even more. You may learn about motorcycles, and even yourself!

 

I googled "Yamaha Seca 750 Forum". I'm the original owner of my Seca 750 but I haven't ridden it in years--home, job, wife, car, other motorcycle, I'm sure many of you know how things get in the way. That said, the bike looks great as its always been garage kept. The only glaring deficiency is rust on the inside walls of the gas tank. I finally decided to find out what to do about it--and the botched attempt to resin coat it about ten years ago--which brought me to this hopefully helpful site. As old as these bike are and with all the years of ethanol in our gas, I'm sure I'm not the first to face this problem. Anyway, here is a pic of what she looks like. I've got the emblems and mirrors. Everything is stock except the pipes which I replaced after the originals rusted.

 

Good looking bike.

Gary H.

 

Wow. That is clean! It looks brand new! Envious.

 

Thanks! I had it painted about 10 years ago and its basically been under cover in my garage ever since. Like I said, the tank has surface rust inside and I botched a job trying to seal it back then and now that is pulling loose. Any ideas on tank remedies?

 

Caswell epoxy liner, or POR 15. The previous attempt was probably with Kreem (which is crap). The big thing is to follow the directions for removing the old liner, and for prepping the tank for the epoxy liner. TAKE NO SHORTCUTS.

 

Now that you mention it, I think it was Kreem. The old liner is in taters and apparently I didn't get it all the way up to the top of the tank. Crap product and crap application--wonder why things turned out like crap? I'll check out the POR 15! Thanks!

 

Image looks broken, so I'm reposting it for you. And you're right: she's beautiful.

 

I googled a YICS tool, XJ4ever linked me to the forum. It's great to know there are still many Seca and Maxim bikes in running condition.

 

I found it while googling xj750j, poof, there you were.