Hello - MPH speedometer - original colour from my VIN.

Hello XJ owners,

I hope you are all coping well with the almost universal now lockdown. Its all a bit surreal but its great to see people giving so generously. Who knows where this is going to bring us and it causes me to wonder if we will simply just go back to the hum drum or whether will we learn from it and maybe put it away as a positive. I wish you all well. I guess having an outlet like an XJ Bike is a good thing in times like these.

I'm continuing with the rolling restoration to my 1983 XJ 750 Seca. I think that it was made for the US market because it has the speedometer marked up to 80 mph with a (used to be ) red sector from 55 mph which I thing comes from a speed limit introduced in the U.S. (or just California) in the 80's. However the XJ 750 Seca that I bought as a demo from a Dealer in Dublin in 1983 had the same marking on the speedometer. I'm pretty sure that more recent "Irish" XJ 750 Seca models had a plain full scale speedometer just like the UK spec. The size of the Irish ( Population 4 million) market for any model would have been measured in 10's not 100's. SO does anyone know "the full story" with regard to speedometers?

My resto XJ 750 Seca is silver and the registration documents reflect that, however there seems to be red beneath the silver on the "tail piece". Does the VIN contain a "colour code" or is there any other marking that tells the original colour. I'm just curious - not really fussed about staying completely original.
Stay safe.

 

yes the speedometer was marked at 55 miles an hour in limited to 80 miles an hour it was the United States law at the time in hopes to keep people from driving over 55. The speedometer is on automobiles and motorcycles. There is a thread by big fits 52 on how to put a hundred fifty miles an hour speedometer on your bike.
The 750 seca is named after the Laguna seca racetrack in California and is typically a model that was just issued in the United States and North America market. The typical Euro 750 is it the same design but just call the 750.

 

In the supporting vendor form he'll find a thread on identifying your bike through its vin number it also has a link where you can just punch in the VIN number if you don't want to go through all the bother of reading doing math etc. It will tell you where the bike was sold or should have been sold don't know why you'd have a US North American model in Dublin other than somebody brought it there at some point in time. Many of the u.s. North American bikes thatt ended up in Europe was do the military bases and soldiers bringing their bikes to the military bases then leaving them behind for whatever reason. Some are legitimate imports. The VIN number contains no information other than the model of the bike nothing about color. Yamaha would issue a bike one year with one color then paint the remaining leftover parts for the next model year. Or somebody replace the fender and painted it to the current color. If you go to our supporting vendor you can look up paint colors and it will tell you what years got what color paints. I do not believe when you purchase the bike in that year you got to choose what color you want or if you did it was very limited it

 

Thanks XJ550H.