A new project, the abandoned xj650RJ

ALright,

So I finally got to swap shims on the engine. This should be interesting, trying to work on the 650 and the 750 at the same time.

The good think is that it cuts on shipping. I ordered two sets or carb bowl drain screws (the hex upgrade from chacal) and new fuse boxes since both have the original original ones and seem to be a common source of headaches.

 

I am rebuilding a rack for the 650 engine since the 750 has proven to be a PITA.

Here is a picture of the first carb body before being cleaned

Untitled by ecogaia, on Flickr

And here is after:


Untitled by ecogaia, on Flickr

Pictures of the entire process can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67973467@N ... 153344879/

More pictures to come as the project moves along.

 

Looks really good...

 

I looked at your pics on Flicker.....nothing a good carb clean won't take care of.....great progress.....one body down & 3 to go.....

 

Today I spent two hours dismantling the parts bike. I finally had some time and an upcoming deadline to take all parts off this bike to start recommissioning the original bike. Quite a few parts are a lot better on this bike than the original one:

rl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/67973467@N00/9643552227/][/url]
Parts bike tear down by ecogaia, on Flickrrm6.staticflickr.com/5484/9643552227_b08c03b946_z.jpg[/img][/url]
Parts bike tear down by ecogaia, on Flickr

 

A little more time on the parts bike, wiring harness is off and the swing arm out of the way. At this point the only thing left is the front fork and engine. It may be easier to move the engine around the yard in the basket.


IMG_3704 by ecogaia, on Flickr

 

This project that I originally thought it would take 3 months has taken a few turns and here I am 9 months later with nothing but tubs full of parts.

Luckily I my daughter's birthday is approaching and the driveway has to be cleaned. This was the perfect motivation to tackle this task and store all the actual parts off the bike:


Untitled by ecogaia, on Flickr

 

The wife had to work today so I am at home with the peanut. She asked me to clean if possible, you all know where there is a will there is a way so I cleaned.

I am not sure if she is going to like what I decided the clean (polish).


Untitled by ecogaia, on Flickr

 

I think that is exactly what she meant. She may have mis-understood herself.

Dave

 

Well put Dave!

I agree with him. Looking good Eco. Keep up the good work.

 

Well I've said it before, many moons & plenty of pages ago. But this is an AWESOME THREAD!!! 8) And I've just spent until 3.15am reading it from top to tail AGAIN!...

But ecologito, where are you now & what has become of the bikes? Have we any running yet? Hope you & yours are all well and you'll be around with more progress soon. Best, Dan.

 

Oh, he's around......just busy with a business trip. He's still working on them, having a tough time with the 750. We're still trying to diagnose a no-spark condition, and we've gone back as far as the stator and pickup coil but still waiting to test and trouble-shoot there. That's where we're stalled at the moment.

I'm still trying to talk him out of a few parts.........LOL As he is also trying to talk me out of a few parts! Hah ha!

dave fox

 

I am still here, right now the seca has been winterized (in boxes in the shed). Like Dave said the 750 maxim is on the driveway driving me crazy since I rather spend time and money on the seca and this other #$%*& bike won't even start. I just want to throw it away some days but I don't even have time for that.

I am also saving some play money to buy the entire rebuild kit for the seca to replace throttle shaft seals and all the other parts that need to be replaced to make sure that I have a perfect set of carbs for it.

The last order from Len included new steering and swing arm bearings for the seca to make sure that they are sound and solid once I start putting the entire thing together.

 

Your RJ looks better than mine right now!

Dave Fox

ps: and it probably runs better, too.

 

Good good, glad you're still plugging away at them this business trip thing is what's called "a good thing", since it doesn't give you time to throw away the bike & regret it later, which you would! If the shipping wouldn't be a killer I'd be trying to talk mr fox out of some 31A fork legs, personally...

 

Well.. I am stil hoping to have time to work on it at some point. Like DAve says, it will get done when it gets done, at this pace I may need to put the bikes on my will so my great grand kids can work on them

 

I found a set of pipes for my 650rj! Now to repair the collector I found, while looking for GOOD one.

 

im sure the site will still be here

keep up the work!

 

It has been a year since I joined this forum, started my journey to fix the 650 seca. The best part has been to meet so many great people of this forum. The bike now is sitting all apart in my small shed.

Now I need to get the mexim out of the way do I can focus on the Seca. Thank you all for all your messages, support, knowledge and phone calls.

Happy Holidays and looking forward to get something done on year 2.

 

After only one day on CL the Maxim sold without any haggling. I guess it helps to know what you are selling. Hopefully the new owner will show up on the forum for help.

In the meantime I have more play money to invest on the Seca, I have contacted Len and hopefully will start working no the carbs as soon as the rebuilt kit gets here.

 

Yippee!!!!!!!!!!

Dave

 

It has been so long since I looked under the tarp that I had to go back to my now thread to look at what I've done.

So it seems like I already did the shim job on the 650 spare parts bike. Now that the maxim is out of the driveway I can roll the seca out of the shed, pull the 750 engine out, get the 650 in and work on the carbs since I should have the rebuilt kit from Len delivered next week.

Let's get back to work on this project!

Thank you for the advise Dave and Fitz.

 

And that was quick,

Len shipped the parts and got them today, that was really fast turnover, makes me wonder if he drove here and deliver them overnight.

Now it's time to get to work on the 650 carbs and put them all back together. I just need to remember what goes where.

Luckily once again Len comes to the rescue:

http://www.xj4ever.com/hitachi%20thrott ... 0seals.pdf

 

Today I got a bike jack to move the bike around on the driveway, it seems like a really handy toy to have around, easier to push around and easier on my back when working on the bike.

Today I pulled the 750 carbs and hopefully this weekend I will have time to swap engines to get the 650 seca back in place. I just realized that I have an entire spare bike in boxes in the shed so I will be picking the best parts to make a good looking stock bike.

At this pace I don't know if this will be done this year or it will have to wait until next year. Luckily the riding season is pretty long in North Carolina.

More to come... and btw I would encourage anybody working on a bike to use this forum as a log book for what they do, I read my thread back to realize that the valve shims have ben checked on the spare 650 engine that is going on the frame.

 

And the 750 seca engine came out of the frame, now is time to get things cleaned up, and load the 650 engine on the frame.

 

Before getting the engine in I decided to make sure that everything is not just functional but also good looking.

New bearings and seals for the swing arm are here and ready to go so I decided to give some fresh life to the entire thing. It took me a little while today to strip the old paint, sand down some superficial rust and get everything prepared. Here is the arm after three coats of primer. Just waiting to dry and after some 400 sand paper cleaning the black paint will go down.

 

And two coats of black paint later...

 

You'll get THIS one done, then you WON'T want to ride it!

LOL

dave

 

It's will be no different than right now that have nothing to ride, but I will have a shiny bike on the driveway

 

rotfl

 

I guarantee he'll want to ride it...pride in all the work done must be shown to the world!

 

I had a few minutes today to work on my project so I figured since I am this far and the engine is ready to go in a fresh coat won't hurt.


and two coats later:


And the frame after a fresh coat where it is going to show.



Hopefully I have some more time before dark tonight to put the engine in the frame.

 

Fitting the swing arm with new bearings...



I am also spending some quality time with the dremel



Now I need to figure out what is missing inside the shaft... according to the parts diagram there is supposed to be an oil seal and I can't find it.

 

There's no seal there...... There better not be any oil in the brakes!!!!

 

Ok, so I spent a bit more time polishing, and parts are dusting off nicely. I few question for the pro-polishers, how do I get rid of the streaks that I can see were made by the small dremel buffing tip?



I will be polishing a few more parts in the upcoming days while I get the carbs done.

 

Get a bigger buffing wheel

 

Depends on which dremel wheel you were using. If it was the small felt wheel and compound that comes in most dremel sets, there's not a lot of avoiding it on large parts.

I've been in the polishing/buffing business on and off for over 25 years and the best advice I can give you (because you will get bitten by the bug) is to get a bench buffer from Harbor Freight. Around $50 plus wheels and compound and it makes the work a lot easier.

If you go with wet/dry sandpaper (ala BigFitz) from around 800 progressively up to 2000 grit to get the shine.

If you go with the wheel (me) you can use 600 and 800 wet/dry for the polish, then a soft or semi-soft wheel and white (aluminum) compound and you'll have the "chrome Look".

Then it's just a matter of using some (I use Mother's) mag and aluminum polish a couple times a year to keep the shine.

I haven't done a write up on buffing/polishing yet because I ran out of aluminum bits to clean up.

Oh, btw, you can also use the bench buffer (very soft wheel, blue compound) to polish plastics and take scratches out of CD/DVDs.

I really need to find some more aluminum........

 

Thank you for the comprehensive answer. I did polish with the felt wheel on the dremel and used the red'ish compound. I was going to go over again with the white compound and see if they will go away.

I think I will go to HF and get the bench buffer/grinder. They are not that expensive and I have a whole lot of parts that can use it.

 

Today I spent some time with a bigger wheel... I realized that at the bottom of my toolbox I had a larger wheel and the chock for my power drill so I did that and after a couple of minutes and the battery on my cordless drill this is what I got:

 

Today is going to be a hot day here so I got a bit done this morning,



After getting the shaft connected to the joint and getting the swing arm half way in I realized that I forgot the brake actuator by the pedal... I noticed that on the back there are a couple of tabs where the return spring and the brake light switch connect to it.

So after a couple of tries, here is the rear of the bike assembled back together. I feel like after this built I will be able to do it during my lunch break.

I need to go back and get rid of that rust in the brake actuator because now it looks like a stain of ketchup on a white shirt.

 

Not much to update this weekend I am working Saturday and Sunday plus a ton of rain so no wrench time on the driveway. I did have time to polish a couple more parts. If it rains like this monday I will be replacing the fuse box on the wiring harness that I am actually using for the bike.

 

After reading and following Fitz's "how to" ...
Rebuild vacuum operated fuel valve

and ordering all the parts from chacal the pet rooster is ready to go whenever the tank is ready for it.

In the middle of it:



And done...

 

Hey tskaz, I've got a bunch of aluminum just laying around on my 82 650 Maxim you're welcome to polish!

 

I removed the wiring barness to be replaced with what I thought was one in better shape. Here is the first difference:

What is in the circle replaced what is in the square, the genius who "fixed" the wiring harness decided to get rid of a fuse (pointed on the arrow).



I will replace that old fuse box with a new blade style fuse box. But first I need to sort out the other differences that I have found.

Find the differences:

 

Eco,

I've seen some like that before, too. As a matter of fact, if you recall in a previous thread, not too long ago, I mentioned about some of the strange repairs I've seen........one of them being eliminating the fuse box. Someone said ' if there's no pics, it didn't happen'......so--here's a pic for you to be able to verify it. I'm sending it to your cell phone cuz I don't have a way to host it somewhere------check it out.

dave fox

 

Thanks for sharing, this is the bowl of spaghetti that Dave has on deck:

 

You can also see the tank is held on by a loop of wire.....

 

I'm affraid the shipping would be a bit prohibitive.

 

The front wheel and forks came off, I have two sets of forks to pick the "better" ones. Both seem to be in similar shape (cosmetically) but will have to go over them mechanically to make sure they are solid and in good operational shape before I clean the outside.

 

I was searching for ideas to paint the bike. What are the odds to find theexact same bike the way it looked 3 owners ago? I found the way my bike looked in 2007.

Take a look a the first page of this thread for a picture of the bike the way I got it. It would have been nice to start with it that way.