First project bike, 1985 XJ700X Maxim-X

Hi,

First I'll introduce myself a little bit, since I haven't done so properly anywhere else. My name is Rick, I am a Unix administrator for a webhosting company based in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

I know very little about bikes.

I drive a 1995 ZZR-600 to work on a daily basis. Two years ago there was a hole in the exhaust and I figured I might as well try and fix that myself. I got a workshop manual and a new exhaust and when I was done I replaced the exhaust, air filter, did an oil change, replaced the spark plugs and oil coolant.. stuff.

Since that bike is still running and I enjoyed doing that very much, I decided to look for a bike that needed work to get it running again. And I found one, this is my proud possession, a 1985 XJ700X Maxim-X:






I'm hoping to use this thread to post updates as I'm restoring this bike to running state. So far I only know one of the carburators was overflowing and the front brake needs work.

My plan is first to get it running and driveable again, after that, I think I'm going to completely strip it and clean each individual part, repaint it, whatever is needed to make it beautiful again.

 

Welcome Rick, Unix rocks!

Good place here, lots of super info, and good folks. I'm sure you'll have fun and learn tons from this site.

Interesting build on that one already, look forward to your progress.

 

Welkom!

I'm a Unix admin by trade also, weird how 80s bikes attract us lol

 

Welcome Rick, more techheads are always welcome, even those from the home of M.C. Escher. All you need is some gold racing stripes and your bike will be in a Vitesse kit, which is rather fitting in Amhem!

 

welcome. Boy are those some wide handlebars

 

Welcome to XJBikes!
You are from AMS and you aren't using a bicycle to go to work???

 

Nice buy! My second project bike is the same bike. I got a wealth of info from this forum already.

 

Welcome Rick!

Nice bike as well! I'm driving a '86 version of yours (currently in repairs). I'm also dutch and living in Westervoort, about 2kilometers from Arnhem and also working in the world of datacenters and hosting

 

Thanks all for the warm welcome In a few days I'll receive more carburetor parts so I should be able to post some progress pics on that!

 

that thing looks badass
Good luck !

 

So, finally got around to working on the carbs again. I had already cleaned them up as best I could last year, but still needed to replace the float needle assemblies. So I did and in doing so I managed to break one of the main jets. I ordered those from chacal and put them in as soon as I could. I also got new washers and gaskets.

So, before cleaning and doing anything, the carbs looked like this:



So yeah.. those were pretty messy.

Now they look like this:





I'd say it's an improvement.. but for me the big question now, is where to go from here?

I guess I have to set the float levels? Anything else I *have* to do before putting them back in?

 

Bench-sync the valves. It's not that hard. From the pictures I cannot tell if it's been done.