IT'S ALIVE!!!! (Creepy laugh......)

Hey guys,

some ten years ago, i bought an '86 XJ700 XS as a parts bike for my own 700X.
For various reasons I traded in my own Maxim X for a V-Max, back in 2005...
The parts bike has been sitting in my garage ever since.

The previous owner had painted the bike purple, had done some work on the forks (reassembling them in the wrong order and giving up while doing so...).

Last week, I started the resuscitation of the Maxim X.
What has been done:

- repainted tank, fenders, side panels etc. in metallic black
- rebuilt the forks from scratch
- new tyres
- some major elbow greasing on the aluminum parts, especially the wheels
- new fuel and the dutch equivalent of Sea-Foam (Forté fuel system cleaner)
- cut the melted connectors for the regulator / rectifier from the wire loom and soldered the connections
- new plugs


1 twist of the crank and the baby is up and running, with a lot of black smoke because of the 2 cans of WD40 i sprayed into the fuel tank for corrosion protection back in 2003...

Some minor problems still need to be fixed:

- leaky valve cover gasket needs to be renewed.
- she is still running on 3 cylinders in the lower RPM's
- new oil and filters
- right hand handle bar switch (kill switch) is defective and needs to be replaced......does anyone have such a unit that he would part with?


But generally, i was very surprised of the ease with which this old bike took the (at least) 10 year rest without falling apart....
Yamaha sure made some good quality bikes back in the eighties....

Best part: the bike is 25 years old now, so I won't have to pay any road taxes and very little insurance now......

When I am confident the bike is good, it wil be up for sale. So if there are any Dutch XJ bikers around who are interested, let me know!



Back to the workshop now.....

Bye bye

 

For me, starting an engine that has been "resting" for years, is one of the best feelings I've ever felt.....congrats!!


jef

 

Update:
For all the guys that can't get hold of the magical liquid called "Sea-Foam":
in Europe, there is a stuff called "Forté Fuel System Cleaner" that does exactly the same.....


I have noticed, that the engine runs better on DR8EA spark plugs (like in the V-max), than on the stock DPR8ES. The 8EA's are .5mm longer, but they don't touch the pistons, so i guess it'll be okay since the heat grade is the same....

Any thoughts on that?


@JeffK:
Yeah, I had never expected the bike to run ever again.
The reasonable mind would say that breaking it up and selling it in pieces would be the cleverer thing to do, but I can't get myself to do that....

 

Update:

#4 cylinder was not firing correctly.
The exhaust pipe would only get hot when revving the engine above 5000 rpm for some time.

I took the rack off today, cleaned all the jets and the carb interior.
Had to slice new carvings into the pilot screws because the PO had messed them up real bad with a bad screw driver....
I found out that this goes best with a broken off 2mm drill......after the slicing, they came out in a jiffy...

Put everything back together, turned the pilot screws out 2.5 turns and the bike now runs a lot better......yet not perfectly yet....

When my brain was milling about the crappy running, I stood next to the running bike and suddenly I noticed some sharp ticking sound coming from the plug caps....
I never thought about a leaky plug cap, so my hand went to it to push it in a little farther when it got smacked......
So I learned about leaky plug caps the hard way....

Unfortunately, Yamaha wants over US$ 150 for 4 plug caps for this bike, according to their online parts catalog....

I figured, since most plug caps are manufactured by NGK, some workshop should carry them in stock.........MAN WAS I MISTAKING......no one has them....

Does anybody know, which NGK plug caps will work for the Maxim X?
They have to be around the same length as the stock ones, because of the short plug wires.....

 

Ngk plug caps are fine, other things to consider are coils from FZR 400/600/750 pre excep models