My 82 550 Seca project

Oh nice! wish someone would get me a welder! gotta put up with bringing one home from work, for now..

Don't forget to post pics of your handy work!

 

Hopefully I will have the tank finished this weekend. Ordering some goodies from Chacal so I can finally get this baby finished up and then I will start on my hardtail project bike. No way am I gonna chop this one.

 

Kinda frustrated tonight. I got the valve shim tool from Chacal and went to change my shims this afternoon. All 8 needed to be changed. I picked the shims up and went to work. Got the first one in no problem. Not one of the remaining shims fit in the buckets. I had gotten a 270, 3 265's and 4 260's. The 270 was the only one that would fit into the bucket. I got them from the dealer too. One thing I noticed was the the 265's and 260's were not marked like the 270. The 270 was marked Y270. The others were just marked 260 or 265. Anyone have any idea what could have happened? Could I have gotten shims meant for another brand of bike? This dealer sells Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda, KTM, Kawasaki, Polaris and Ducati.

 

What do you mean by "won't fit the bucket?" Measure them, XJs of our era use a 29mm diameter shim, no beveled edge(s.)

Dealer or not, it's quite possible they supplied the wrong parts, you probably did get other-than-Yamaha parts.

Quick Q (personal informal survey) do you know approximately how many miles on that motor with all 8 tight?

 

By "won't fit in the bucket" I mean that when I put the shim in it, it won't drop down flat into it. I told the parts guy that I needed 29mm shims. They don't have beveled edges either. The bike has 42K miles on it. Gonna take the 30 minute drive back over to the dealer today. Not what I wanted to do. Had planned on tuning the bike. At least it is nice out here. Gonna be about 80 degrees today.

 

When I had to change mine out, they didn't just "drop right in" (not all anyway). Even the "originals" didn't. Rolling the cam around ever so slightly provided the persuasion needed...

skillet
BTW pay no attention to me, I know nothing. My $.02 probably ain't worth even that :roll: ...

 

I tried that Skillet. $.02 is better than no sense. LOL. Took the shims back. Got ones that had the size preceeded by a Y. Also noticed that ones I was originally given had one edge beveled. Gonna go get to work. Hopefully no more problems.

 

"Hopefully no more problems." ME TO! That just REALLY SUCKS when you know what you want and tell 'em what you want and the guy behind the counter (that was probably flippin' burgers at Mc Donalds last week) can't follow through...

skillet

 

Got the shims all changed. Good to go now. The idiot still gave me one bad shim. My fault though. I should have checked them before I left. I was able to move one shim over so it all worked out. All in spec now.

 

Well I got the bike all put back together after the valve adjustment. Now it won't start. Thought it might be bad gas cuz it was kinda old so I drained the tank and put in fresh. Didn't help. I'm getting spark and gas to the carbs. The carbs were cleaned a couple months ago. It wants to start it just won't do it. It was running a few weeks ago. I just don't get it.

 

Did you put the carbs back on set up for the bike prior to the valve adjustment, or did you bench sync?

The valve adjustment WAY affected the carb tuning trust me.

Bench sync, idle screws 2.5-3 turns out; check the float levels using the clear tube method; be sure the battery is FULLY charged and install a brand new set of spark plugs, airbox boots need to be connected too.

 

Carbs were bench syched only. Screws out 2.5 turns. I will recheck it all tomorrow though. I hadn't fully adjusted the carbs yet because I didn't have the Carbtune or YICS tool yet.

 

Float levels? It only takes one way high or way low to really F* up cold starting, trust me.

BRAND NEW plugs, never used, ever, gaps confirmed?

Petcock on PRI, all 4 drain screws open until you get good gas flow into the pile of rags, see what crud flushes out.

FULLY charged battery?

"Choke" on, no throttle until it fires.

 

Thanks Fitz. I will try all that in the morning. I appreciate the help. I am so close to getting this baby finished I am getting impatient. That is why I stopped working on it today so I could look at it with a clear mind.

 

Well I got the old girl running today. Ran out of light, so fine tuning will happen in the next few days. Found one big problem that was probably a major contributing factor to the bike not starting. I had an intake manifold on the number 3 cylinder that was cracked over half way around. Luckily I had a good one on my extra motor. Now I will need to get one for that. She starts right up now and idles nice. I also have to fix a nasty oil leak at the filter housing. I was laying down a smoke screen when the oil dripped on the pipe. LOL

 

Re: oil leaks--

If you haven't done the tach drive seals, do it now. Both of mine failed within about 1000 miles or so of putting the bike back into service, even though the bikes had an 11K-mile span between them.

Having ruled out some sort of bizarre mechanical conspiracy, I figured it was because those seals live a really hard life, and once the bike is parked for a while, they dry out and then fail soon after being called up again.

It's not in the book: http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=19538.html

It's a good way to kill an evening. Get the parts from Len, the outer o-ring has a "D" cross section, something the aftermarket missed.

 

I'll take a look at the tach drive seals. Gonna need a few parts I am sure from Chacal for the other bike so I will order them then. I can't wait to get back in the wind.

 

Eat a bug for me. We're into single digits here, all I can do is sit on my bike in garage and make "vroom vroom" sounds. (Guys who live where there's a real winter do that...don't they?)

 

Some guys are just too easy put off.

 

Been in the 80's here all week.