What did you do to your Yamaha today?

Frugality says replace it.
There's nothing worse than riding on the highway and finding that your pissing gasoline all over.

 

No riding this weekend.
The weather is being a little uncooperative.

 

I will before I title it. It is fine for now.

 

Motorcycles guys,

Motorcycles.

Lay off of the politics. I hate spending my weekends deleting posts.

 

Today I got rid of those terrible air horns! When I finally tried them, they barely made a squeek and took a second for them to even do that much. I ordered this set of Hellas off ebay based on reviews. Did not disappoint! They sound right to my ear and respectably loud. Also being small and black they don't stand out visually and I like that too.

Did have a bit of a panic after I realized that I had torn out the old system with no reference pics or anything and found myself lost after about 15 feet of useless wire had been disconnected, unwound from various places on the frame and discarded. Fortunately with a bit of patience I was able to sort it out.

Looks better without the red plastic obstructing the view of the engine and sounds MUCH better!




Next on the agenda is some more electrical. Seems I have no oil light and the neutral light is always on. Hopefully not a big deal there. If anyone has any tips on what might be good to check out first I'd love to hear.

 

neutral light runs off of the neutral switch. when bike is in neutral, the switch grounds the circuit. you can test switch and inspect the wire running up to harness it may be pinched and grounding
or your switch is bad and always grounging

 

Good choice. Hella makes excellent (and effective) horns.


Someone might have also bypassed the ignition safety by purposely grounding the neutral switch wire. It's the only sky-blue wire on the machine.

A dose of Seafoam in the oil usually frees stuck switches (but the neutral switches can occasionally fail internally).

 

That documentry follows events that occured not too far from my place.

 

I took the MSF Advanced Rider Course today. I had the oldest bike and the only 4 cylinder!

 

And the only one that can turn worth a darn.

 

Started cleaning the midnight's carbs today...let me tell you, those things looked decent on the outside but once cracked open it was a whole other story. The nasty green goo plus a whole lot of other nastiness. The ultrasonic was working on carb #3 when I left. Hoping to make it back over there soon to finish the 4th and start putting things back together. I had a heck of a time getting the float pins out, but I was able to successfully without breaking a tower.

 

Nothing physical but today and yesterday I spent a lot of time looking up stuff online for my bike. I'm probably going to make a fiberglass cowl to put my battery in - which means I have to make my own seat, as well (but that means I can fabricate a tray under it for my electrics/electronics). I also spent some time in the xj4ever thread to look up what I need to do an engine rebuild and install dynacoils.

 

DYNA COILS are great ,but Honda CB750 coils 80-83 are direct swap in and have replaceable plug wires and can still be bought new and is cheaper than the dyna coils.

 

This is what I found after cracking the carbs open from the midnight...

 

Thank you! You wouldn't happen to know the part number for that?

 

that's what pressure washers are for

 

Can be bought new from Cycle Recycle part 2 44 $each and they carry the plug wires and plug caps as well , I'm not sure how much shipping runs though over seas.

 

Today I pulled the out the headlight and removed the instrument cluster. Opened up the instrument cluster and attempted to clean the glass from the inside but couldn't remove the glass from the bezels so I just cleaned them up best I could. I got it a little better after the pic was taken but still not really right as I'd like it. Anyway, I got everything back together and it all seems to work properly including the neutral light which used to stay on constantly. I had also fooled around with the wire near the switch on the bottom of the engine, so that may have been where the problem had been. Maybe not a "real fix" but seems to be ok for the moment at least. The rest of the electrical system seems to be alright.

Streaked glass in a hard place...



Also I got some Harley shocks for the back and messed around putting those on. The eyes on the ends of the shocks are a bit bigger and wider than the XJ shocks, so I did a bit of trimming to get them to fit. Still need to make some steel sleeves to tighten up the rubber XJ bushings in the HD shocks, I'll do that tomorrow. I think the original shocks were pretty worn and it felt like they would have given a very bouncy bouncy ride. The HD shocks are way newer and hopefully won't be so bouncy. Feels a little better sitting on the bike in the shop at least. They're also a little taller than the originals, which is also something I wanted. Looks like my new shocks at the lowest setting make the bike sit about the same height as the old shocks at their highest setting.

Milling the eyes to width...

 

I wasn't going to do this just yet but I unexpectedly had some free time on my hands!

 

Nice! I wanted to know if you clear-coat the polished aluminum? I polished one of my side covers and thought it looked pretty good, but clear-coat didn't look so hot!

 

Nah, no clear for me I think. My old hotrod had polished bare aluminum wheels for several years and they were easy to maintain. A little polish on an old tee-shirt, some hand rubbing, and call it good for another couple of years.

And this was sort of a quickie job anyway. I just wet sanded with 400 grit and kept rubbing a while after the paper was pretty dead, then dried everything off, wiped it down good and went straight to the Mother's aluminum polish. Used my big slower speed die grinder with a cotton buffing wheel/bob thingy. Took about 3 hours start to finish for both sides of the bike. It's certainly no pro job but it's not too bad and I think it suits the bike. I mean the seat's kind of faded, there are chips in the paint on the frame, couple scrapes here and there, my amateur paint job etc etc... I'ma call it good!

 

Killer job, mate! And you answered my question before I could ask it: sandpaper, aluminium polish and effort. I might not have many technical skills yet, but I have an abundance of enthusiasm and elbow grease! PO painted everything black (in his usual half-assed manner) though, so I'll have to see how that complicates matters.

 

Yeah, I think it was Chacal who had posted something about POS (previous owner syndrome) the other day on a thread of mine. How true that is!! Mine definitely has that as well.

As for the paint on the engine covers, I would try the wet 400 grit first. That stuff is actually pretty aggressive when fresh and would probably take the paint fairly quickly. There had been a thin clear coat on mine when I started, but that didn't last long.

Also on the sanding, I used a balsa sanding block as much as I could and actually did a tiny bit of reshaping on the YICS covers. The perimeters of those covers looked a bit wonky to me and I fixed that. Pleases my eye a bit better anyway! And I did some file work on the right side YICS cover to remove some scrape marks. More pics for that because I like to say everything with pictures, lol. Check the forward edge of the right side YICS cover. Nevermind the fact that I buffed off half of the red from the lettering... Oops, damnit... Like the rest of the bike, I didn't try to make it perfect but it's a lot better than it was.

 

Awesome job engine looks great.

 

Got myself a spare TCI unit for my XJ900f for 25 dollars.

 

After I de-rust all the bare metal steel bits while I'm working on the swing-arm, I put them back on in raw/unprotected form. Now, surface rust again! Should I have coated them with light oil?

 

Some oil or lithium grease would probably be a good idea. Anything to keep it from getting dry. I wouldn't try to go light as in WD-40 though. That stuff doesn't hang on very long. Evaporates I guess.

 

New handlebar grips today. It's a small thing but I really like these. Hated the red aluminum ones PO had put on there, and these seemed to have a nice vintage flavor that fit the bike.

Also I got mucking around with the electrical stuff a bit more and learned that my neutral light actually ISN'T supposed to come on when I pull the clutch lever. Who knew? But it sure would be nice to see if the bike is in neutral without actually having to let the clutch out, lol . Seems my neutral/start relay has a bad diode, so now I have a new relay coming.

 

WD40 is not so much a lubricant as a penetrating, anti-seize agent (WD: Water Displacement). It's fine for starters, but you need to properly oil/lubricate your stuff with something else.

 

Rode out to pick up and installed the trunk that I had a new seat pad fabbed.

 

Calibrated speedometer by GPS today. It’s finally 100% accurate.

 

Took my first ride after dark...... I need to adjust my headlight, high beam is fine but at 80 km/h I am easily out riding the light it puts out. Any thoughts?

 

You could do HID conversion for OEM appearance or LED headlight in stock bucket. That’s if you’re still running stock headlight set up.

 

Was hoping to align the beam first. The Haynes manual just say "loosen the bolts and adjust up and down". I seem to remember there is away to park in front of a wall at a certain distance and the beam should be centered on a height from the ground. Anyone have a link to something like that? It's an 83 750 Maxim all stock if that helps.

 

YouTube has so.....many pic I think finding the correct for you is the important thing. That and may sure you don't blind oncoming traffic. Driving at night with only the one stock headlight is to me not comfortable. In my area way too many things coming out of the ditch to say "Hi" at night.

 

I'm in the same boat as you Timbox, lots of things that can go bump in the night around here. I just want to get my stock set up right before I start changing things up. The YouTube search will start tonight!!

 

Started tearing my engine down. Ran into an issues on the alternator as I apparently need a special bolt to remove it from the engine ... Any tips on doing it without? No shops open here on Sunday. :-(

 

Those were plated to begin with.
Paint the parts, or get a kit to replate them.

 

The DYI section has all sorts of useful information.
Replacing Alternator Seals in XJ700N with Pictures
All the XJ alternators use the same bolt.

 

same height as a car at same distance. you can add some led lights that come on with high beam or a switch. oh and slow down you should never ride faster than your lights at night.

 

Finished putting carbs back together see my thread on butterfly seals

 

Plated, like galvanized, or chromed?

 

Nickle.

 

Within the error of the GPS (yes, even the best consumer GPS has a certan degree of error. Nature of the beast.)

 

Agree.
But this is as accurate as I could set it up.
I used revolutions per mile, and tire circumference to calculate speed signal to set the speedo up and then verified it by GPS, seem to work flawlessly. I personally believe it is 100% spot on, but even if it’s off by a mile or two, I’ll be ok with it. Have yet to have any vehicle besides XJ that had 99%-100% accurate speedo.

 

Engine is out of the frame. Found out this morning why my oil level warning light and neutral switch were not working. The wire on the former was shorting to the frame and the pin on the latter was seized and worn down. I assume the pin is made of softer metal than the selector drum so it won't be damaged.

 

DOT allows 4% error on brand new speedometers, so no more excuses for speeding

 

Aaaaand another---3rd Place today.... 1st went to a '69 Norton, 2nd went to a '69 BSA.

 

Congrats!
In what category?