What did you do to your Yamaha today?

You're not alone, make sure you don't skip the last sentence.......


SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES:

04/08/2024 SPECIAL NOTE FOR ALL CUSTOMERS: as of today, and until further notice, due to problems with the postal service, we are only offering shipping services via the private carrier UPS. We will begin offering shipping via USPS as soon as they can get their act together…….and prove it, not just offering weak, lame, avoiding-the-issue “assurances”!



03/21/2024 UPDATE: just today it was announced that an Official US Congressional Investigation is being opened into this matter........so, expect nothing to improve until the proper palms are greased and the various pay-offs made.......

https://www.gpb.org/news/2024/03/21...emand-answers-us-postal-service-delays-across



02/29/2024 LATEST UPDATE FOR ALL CUSTOMERS:

Beginning a few months ago, performance through the Postal Service (USPS) in the Southeast USA (and, anecdotally, other areas within the USA) have deteriorated significantly. In the Atlanta area, a new main routing hub was opened late in 2023 which consolidated some of the smaller, older hubs:

https://www.costar.com/article/2030...opens-new-breed-of-mail-processing-facilities

…..and the transition has NOT gone smoothly. Both packages and letter mail have seen significant delays on occasion, and it’s hard to predict which shipments are going to be affected. Many packages sail thru “just fine” while others can linger, and linger, and linger on and on.

Eventually, all packages seem to find their way out of this new hub (state-of-the-art, highly automated) and onto their destinations, but some will appear to get “stuck” there for extended periods of time (1-3 weeks or even much longer….).

Letter mail is a whole different situation....things go in and may never come out. So just be aware (or beware.....).

Since Atlanta is a major hub for postal shipments, the problems here can “fan out” across the country into seemingly un-involved areas. For instance, a shipment from Texas to New York may be routed thru Atlanta by the Post Office for efficiency reasons. It’s the whole “hub-and-spoke” system of distribution that many industries (trucking, airlines, and other private carriers) use for routing (even the entire internet works on this principle, although it tends to have ways to quickly by-pass any “electronic hubs” that are having difficulties…….with physical items, this isn’t so easy, as doing so will quickly just overload other hubs).

We hope this situation will resolve quickly, but……we’ve been hoping that for almost 4 months now, and it’s been getting worse rather than better. So…..just be aware of this situation and take it into account when selecting your carrier option.

And if you live in some of the other areas that will have a similar type of “consolidation” occurring later this year and into 2025…… see the list at the bottom of the above article …..then we suggest you prepare yourself for what could be a very disruptive experience.

 

Regarding USPS shipments, I've noticed more frequently over the past few years that the tracking updates will just stop at some point and it says "Moving through network". Which I guess is a catch all phrase for "Hey...quit asking! We got your package somewhere...maybe!". The expected delivery date doesn't change, but once that date is a week in the past it becomes less believable.

 

What have I done to my 1980 XJ650 Maxim lately? Just finished what I suspect is (at 8300 miles) its first valve adjustment. Had to buy five shims from Len; my only mistake was sending payment (a money order) via US postal service. A first-class letter will make it anywhere in the lower 48 in one to three days... except Atlanta, where it's more like one to three weeks; nineteen days in particular. Parts then got here in another two days, are now in the bike and all eight valves are spot-on.

While waiting for my payment to make it to Georgia, I did a bunch of other things. Let's start with the intentional misuse of Harley parts:



The obvious one is the sissy bar/luggage rack, brought over by a neighbor who said he found it in his garage; his wife bought it when she owned a (since sold) Sportster, did I want it? Sure, anything can be made to fit anything, right? And the Maxim is remarkably similar in a lot of measurements to a 1980 Sportster. A couple hours of quality time with the drill, tap, carbide wheel, file, hammer, vise, etc., and it bolted right on. I made one new threaded hole in that very stout grab rail, and re-used the frame hole (which also attaches the rear of the grab rail), and found a spacer of the correct length in my collection of odd hardware. In a short putt around the neighborhood, the wife pronounced the backrest "good." The sissy bar may or may not stay in the long term--at some point we may add a trunk, and most trunks have built-in backrests, so I might end up with just the rack, with a trunk on top.

The other misused Harley parts are the Progressive Suspension 412-series rear shocks, 13" items intended for a Harley Sportster. Same spring rate as Progressive's fitment chart shows for the Maxim, and a lot of people have used Harley take-offs on the XJs. They are returned items from the Amazon warehouse, clearly never installed or used as the hardware kit was still in its sealed plastic bag. The supplied bushings are the wrong size for a Maxim (1/2" vs. 14mm inside diameter), but my son-in-law has a drill press, so we drilled them out while I was visiting him to watch the eclipse last week.

On to electrical stuff... I installed a set of LED turn signals with white "halo" running lights on the front of the bike:



These were a bit of work. I wanted the white running lights that would go out when the yellow turn signals were blinking. These, too, are intentionally misused "Harley" parts, in that they are sold as being for Harley touring bikes with the 3-1/4" pancake-style turn signals. The Maxim's signals are about 3-1/8" in diameter and not as deep as the Harley units, but after a little quality time with the Harbour Freight Imitation Dremel Tool, the LED units dropped right in:


Notice the notches around the edges; I could have ground off the little prongs in the signal housing, but those hold the gasket in place.

Of course, these LED units wouldn't work with the stock yellow lenses, but I found a set of smoked/clear lenses on Amazon (with very slow and erratic delivery). They are for an XS and are a tiny bit smaller than the XJ lenses, but with a little more HFIDT time they can be to look like they were intended for the XJ:



Finished product:



Connection was an adventure. The obvious thing would be to replace the stock single-filament (1156) sockets with dual-filament (1157) items, but that would be too easy... I initially assumed the circuitry was all in the LED "pancake" and so just cut off the simulated bulb-base and spliced the wires to the Maxim's pigtails. Bad idea, as it turns out the "switchback" circuitry (which causes the white halo to turn off while the yellow turn signal is blinking) is inside the bulb base. So, after laboriously re-connecting the wires to the bases, I then soldered the bike's wires to the contacts on the bulb base (fun fact: did you know the little raised contacts on the base of a signal bulb are in fact just blobs of solder?) and ran the wires back to the headlight shell. I grabbed power for the "halo" running lights from the instrument-light wires, because these were easy to reach.

Of course the LEDs don't offer enough load to make the flasher flash, but the assemblies came with a pair of load resistors. Since the Yamaha is not a CAN'tbus vehicle, I only needed one, spliced into the wire running from the flasher to the handlebar switch and grounded to the horn bracket:



I did not go with LEDs in the rear, as my main purpose in this project was to gain additional forward visibility from the "halo" running lights, but for consistency I did install a set of the smoked XS lenses and yellow bulbs in the back. By keeping the incandescent bulbs in the back, I also avoided the problem that people have encountered when installing LEDs both front and rear; namely, the single "turn signal" indicator on the dash turning blinkers into four-way flashers.

That left one more electrical project. All my bikes have voltmeters, because (a) I don't trust motorcycle charging systems, and (b) a failed regulator or alternator is one of the problems you can deal with gracefully if you are aware you have a problem (vs. finding out you've blown a regulator only when the battery goes dead and strands you by the side of the road). I had a nice little LED meter, and a spare set of gauges, so on a rainy morning I set to work. Figured that since I have a trip meter in the speedometer, it only made sense to install the LED voltmeter in the same place in the tach housing. Pretty easily done as the instrument cluster on this antique is actually designed to be taken apart and put back together. I started by taking the tach out, at which point I found I could easily pry out the plastic mask that frames the tach:



A few minutes with the imitation Dremel tool and a bit of JB Weld attached the voltmeter:



Then I put the whole thing back together...



+ and – leads to the voltmeter exit through the breather hole in the back of the tach housing...



The negative goes to the gauge illumination ground wire. Because I wanted the voltmeter to work even if the headlight wasn't on (Yamaha's clever Zener diode/relay setup that doesn't turn the headlight on until the motor's running), I ran the + wire down through the tubing and spliced it into the positive lead supplying the neutral and oil-level lights:



I figure this connection is inside the headlight shell and pretty well protected. Anyway, I used marine-grade shrink tubing, the stuff with a watertight sealant inside it.

BTW, remember I mentioned I got power for the "halo" running LEDs from the gauge lights? That's the two blue wires you see in this picture.

Here's the finished product:



The voltmeter is actually a lot easier to read than it appears in this picture, which was shot in the garage with a phone camera that likes to emphasize reflections. I tried taking pictures outside in the sunshine (and with the motor running and the meter showing 14.4 volts), but it turns out the meter actually only lights one digit at a time, so if your not in a dim environment where the camera takes a long-ish exposure, you end up with a photo showing only one lit digit.

And that's what I've done to my Yamaha lately. Coming next: new front rotor, new right fork seal, and further ergonomic improvements, all to be done (I hope) in time for the Slimy Crud Run on May 5th.

 

That is what I call well done. Tasteful & functional but not overdone, definitely rocks in my world. I did a perimeter of warm white LEDs in my Atari cluster and replaced the signal lights with LEDs. It's bright but not annoyingly at night, I reworked the signal LEDs last night, used cheap chinesiums to start with and they lasted only a few weeks so this time it's CREE all the way.
The reason for the one digit at a time in your voltmeter is how the little microprocessor multiplexes the digits together to make it appear as a continuous display to the eye, the CCD in the camera time slices the exposure according to the average light so outside it is shorter and catches only one numeral. Cheaper processors strobe the digits while others hold them on steady which takes more power. You did a real nice job integrating the voltmeter.

The other thing I did was "comb" out and de-tangle all the wiring inside the headlight bucket. Everything now "flows" without getting bunched up. I'm a retired 2-way radio technician and my biggest pet peeve has always been balled up rats nests of wiring, I've been known to spend hours making art of a wiring harness. The diode pack got stuck to the top with double sided tape and now everything is modularized.

My K&L 15-6126 fork seals arrived today thanks to Tom our UPS driver, my caliper measures the correct 36x48x11 and I brought them and the wrong ones back to our local Yamaha dealer to show and they gave me my money back. Going to start this wrestling match tonight. According to USPS tracking the speedometer drive has arrived back at the mail sort center in St. Paul and is "in transit" to the Mora post office... we'll see.

I did read the XJ4Ever note regarding shipping, our St. Paul mail center is one in the postal congressional "investigation" but honestly I don't see anything positive coming out of this. One of my biggest customers was the USPS Postal Inspectors (mail cops) and I have spent countless hours inside St. Paul, Minneapolis (downtown) and the Air Mail facility at MSP airport. The one thing that stands out above all is the level of bureaucratic arrogance. I don't see how anything gets done around there outside of the machines, a govt job with low expectations and a guaranteed paycheck they have no incentive to do much of anything. Now that they're under investigation I can see a future of retaliation against the people for complaining about their lackluster performance, this gormless jackwagon of a postmaster general wants to whine about budgets then he can stop wasting the money and start streamlining... a word that has NEVER been used by a govt bureaucrat. If they want the money then they can earn it.

All of my eBay purchases come with a message to the seller: In light of the recent issues with USPS please ship via UPS, I will cover the cost differential if you include in the total amount due. If this is a problem please cancel the sale.

 

The specific "halo" lights were not my first choice. My Harley and my Himalayan are using a different, and I think better, set of LED lights:



Same "switchback" function, but the lit-up area is bigger in both running-light and turn-signal mode. And a sharp-eyed observer might notice I have put them into a spare set of Maxim housings. They do fit... kinda. But the electronics package is thicker and the integrated lenses are just a tiny bit bigger than the housings, so they stick out just a bit:



On the "WTF?" styled Himalayan, this is not an issue, but on the somewhat more stylish Maxim I thought I'd go with something a bit nicer. Time will tell if I stick with it or ultimately go with function over style...

BTW, getting those smoked lenses was... interesting. The first set I ordered (for the front) came in about two weeks, only a day or two later than promised by Amazon. The second set took only four or five days, a week less than the estimate. The third set I ordered (for a different project) has been missing in action for almost three weeks now, and Amazon says they have no idea when it will be delivered. Yes, if I recall correctly the first two sets did arrive in a USPS box...

 

Yep.

Yep.

Oh contraire, Pierre. What I'm talking about is LIGHT-YEARS away from mere everyday, garden-variety, run-of-the-mill lackluster performance.....this has been building up for 2-3 months into basically a TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF MAIL SERVICE in or out of that facility, which services not just Atlanta but most of Georgia and other portions of the southeastern USA. Nothing (well maybe a trickle, let's say 2-3% of normal mail.) And note: if you google this subject, let's say you use the phrase "Atlanta post office delays" or "Atlanta mail delay", you'll come up with a lot of local new stories about this issue stretching back to late Feb / early March, and ALL of them are a whitewash ("some residents are reporting delays" and "postal officials assure Channel 5 that swift actions are being taken" and all sorts of other BS).

So the media.....powerful institution that they are.......are following the first rule of "Fight Club" (the first rule is: you don't talk about fight club): you don't talk about the failings of other powerful institutions, lest they might retaliate against you someday----let's just all get along and ride our respective gravy trains in silence and harmony.

And the funny thing is......these new centers are --- if/when they get fully operational ---- ARE very automated and streamlined (akin to what UPS and Fed-Ex does in their distro hubs). But there are "plans" and then there is reality, and this time they certainly were "ships passing in the night'......"

So when I recommend that people who are served by these other soon-to-be-implemented hubs:

Houston, TX
Portland, OR
Sandston, VA
Santa Clarita, CA
Sacramento, CA
West Columbia, SC
Jersey City, NJ
Memphis, TN
Miami, FL
Boston, MA
Pittsburgh, PA
Cleveland, OH
Detroit, MI
Louisville, KY
Billings, MT
Boise, ID

to be prepared, because non-stop pain-in-your-assness might be coming soon to a town near you.........

 

I have respect for the hogs and have the same attitude; it's my bike and I'm going to make it the way I like it. Personally I'm more for the amber lenses giving the front some detail and distinction, I looked into some aftermarket signals but they didn't really keep with the bikes' 80's square theme so I ditched them, cracked open another 'Dew and made the factory pieces work again but pulled them in slightly only because the plastic retainers were cracked.

Tonight it's all about the forkin' around... you should have seen the mess I found in the tubes around the anti-dive assy. Yeah tasty. Will post some pix when I get a moment.

 

First time using a Metzler, since that's what I took off. The old ME88 was dry and crusty. Had to Sawzall the bead to remove it. The current ME888 is an impressively beefy tire, heavier than most I've installed, and a bit more difficult to mount.

 

Spent the evening wiring the bike up with a camera & mic to do a realtime capture of the carburetor slides on the road. First attempt was with a GoPro but that turned out to be a NoGo, the problem with these is the rolling shutter and how they attempt to sync themselves to what they see and in this case the local vibrations. The other issue was with the raw size so I ditched the GoPro and went old-school. At one time in my life I was a video technician and technical director, ever wonder how they *used* to get those amazing shots from vehicles? I was one of those dweebs. (still am)
First order of business was lighting so I made a small LED headlight using what was supposed to be 3200K sources, not even close. A total of six on a chunk of perfboard secured with double sided tape. The camera itself is a cheap Ansice CMOS job from Amazon that was $15.00, I use those with my old-school security system in lieu of networked gizmos. They're far more stable and don't crash or hang-up the WiFi, they're also very sensitive and tolerant of most environments. With a tested resolution of 350 horizontal lines NTSC they're about as good as the old analog broadcast.
So the camera was secured to a neodymium magnet and from there an "L" bracket mounted inside the air filter and wired to the outside world. The lighting and position gives a good view of the #3 carburetor slide. After this I attached a shure stereo microphone just above the cam cover for live sound, the original intent was to run two recorders with two cameras doing an A/B roll with another camera on the tach & speedo but I have only one working BetacamSP deck at the moment and went DVCAM instead. We're all Yamaha owners and know the sound of our engines in relation to RPM's. Didn't think anyone wanted to hear me making motor sounds.
Don't know when I will hit the launchpad, issue right now is our uncooperative weather that is not exactly bike friendly. Rained monday night into wednesday morning and now it's just damn cold & windy. Once I get the capture I will post it on YouTube as a raw however they do their file format conversions.
I posted the images here as thumbnails for your entertainment.

 

Neat set-up. Hopefully you'll do this on the XJ750, we don't have any Hitachi vac piston-in-action videos yet!






Note that the carbs will likely be spitting fuel back at the camera due to all the turbulence.

 

Yes this is my XJ750 SECA that I'm going to do this video of with the stock HSC32 carbs running my filled & drilled 1.25mm jets, they can reversion spit all they want.
Going to do the captures of EZ street acceleration at first then full-out to 9500+ 2nd gear up to get the slides moving. After this it will be a highway run 5th gear at 70 mph with a 5/4/3 downshifts depending on traffic.
At some point in the near future a wideband O2 will get mounted to the collector, the header and muffler have a date with the sandblast cabinet and VHT satin black.

 

This entire experiment is awesome! I can picture somebody seeing you out on the road with all the gear bungeed to the bike and asking what you're doing, "Well, duh...I'm filming my carb slides!"

Looking forward to seeing the results!.

 

Most around here except the unexpected from me

 

Then we'll want the audio too.............!

 

Looks a whole lot better than my current "Flying Buttrest":



The original seat on my '80 Maxim is actually in remarkably good condition--only one small patch, made with some kind of "liquid vinyl repair" product. My problem is being six feet tall with a 34" inseam and a fake hip. With the low "cruiser" style seat, it's hard to pick my right foot off the ground and put it on the peg when I leave a stop. Hence the "booster seat," made from a foam duck blind cushion and several layers of closed-cell foam that used to be part of a "Type IV PFD" boat cushion. My goal is to produce a relatively flat seating surface at the height of the passenger seat. I have a vinyl cover and a couple more layers of rebonded foam (from a thoroughly silly "solo" seat that was in the box o' junk and spares that came with the bike), and hope to sew/glue this to the "booster" so people won't look at it and instantly assume I grew up in a trailer park (actually, I did grow up in a trailer park, but that's another story). I wish I could do an upholstery job half as nifty as the one you did!

 

Well to be clear, I didn't sew this thing up. It's just a pre made cover, although I'd like to attempt making one from scratch someday. I've been wanting to try using one of the gel pads, but under the upholstery, and that would require a custom fit sort of like your PFD.

I can empathize with your hip struggles. Do you normally stop with both feet down? Or do you shift to first after stopping, so left foot is up and right is down?

 

Ah. On my Himalayan I have a Seat Concepts "tall" kit, with foam that's firmer, flatter and about 1.5" thicker than the stock item and a new, pre-sewn vinyl cover. Very nice. I wish they made something like that for the Maxim, but I guess there's not much of a market for tall-seat kits for a 40-year-old Japanese cruiser...

I normally put my left foot down first when I stop, so I can keep my foot on the brake pedal if needed. Then, if I'm going to be there a while, I put my right foot down and shift into neutral. Then I shift into first to take off.

Couple years ago I took a Zero electric bike for a demo ride. One of the nice things about the electric was that I never had to take my right foot off the peg, which was nice because it was pretty tight and lifting my foot onto the peg was pretty uncomfortable. Back in January, I was on vacation in Puerto Rico and rented a scooter with a CVT (and, of all things, the rear brake on the left handlebar, where a normal bike would have a clutch lever). It was kinda nice to just leave my foot up on the floorboard all the time. Makes me wonder if there's an electric or maybe one of those DCT Hondas in my future...

In the meantime, in addition to the booster seat lifting me up an inch or two, I've figured out how to fabricate a ~1.5" lower footpeg mount from the spare rider and passenger peg bracketry that was also in the big box o' stuff. Pictures to follow once my friend who does welding gets back from vacation.

 

Soo... someone wanted sound with their video? Yeah we got that. Did a short take this afternoon and loaded it up on YouTube

Had to give up early because it was so damn cold. Take a look at it and tell me what you think despite the clutch slipping out, the bike really wanted to pull hard and I max'd out at 93 MPH on the headwind.

If time allows I will do another longer capture tomorrow provided nobody makes plans for my sunday afternoon. Everything was captured in analog BetacamSP... the sound is incredible on good speakers. If I get ambitious I may do a 4-channel sound as I do have this capability, SECA in surround?

 

Very nice, great sound........how did you eliminate all the wind noise? Maybe on the next run you can illuminate the carb a bit better, it's a little dark.....or, it just struck me, are you filming this thru the airbox and the airbox boots? I think you are.....wow!

By the way, for those that are new to the subject-----understanding what is going on here (and why) is the key to understanding CV carbs.