XJ650 Somerset Cafe Racer Project

Thanks for the advice bensalf, I am going for the agressive cafe stance for sure. I've played around with the height a bit and they are now even lower as the handlebar controls would fould the petrol tank near full lock. to have them at a decent enough angle to not be straight and fit my wrists I need them down a bit. My other option is to lower the front a couple of inches and pop them on above the top yolke, but if i do that then they will be at a similar height to the original bar clamps and i may aswell have got drag bars. Dilemmas. Its a work in progress so i will definately be adjusting the height further, the great thing about clip ons!

 

The Missus sent me a couple of pics of the bike in the car port at home. So below is the front with tidied up wires and slightly lower and more angled bars. You can see my stripped and accented Yamaha brake fluid reservoir also. The steel braided lines are in there. I may reroute the throttle cable as its a bit long poking out front there at the moment.

With all the slack in the loom, i've managed to chop out a kilo or two of redundant long bits of wire and pulled most of the connections back under the tank. Originally, these connections were made behind the headlight in the front fairing. I replaced many of the old ones with new multipins and they fit pretty nicely up under the main logitudinal chassis brace between the two coils.

The back shows my home made ribbed stitched seat, made from the old seat. its pretty tight in there now and sits down between the tank and the rear hump, unlike the chunky foam on the previous attempt. I hope my bum doesn't miss all that foam i've cut out too much.

 

Looks amazing!The brake reservoir looks good up there. Where did you get the brake lines again? Where they made for the bike or did you have to order from measurements?

 

Hi Rk,
The lines are hel steel braided with a clear PVC sheathing. They do other colours depending on what you colour scheme is. They do titanium ones if you want to splash the cash, they are twice the price.
The aussie site for them is here:
http://helperformance.com.au/catalogue/ ... e-systems/
I think the company is European and they have links to other countries on the site but that is the one I am automatically taken to due to my location.
The kit comes ready made for the XJ and can be found here:
http://helperformance.com.au/store/prod ... ts_id=4887
I think I paid 200 with delivery and a fuel petcock thrown in from an aussie motorfactor. This was the only stuff I managed to buy from home soil before searching abroad in Europe and the US.
My brakes feel great, much firmer than before. They were probably just dirty and so a flush out and rebuild of the calipers with the new Dot 3 in there and the fresh lines has really tightened them up. The pads were newish with lots of meat on them and I have the cross drilled discs in there now so should have the braking all sorted.

 

Ok,
So its been a while and I have been distracted from the project by other things but to bring it back up to date. Got the acewell hooked up and running, looks a bit like this.

Functionality has been great and its pretty cool seeing the digital RPM working in nice big numbers underneath the speed. The fuel guage is redundant for now. But i will look into getting a sender unit and hooking that up when the project is near its conclusion.

 

Next up was the seat and rear hump.

I think I covered the fibreglass job for the hump already. The seat was made from the original as i wanted to keep the hinge and locking function for the seat and helmet. As there is an empty space under the seat now then it acts as just a service panel to get to the battery and TCI as well as the regulator/rectifier.

Basically, it was a bit of a chop job. I lopped the back off, chopped the foam. Cut the vinyl into strips and inverted them to stich them back together on the missus's sewing machine. Its clearly home made and wouldn't win any shows. I intend to stitch a better border to it and re-staple it to the underside but generally I'm pretty pleased with it. The original faom pad was pretty chunky so i had to shave alot off to keep it within the lines of the seat hump.

 

And the finished product engaged on the bike. The ignition switch is next to the seat and helmet hook lock. Both still use the original key thankfully.

 

I mentioned the antigravity battery before. Its been great and is located with the original strap and hook up under the seat in a horizontal position. Due to ongoing ignition woes (More of that later), the final arrangement of the wires up there isn't sorted, so I don't have a pic yet. But here is the antigravity next to the original battery. It has a higher cold cranking rating than the original so whips the engine around nicely.

 

So,
With things back up and running and another TCI sent in from a breaker in the US, it was time to check the sync on the carbs (Bench synched during rebuild at the start when it was stripped down).
The synch up went well and it started so easily on the button, producing a fairly crisp throttle response. A surprising difference from the original TCI and 750 carbs the previous owner had on there where it barely ran at all. Almost time for a test ride.

 

The first couple of test rides around the block ended with me pushing it back to the shed. on one I blew a main fuse which was put in at below the rating, so put a 20A in there and went again. Ran out of fuel, but the pick up seemed OK. I decided it was time for a proper jaunt so went for the 2 bridges route about 1.5km away from the house and across a river on a dual carriageway. Disaster, started missing when i pulled out onto the carriageway then gave up completely when i was furthest from home. I pushed it back pretty ticked off.

This time it blew the 20A, so i replaced it.

Took the plugs out, turned it over, no spark. So went back to basics on the wiring. At this stage there is virtually nothing left of the original loom with the previous owner having removed the side stand, clutch and neutral relays from the ignition circuit. The diode block is gone as is the self cancelling indicator. The wiring setup I have used is absolute minimalist as used on this forum from other members.

After much fettling, and testing to the haynes manual, i now have a spark, just all the time. I have 3 spare TCIs now the one it was running on doesn't produce a spark either side and the one it originally came with only fires on 1 coil. The replacement ones i have fire on both coils ok but all of the time. They even fire when i turn the ignition key off so the bike won t run and backfires, top fires and sparks all the time.

Having other things in life to be getting on with I haven't had much time for it since. I had considered stripping it for parts and using them on my next project bike and selling the engine frame etc which all check out. Its probaly worth more money that way. But this would be the first vehicle ever that i haven't been able to fix. My last shot is to buy another loom and go back to basics. I'm sure that the diodes in the circuitry I have must be missing and causing a back emf when i turn the switch off.

All in all its been rather frustrating. I have a bike that i'm really pleased with sat there in the garage, but can't use it. Now that the rocket is gone, its my only bike. I bought a couple of buffing wheels and have polished the handlebar controls and engine casings to a mirror finish but thats been the only progress in the end of 2012. Hopefully 2013 will be more fruitful.

 

This the old beast as it lies now

 

Looks real NICE!!!

skillet
btw The Horse (mag) just had a write-up on those batteries...

 

For the no spark issue just check everything. I had a few of the old plug ends where the wires actually came out of the metal piece that inserted into the plugs but it looked fine from just a fast visual inspection. Also some of the wires may be corroded from the inside. If any of them are stiff to move, they need to be replaced.

A few questions of my own now. How accurate is your Acewell tach? Mine seems to me fairly accurate but I feel it could be better, I went with the wire wrapped around a plug wire method to get the signal and set the gauge at .5 revolutions per cycle. I had it on 1.0 and I think it was readying to high. What do you have yours set at?

I like the look of the white and red also, mie will be black and red with gold accents. Hopefully it stops raining and I can paint it this week.

-Chris

 

The problem now is too much spark.

Regarding the acewell, it worked as soon as i did the wrap, i went for about 20 wraps to get a good signal. Way more than the recommended 5. Had it reading pretty well with an idle of 850 to 900, it was pretty stable. Maybe mine was already in the 0.5 setting? I've been watching your build with interest. Keep up the good work.

 

like how thjis is going, keep it up!

 

HHHMMMM I've got 4 wraps on mine now... I guess I will try more!!!!!

And what do you mean to much spark? Sparking at the wrong time? I think our bikes are a wasted spark system so there will be an extra one, but if the timing of said sparks is off it will never work properly. Have you changed the timing at all, check the chains and tension.

 

Looks great! I think the 650 Seca is the best looking of the Seca line. I have one I've owned new since 82. Not sure if anyone else asked, but what did you do with the original headlight? I'd like to buy it as a replacement on mine.
Thanks.

I'll PM you too.

 

Apologies for the tardy response. I still have the original headlight if you want it. Its yours for free as a fellow forum member if you pay postage which may be a bit from WA to eastern US? do you want me to look into it?

 

I have other bits and bobs so will put a sales list together. A few project updates. It is now essentially finished and I have put about 100km on it bombing around town and visiting cafes. I have started a new project, which is also almost complete so will be selling the XJ shortly to start on the next one.
The electrical fault was a back emf related problem causing errors with the TCI, this was due to the removal of too many diodes from the circuit. It seems others have had succees with the removals of these diodes when wiring the simple circuit, but for some reason my bike was not able to run those circuits, it may be due to the wiring in of the acewell and ballasted LED indicators???
Anyway, sorted now.
An additional problem which i did not find and solve was that the carbs had their jets drilled out by a previous owner in the pilot circuit. So my 45s were actually considerably larger, this was effectively choking out the bike and coking up the plugs within a few miles, which compounded the weak spark issue. The bike runs great now we have the original jets back in there. Something to be aware of, without having a new standard jet to hold up to the light and compare it to, i would have never spotted the difference when rebuilding the carbs and checking the jets.
Finally, the bike needs a few finishing touches so i'm selling it on for the next owner to tinker with, things like polishing aluminium on rear hub, stitching seat, wheel tape both sides etc etc. I will carry on tinkering and finishing these small jobs until it sells.
I ended up taking forum advice and heightening the bars by lowering the forks through the triple tree then reattching the clip ons to the 2in of tube above. I have found this to be alot more comfortable but have lowered it a bit too much. There is a slight fouling issue if i hit a bump at speed with the front wheel cowl so i will either cut it back or heighten the tubes an inch or so.
Generally i am pretty chuffed with the outcome, i made a small aluminium box to go under the seat which now raises as a service panel to access the Li-ion battery and rectifier as well as the TCI. The wiring could no doubt be neatened but is well hidded under the tank and seat with the new fuse box. I even managed to get the old lock in there so 1 key operates the ignition barrel, chain lock, seat lock and helmet lock as it would have done on the original bike.
A few pics to follow.

 

In Le Garage before final tank and hump fitment