Yet another Bobber Project: 82 Xj650

I bought this bike in peices off a roomate of mine for $50 dollars. It had $130 dollars worth of misc engine parts and stuff in a bag that I dont think he knew he had but oh well. This is what I started with.





I got the motor all put back together, which with the haynes book turned out to be alot easier then I thought it would.



This is how the bike currently sits. Youll have to excuse the bad angle of the picture, Im working in my basement and I also have my Dirtbike (1991 Yamaha RT180) down there for some work also.





The tank needs some more sanding so that I can paint it. Ill be going with a semi-gloss black most likely. I like flat black but alot of people do it so Im gonna see how the semi turns out.

For bars Im trying to order these: (87-0513)



Parts that are on the way:
Pod Filters
Tach cable

Parts I need:
Rear swing arm (mine is rusting pretty bad where the axle goes through it, so if anyone has a spare let me know.)
Axle spacer that goes in between right side fork and wheel
Rubber boots that attach carbs to the motor

 

nice!, you should polish that engine up and since its all apart, make it likenew, unless you just want a cheap bobber that you can beat the snot out of

 

Yea Im not real worried about the looks persay, I want to bike as a whole to look a certain way, but as far as "pretty" this wont be that kind of bike.

 

bobs arent supposed to be pretty!lol

nice start keep the pics coming

 

My pod filters came in today. I also pulled the harness off the bike. Im just waiting on my haynes manual so I can start sorting through the harness. Anyone know exactly the bare minimum I need for this bike to run? Im looking to simplify it as much as possible. I bought the fuse kit from chacal because the owner before me has some ghetto rigged fuse setup.

 

see you made it to the forum, there is a guy on here that can make you custom bare minimun harnesses. and i think there are some threads on cutom wiring just search a bit.

should be a fun project mine is so far just needs to get warm out again so i can get it started

 

I dragged my bike into the basement so I could work on it. We actually just brought down my buddies 72 XS650 bobber project to join my bike.

Another small update. I scored a free New rear tire today. A guy from another site changed wheels and had a new tire on the stock rear wheel that he is giving me. This week Im hoping to get through the wiring harness and I hope my fuse box from chacal comes so I can get that put back in.

 

hey, how did you cut your rear fender mount off, from what i can see it looks realyl clean, can you also take a close up of it?, i want to do the EXACT same thing to mine, thanks, Lance

 

Well there is a pile of wires that is starting to build up as I thin out the harness.


Ill grab a photo of the cuts I did tomorrow. I used a regular old hacksaw when I did them because I was at my apartment and I didnt have any of my regular tools that I have here at home.

 

mine are chopped about the same way. i wasnt ready to go hardtail yet so i left the springs

 

Heres those pictures.





My growing pile of wires, the harness is getting close to done. Im still waiting on my fuse box from Chacal.

 

doesnt it feel good getting rid of those extra wires? For a real clean look, check into getting rid of the bulky speedo/tach cluster. A bicycle speedo is legal, and there are some good, small digital tach/speedo for about 80 bucks. Good luck.

 

Im going even simpler, no tach, no speedo.

 

That's what I'm talking about!!!

 

I started cleaning up the frame, removing all the stuff I don't need. The relay mounts are all gone. The side panel mounts are gone along with the reflector mounts on the head tube.

Since Im only using the headlight dimmer and start switches, I removed the guts of the other stuff, and Im going to fill in and smooth the controls.

 

sweet, should be nice and clean when done. My next project bike will be a bare bones i think.

 

Well the frame is all painted, Im just waiting for it to dry. Ill grab some pictures tomorrow as it looks alot better with new paint. My fuse box came today, but I forgot to pick up connectors for it when I went to the hardware store today so Ill have to go back tomorrow and grab some. I should be able to get the harness done either tomorrow or the next day. Then I can start reassembling the bike.

 

A couple updated pictures nothing huge.

Found some old Dirtbike bars laying around that will be similar to the bars that will be going on the bike so I threw them on just to get rid of the stock ugly ones. I will also be cutting the coils on the rear shocks about an inch which is said to give about 2" of drop in the back.

 

did you sand and prime the fram, or just throw some paint on?

 

I cut off all the mounts I didnt need, then flapped disked them smooth. Then I used a scotch pad to "clean" the frame. It roughed up the surface a little to make the paint stick better. Then I painted using a rust inhibitor gloss black.