First bike. First build. Yamaha XS750

I guess I should start with some basic background information before I go anywhere with this post. I am a 19 year old college student. I go to college far from home so working on this during the school years is impossible. Also, I am on a tight budget, and thus I'm not sure how quickly this build will go due to that aspect. I have never touched a motorcycle before this, so I am new to all of this. My dad isn't into bikes at all or anything, so he won't be much help. I have zero friends who own bikes either; so it's basically all up to me using the internet and my service manual for figuring everything.
I bought this bike during my time home for Thanksgiving break. Assuming I uploaded a photo properly, you should be able to see the condition in which I bought the bike in. To put it bluntly, the bike is in rough shape. It didn't come with the carbs, gas tank, headlight, seat, key, and many other parts, the wire harness is burnt, all the parts on the handlebars are complete garbage, the rear brake pedal is totally jammed, the mufflers are completely rusted through (can see easier from the bottom side), the tires are a joke, and pretty much every surface is covered in rust and/or a green substance which I can only assume is algae of some type. That being said, every bolt/nut/screw has been stubborn coming off. PB blaster has been my best friend with helping loosen those thankfully. Oh, the best part. The engine is seized, so I'm currently tearing down the entire bike for an engine build. I have never attempted one of any type, so that'll be new for me too. I'd say I'm mechanically minded, so this isn't an impossible task for me, but it will not be a breeze either. Because of all of the things wrong with this bike, I picked up this titled XS750 for $80.
I have no idea how long this will take or exactly how it will turn out when done, but I have some ideas in mind. Obviously since this is in the cafe racer section, that is the style I will be aiming for with this build. I have since purchased a gas tank and would like to incorporate the color scheme around that. (I like the patina on it and would like to just throw a clear coat over it.) Since that is the gray and red tank, I would like to paint the bike black, gray, and possibly some red. Only time will tell if that is the reality of this build.
I think I have rambled on enough here, so I'll wrap up my into. I work on this probably 5ish days a week currently, so there's a decent amount of stuff being done right now. Sometimes it's just me struggling against stuck parts, so nothing noticeable will be done. When stuff is noticeably different, I'll try my best to post that. Taking pictures consistently so far is more annoying than I imagined, so I apologize if there's not enough photos. Oh, I'm sorry for the terrible lighting in many of them. I wasn't looking at them until after I was done at first, and some of them are rough. Also, does anyone know how you upload these without resizing them until they are crappy quality photos, or is that not a thing? (Also assuming I get the photo I resized to show up; because I read somewhere on here that you had to do that in order for them to upload. But nothing is showing up in my preview menu, so I'm not sure if that's normal or not.)

Oh. This the the 1977 2D model by the way.

I'm going to try to upload two photos here without resizing them to see if that's a thing. Here is my bike with nothing done to it yet besides the gas tank being placed on top to see how it looks.

I'm probably just talking to myself on here right now, but I'm new to this so don't hate! Everyone needs to start somewhere.
I guess I'll just post some pictures to show how bad the bike is to start off with.
Oh, I originally planned on waiting until summer to start anything, but by spring break, I had had enough and decided to start doing some work on it. It was still dark out when I was home, so I used a floodlight to help me see in the garage. It helped me see good in real life, yes; but it sucks for pictures. Lesson learned there.

After getting coming home, I worked on it some without pictures. Nothing too exciting happened. Here is a picture after I tried to clean the chrome on one of the forks. I also will show a picture of the second fork from a different angle after I scrubbed that for quite some time with aluminum foil and some coke. Sadly, that side didn't come out as nicely. I still haven't decided if I am going to keep the original front forks or not, but if I do, I think I might just get some fork gaiters to cover all of that up.

After a long struggle with the burnt wire harness, I finally got it all out yesterday without cutting too many wires in case I need to use it as a reference for when I make a new one. I definitely didn't take any photos of my process since I am not a fan of all that wiring. So here are just some of how it looks with all the wiring finally out of the way.
Oh, there has been a decent amount of things taken off by this point. Things such as the front brakes, front fender, and just more random things. I'm drawing a blank to what else. Basically I just have a pile of parts off the bike behind where I am working, and that keeps accumulating. I already quite a bit of shelving in my room to store a good majority of the parts after I leave at the end of summer. But for now, I'll leave them there. The ones that can be reused will need to be sanded and painted sometime, and I have no idea when that'll be, so they'll just stay there all summer. I'm rather random to how I am going about tearing down this bike, but it all makes sense to me. So just a little heads up.

Oh. I'm quite messy with my tools. I know where they are at all times, but they kinda are just spread all around the bike. If you don't see them in a picture, that is because I kicked them behind myself of something. I also use a skateboard so I can move important tools from one side of the bike to the other quickly by just sliding it forward and backwards. It looked weird, so I think I kept it out of all the pictures. But I think that that is actually a pretty smart thing to do when bouncing from one side to the other.
Today I worked on getting the exhaust off. The mufflers were rusted on, so pulling them off was impossible. So I decided to cut one off, and cut the metal that connected the two mufflers too. The annoying part is the mufflers just dropped crazy amounts of rust whenever I shifted the bike slightly. Thankfully, that is all done now. Looking back at it, I didn't need to do the first cut, but whatever, it's all done now.
Here is the underside of the one I cut off. A little bit rusty.
Next will be a picture of the opening from the first header. That is nice and dirty. But I guess I can expect nothing less from this bike.
A few minutes later I got the other muffler and two headers off. That side is just as dirty. Awesome. So I tried to wipe all that crap out from the three holes before I covered them up for now.

Oh. No idea why some of these photos are flipped sideways and others aren't. It's even annoying me, so sorry for that.

I don't own a yamaha xs triple myself, but I've always been a fan. You've got quite an ambitious project ahead of yourself, but it's definitely not impossible.

Pour some Auto Tranny Fluid down into the cylinders and let it sit for a few days. Don't be afraid to pour a lot intobit. That stuff is great for unseizing motors. Try to rotate the crank by hand afterwards. If that doesn't work, get that motor out the frame and crack that badboy open. See what can be salvaged and what's junk. If need be, you might have to buy another motor.

Don't worry about the wiring harness, you can always build another one. Since you're aiming for a cafe conversion, you have a perfect excuse to build a simplified harness.

If you haven't already, check out yamaha-triples.org, they have plenty of info that can help you along your journey. They have links to service manuals, if you don't have one already.

Cheers mate!

I wanted a good project, so I am not afraid of the work load ahead of myself.
We have two old Johnson boat motors at my home that have been seized and laying around since as long as I can remember. My dad was talking about pouring that stuff into the cylinders because he read online about it. I'm not certain if I want to do that for my bike, because I wanted a rebuild on the engine anyways. It has 11,906 miles on it. I know that isn't a ton, but if that is anything like the rest of the bike, it will need some work done on it.
I am already a member at that website, and I do already own a service manual. But thanks for all the advice that you have given!

I didn't get a lot of time to work on the bike today. But I did manage to finally get the brake pedal off which makes me happy. That thing has been stubbornly stuck on there and I have been working on it since Spring break. Basically I just used the teeth of a normal hammer and did a swinging and hooking action around the back side of the pedal near the center until it came off. Now I get the fun task of getting the rest of the brake system off. It is totally rusted on; it doesn't spin whatsoever. Even wailing on that with a rubber mallet or a normal hammer doesn't do anything. So I have no idea what else there is to do for now. I guess I will just work on other things and keep spraying that with PB Blaster and hitting it with the hammer each day and see if that somehow finally frees it up some.
Oh, Fullmetal suggested that I pour some Auto Tranny Fluid down the cylinders to see if that would free the engine. I didn't have any of that around the house. But I did have the PB Blaster, so I sprayed quite a lot of that down each of the cylinders. I will keep spraying some and trying to turn over the engine each night to see if that helps any.

Your forks are not usable. You'll need a new front end.

Pull the plugs, and pour some oil into the cylinders. Works wonders for freeing up seized engines.

J-Rod10, can I ask why you say that? It's not that I doubt you. I thought that that might have been the case, but was trying to convince myself otherwise for the time being. Is it due to the decently heavy pitting at the top of the forks?

I'll pull the spark plugs again and see if the oil has any better luck over the PB Blaster.

Thanks for the input!

You have pitting down the fork tubes.

The pitting on the tubes will either wreck your seals or leak really bad when the forks fully compress. Search craigslist or ebay or go for a modern front end swap if your budget allows. Like what was said earlier, very ambitious project, don't get discouraged!

I'm debating whether I should try to find a non titled bike on Craigslist and try to use many of the parts from that on my titled frame. I think that might be better from a financial standpoint if it were to get me many essential parts such as the new forks and whatnot.

Assuming you can't fabricate the majority of the stuff you need; You'll be better off, from a financial standpoint buying a bike that is running and riding in the $2K range that you can tinker with.

I may be a mere "kid" still, but that doesn't mean that I don't know my way around a shop. You name it, I probably know how to do it: welding, using an plasma cutter, a lathe, a milling machine, sandblasting, grinders, saws, all that good stuff. That being said, I do not have easy access to most of that anymore, which would be more of the limiting factor on that now. I think I'm going to try to purchase my own welder and sandblaster to use for this possibly when the need for those becomes greater.

I guess I wouldn't feel like I did anything if I already bought a complete bike and did nothing with it besides small tweaks that anyone could easily do. But I appreciate your insight once again!

Doubl3A said:

I'm debating whether I should try to find a non titled bike on Craigslist and try to use many of the parts from that on my titled frame. I think that might be better from a financial standpoint if it were to get me many essential parts such as the new forks and whatnot.

Click to expand...

Good thinking. Currently you have $80 in a titled frame. That's a pretty good deal.


You can't make everything you need to get the bike running - things like gaskets, seals, forks, shocks, tyres are all going to cost you money and you'll quickly rack up $1500 in parts before you know it.

I've bought running parts bikes for $100 non-titled before (speaking even of yamaha triples).....I'm actually looking at another one this week. if it has good forks on it maybe we can work something out.

beyond that, I would agree that your best option is to find a titled parts bike locally that has a good set of forks and a motor that kicks over. If you need to overbore your existing motor in the event you need to break into it.....you won't be able to find overbore pistons anymore unless you buy an aftermarket big bore kit which is immediately $700-800.

all that said, these are awesome bikes to ride. And scoring a 2D with that tank on there for $80 is a robbery of the previous owner no matter what. that tank would sell for double that on ebay.

There was a nice non-titled running one here back a couple months ago for $350. Wish that were still the case. Right now there isn't much within a 4 hour radius, so I guess I should just play the waiting game. I've looked decently often for a second xs750 when at school and there have been other good deals to be had around here, so I don't think all hope is lost. I will keep you in mind about those forks if no full bike ever pops up here though.

I realize now that the rebuild on an engine is going to cost more than it is worth to me right now, and that is why I think a second bike would totally be worth my money. I could then keep the engine from this bike as a backup to rebuild properly someday in the future when I have a steady, good-paying job.

The tank did not actually come with the bike. I bought that on ebay for a little under $100 I believe, so I don't think that that was too bad of a price to pay. It is a '78 tank, however. I also did purchase the carburetors from ebay. But those would kinda be pointless too if I bought a second bike which had its own set...