1975 XS 650 cafe

[montessa172]

XS 650 cafe - v2.0 less resto more cafe

Finished the 2 into 1 exhaust…it's tucked in about 2 inches closer to the frame while still giving me an inch off the wheel. Plus I have the saved weight factor, hopefully it won't affect the performance of the engine but I'll have to wait and see on that...

 

[montessa172]

Re: XS 650 cafe - v2.0 less resto more cafe

Spent this afternoon modifying a fork brace that I picked up at a swap meet a couple years ago, should get the job done I think, i just need some spacers (washers) between the cross piece and the fork lower..

And a pic of how it sits right now, tank mounts are complete and thats about all i've done. But i'm on holidays this week so great strides will be made!

 

[50gary]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **fork brace installed**

Keep up the good work, I think the two into one exhaust will help the 650.
Cheers, 50gary

 

[montessa172]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **fork brace installed**

I've been busy, I decided that rather than hiding all the electrical under the seat I would hang it out in the open, sort of. So the new very simple harness is done, dash is done, and i'm off to repaint the frame..

Stator, rectifier, regulator and ignition grounds

Dash panel, the only two switches on the bike.. the one on the right is main power - stator, ignition, positive feed etc and the one on the right is headlight, hi/low beam. I decided to run the tail light constant, if the ignition is on the light is on..

Regulator rectifier in their new homes

And battery box

And the battery box and reg/rec box with their lids on

I picked up both of the boxes at a local electronics supply shop, they're aluminum project boxes.. I'm not exactly sure what a project box is but they suit my purpose fine and one last picture of the throttle housing that I found digging through one of my random boxes of "things"..

So now i'm officially into the "i'm done fabricating and need to clean up the mess I just made" stage, so paint, polishing and making things pretty is coming up..

 

[Tim]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **lights - check**

You might consider drilling some ventilation holes in those electronic boxes - esp the regulator / rectifier, which produce a bit of heat. Running a horn anywhere?

 

[rrjlind]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **lights - check**

I picked up both of the boxes at a local electronics supply shop, they're aluminum project boxes..
So now i'm officially into the "i'm done fabricating and need to clean up the mess I just made" stage, so paint, polishing and making things pretty is coming up..

Great find! That could come in handy. And the 'pretty part' is pretty enjoyable too, tinkinering is fun solo, or with a buddy

 

[montessa172]

1975 XS 650 cafe - **lights - check**

I was thinking about holes for cooling for the regulator mostly, i'm still running the mechanical type, but the trade off is water / road dirt getting in, so I dunno what I'm going to do there... Wait for the spring and shoot the temp of the box and see if it stays in a reasonable range. And no horn, most of the times I've needed one it would have been to late to get the idiots attention, usually I can't find the button fast enough. I tend to rely on aggressive riding to get me from point a to b. If I'm in front then I can't get cut off. May not be the best practice but it has served me well thus far!

 

[montessa172]

1975 XS 650 cafe - **lights - check**

1/2 way to fixing my crap leaking base gasket, and it is possible to remove the top end without breaking the cam chain, I just wish you didn't have to pull the engine to do it

 

[montessa172]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **lights - check**

I got the engine all together and back in the frame, head was ported and polished while I had it apart, by ported and polished I mean that I cleaned up the casting slag and put it down before I did more harm! :

Also note the the picture above the kicker is bent, that is to make room for this

And upon my initial installation using the mount points that came with the plates I discovered that while sitting on the bike with my feet on the pegs I felt like a bear screwing a football so I redrilled the plates and moved the pegs forward 1.5 inches and down .5 inches which made necessary this...

I didn't really like the look of the threaded rod between the heim joints so cut and threaded some steel rod and drilled the center to give me a leverage point if the rod jams in the joint.. I don't know why it would but these things happen to me!

And to pay some tribute to the brat / bobber / crowd I'm rocking these grips for next summer..

And because I hate the way it did look, I did this to my front mount

Maintained the structure that it provided and eliminated the ugly cover(?) that was tacked on it..

 

[50gary]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **rearsets and other bits**

I'm happy to see someone else do something with the forward engine mount. It weighs 5/6# and is butt ugly. I made my own from scratch as well as the upper "head" mounts, There's so much dead weight on these old bikes it's not difficult to improve on them if you just take a good look.
Cheers, 50gary

 

[montessa172]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **rearsets and other bits**

50gary i'd be interested to see what you came up with for the uppermount... Grab a picture when you get a minute... What material did you use for your mounts? I'm would like to make an upper out of aluminum and see how it holds up... With steel on the front and both back mounts I think it would be allright.. I'm sure that they were over engineered when they were designed..

 

[montessa172]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **rearsets and other bits**

Six dollar shorty velocity stacks - how I did it on page 66 of $50 dollar mod thread..

Need to add an inside and outside screen / mesh and some filtering material, but that will be easy... Version 2 of these will be better again

 

[50gary]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **home made velocity stacks!!**

The OEM upper mount is as terrible as the forward mount. You can do better than the factory and save on high mounted weight. I made everything I added with 4130 chrome moly tubing .065" wall and chrome moly sheet .125" thick to make all brackets and such.
Cheers, 50gary

 

[montessa172]

1975 XS 650 cafe - **home made velocity stacks!!**

All right version two as I'm going to run it, one more to make tomorrow night....

I like it, better than the pods I would be running... Gotta sew up some elastic socks to slip over the ends to catch the dust when I'm going distance…

 

[montessa172]

Re: 1975 XS 650 cafe - **home made velocity stacks!!**

Started to get the back end of the bike together over the weekend, one of the things that I don't like about the 650 is the stock chain adjuster...

I much prefer something along the lines of this, as used on my Sherco... pardon the mess that its in

So this is what i've come up with... need to mount them on the opposite sides so that they are under the axle, but other than that i'm happy with the end product.. Note to self or anyone else, the axle plates on the stock swing arm appear to be made out of some sort of hybrid titanium - carbon - kryponite - hardened - dense - tap breaking - drill bit snapping - super steel like material. On the left side. Right side was no problems, left broke one bit and two taps... and i was being careful... oh well its done now...

And the bike as it sits right now...

 

[montessa172]

Re: 1975 XS 650B cafe


I suck at updating this

Exhaust mounted up

And how it sits now..

Still need to make new plates for the rearsets to drop them and move them back a bit, go through and tighten everthing, re torque the cylinder head, set up my plate and tail light, and probably 20 or 30 other things.. Spring is coming fast, need to get this thing of the stand soon so I can introduce myself to the neighbours properly...

 

[montessa172]

Finally a picture of my bike not on a stand! I've had it out for 4 runs so far and all appears to be well... Oil leaks have been 100% eliminated ;D.... But with every success I have ,there are set backs...

Pulled the plugs and they were off, one side rich, one side lean... So I decided to get a bunch of new ones and do some carb tuning... Apparently the plugs that I use are as rare as unicorn crap. NGK BP7ES, canadian tire...nope, NAPA nope, Part Source, nope.... So in my infinite wisdom I grab a pair of NGK BPR7ES. The R denotes resistor (resistance?) long story short the 4500 ohm resistance of the plug plus the 5000 ohm resistance of the cap fried my coil. So I now have an 80 dollar paper weight... there is no reason why it should have cooked it but it did... So anyways that was my second coil in a year, the first one was again my own stupidity.... Grabbed a spare coil and verified that my other ignition components are still good ( I have a pamco and its awesome ) and then seeing as i'm not going to fork over another 80 bucks right now I threw my points ignition back in...New contacts, condensors and coils that I removed and put away when I got the electronic ignition... 4 hours of doing things the hard way and I have a bike that starts first kick hot or cold every time... Still have a bunch more work to do but its all things that can be done as I ride it...

Haven't figured out why my regular plugs are absent from every inventory that I checked so i'm running champions equivalent now

and the rearset brackets in the picture above are new courtesy of Tim, thank you very much sir they are the bees knees..

 

[310weber]

That's a good looking bike. You actually passed me on Main St. in Hamilton yesterday (between Dundurn and Queen). I was holding up traffic trying to get a good look. I guessed you may be a DTT member so I looked you up on the member map. It's cool to see how you've transformed the bike a few times to dial it in. Keep the pics coming.

 

[montessa172]

An update for any that are interested, this little 650 continues to run well, ditched the flat slides that were on it and am running the stock CV's again. Ran it successfully to mid - ohio, 7 hours in the saddle, not something that I would do again on this bike but it got done... Picture is of my 650 and my dads 76 Bonneville, his Triumph is starting to take his version of a cafe style as well. I believe this picture was prior to a Sunday morning Campbellville breakfast run..

 

[montessa172]

I've been thinking lately ( dangerous I know ) I believe that I want to build and install a girder front end on this machine. I'm not so sure that I will want to ride it after I do this (if I do) but i want to build a girder and also make it undo-able so I 'm thinking something along the lines of these..