Street tracker progress

For about three years now (I work slow!) I have been working on a 'street tracker' project. It started life as a 1980 Yamaha XS650 'Special', one of those faux cruiser bikes with a short fat rear tire, king n' queen seat, pullback bars and gobs of chrome. They were meant for stylin' and profilin', not performance. Stock bike:

Under all the flashy shiny junk is the original 650 Yamaha which dominated flattrack and TT racing in the '70's and '80's, ridden by such greats as Kenny Roberts.

You just have to dig to find it. The bike is getting ready for paint; the 'de bracketing' of the frame is nearly complete. The paint will be white with a red stripe, to match the Jensenator. The frame will be a 'warm' silver, the engine side cases and fork legs will be gunmetal gray. The battery and electrics will be covered by aluminum number plates.

The stock rear rim was a 16" drum brake piece, this one is an 18" from an SR500. I had to add the brackets on the frame and swingarm for the disc brake stuff. The hardest part was making the spacers to center the wheel in the frame, it had to go .400 to the left.

The stock shocks will be tossed for a set of 13.5" eye to eyes, that will raise the rear of the bike and level it out. I have a headlight but I'm not real enthusuastic about it, it's sort of a 'chopper' piece. I'm still looking for a 1970's DT1 or similar headlight, I can put a 5 3/4" H4 unit in that housing. I will need to run at least a speedometer; I'm undecided about a tach. There are 1.9" and 2.5" speedos and tachs available very reasonably.

I love the Jemco upswept pipes but man are they expensive.

I have the Mike's XS 2 into 1 system on mine, online reviews have all kinds of good things to say about it. BTW, this is the pic that convinced me to paint the cases gunmetal gray.

Looks like you've got the rear frame rails, so you'd probably have lots of room to put the electrics and the battery under the tail. That'll give the area behind the filters a little bit more space and openness (ie looks lighter).

Nice work! Me, I'd paint the springs/shocks and drop the front a tiny bit. The cases will look awesome.

I'd ride that in the shape it's in! Great job! I love those old XS motors. They have a cult following that's only going to grow with time. A worthy project.

Damn, that thing has come a long way since the last time I saw it. You got skills dude. Want to go through a K1000 when you're done with that? Or is it A-Mod time?

Thanks! A lot of work has gone into this. BTW, the bars are the stock ones from my WR400. I have been looking at different bends online for the last few weeks, saw those lying on a shelf and said 'why not try them?'. They are perfect.

On the side plates, I'm going more for this look: It looks more like a race bike of the era that way. I think brushed aluminum would look great. The 'strobe stripes', while cool, have been done to death.

I'm still sniffing around for another motor. The original design is a 360 degree twin, the pistons rise and fall together. There's a 277 degree rephase crank, cams and ignition available which, when combined with the 750 big bore kit not only lowers vibration and makes big HP but it sounds like a Ducati at idle.

Stock engine:

Rephased engine:

With another motor, I can ride the bike while I'm building a killer motor. I plan to go all out: 277 rephase, cams, flat slide Mikunis, big bore kit, big fin cylinder, the list goes on. I am also considering adding a set of upside down forks from a newer bike, but that's a ways in the future. Another mod I'd like to do is to find a YZ tank from the late '70's/early '80s and modify it to fit. But again that's a ways down the road.

minimac wrote: Nice work! Me, I'd paint the springs/shocks and drop the front a tiny bit. The cases will look awesome.

Since I posted this, I experimented with dropping the forks 3/4" in the clamps; perfect. I'll grab another set of 12.5" eye to eye shocks and thus keep the bike low.

I love the bike, but if it were mine I'd dump the mags and go with wire spokes.

I like it, but I am confused by the fuel filler neck on the tank.

Rusnak_322 wrote: I like it, but I am confused by the fuel filler neck on the tank.

So, I'm not the only one...

Grtechguy wrote:

Rusnak_322 wrote: I like it, but I am confused by the fuel filler neck on the tank.

So, I'm not the only one...

Nope that make 3 of us at least..

Curmudgeon wrote: I'm still sniffing around for another motor. The original design is a 360 degree twin, the pistons rise and fall together. There's a 277 degree rephase crank, cams and ignition available which, when combined with the 750 big bore kit not only lowers vibration and makes big HP but it sounds like a Ducati at idle. Stock engine: Rephased engine: With another motor, I can ride the bike while I'm building a killer motor. I plan to go all out: 277 rephase, cams, flat slide Mikunis, big bore kit, big fin cylinder, the list goes on. I am also considering adding a set of upside down forks from a newer bike, but that's a ways in the future. Another mod I'd like to do is to find a YZ tank from the late '70's/early '80s and modify it to fit. But again that's a ways down the road.

When I used to play with bikes, some of the folks used to feel that "big bang" twins (where the pistons cycle together as if it were a single cylinder) had the best power delivery, so it's interesting to consider vibration and acoustic qualities in crank design.

Nice animations, by the way!

Guy's used to rephase Yannke 500 twins alot both up at once or 180 out. Yankees were just two OSSA 250's side by side. Easy to change.

+1 on spoked wheels, and I would either lose the front fender, or go with something smaller and higher mounted.

Man, I've been thinking about picking up an XS to futz with. This isn't helping. I'm really the digging the tall/skinny look with the bars and the pipe tucked in nice and tight.

Spokes could be cool, but I kinda like the mags as something different. Any plans to change the wheel color?

Where's the bodywork from? Any troubles with fitment?

One of these days I'm gonna get that GT750 in the garage and build an "homage" to King Kenny's TZ...

Fuel fill neck: that's a piece of radiator hose I shoved in there to keep from getting primer inside the tank. I might just leave it there. Tom, I stole (hotlinked) the animations. I ain't that smart.

I thought about going with spoke wheels because I too like the look but I wanted disc brakes on both ends and rear wire spoke wheels with discs, while available, are hard to find. They are generally rusty as well. The alloys allow use of tubeless tires too. I'm going to leave the alloys black and silver. BTW I think the rims on the yellow bike are Akronts, those were the shizznit in King Kenny's day.

I think they look better without a front fender too, but I've ridden without a front fender and it ain't no fun. There is an amazing amount of stuff it keeps from smacking the rider in the face.

The front fender, rear fender and seat came from Hotwing Glass. The tank is a stock Yamaha piece. On tanks, there are several companies making cool looking fiberglass tanks but they all share one problem: alcohol fuel attacks them like crazy. I'm glad that at least the carbs have brass floats and stainless needles.

This is the style of tank I want. The fuel cap moved around over the years but the tank shape didn't change.

Yeah, I had a YZ 80 as a kid with the NIKE check, later a 500 2 stroke, let that one go, much to my chagrin.

I might have one of those tanks. It is yours if you want it.

Sweet! I'll be happy to pay shipping. You have PM.

There is a difference in tanks. MX and YZ tanks look almost the same...YZ tanks are skinnier on the outside and most important skinner in the frame tunnel.

Also the silver tank pictured above i believe has two bolts to hold the tank on. the 74 and up used round (double stuff OREO's) rubber biscuits up front and single bolt in the back. It's been awhile since i looked at an XS so i don't recall how that stock unit mounted.

Gopher Glass and other sell nice tanks and Kits etc. but yes the fuel is hard on them but lining them with the Casswell or aircraft spruce goo's works well and most steel or Alum tanks will need the same goo due to age anyway.

44

Mine has the two rubber donuts at the front and a single bolt at the rear. I'll need to POR the tank no matter what. As far as I can tell, POR tank sealer is the only one that no one has had alcohol issues with. I didn't think that stuff would stick to fiberglass.

Both the Caswell and aircraft spruce are not effected by alky. Spruces stuff is great but not cheap.. Get a bunch of tanks to do and share the cost.

Trick to getting anything to stick to glass is two fold. warm the tank use a good solvent them boiling water flush repeat twice. The mold release waxes are a bitch to remove.

In reply to 44Dwarf:

So you would recommend the Caswell or Aircraft spurce stuff over the POR for a stock tank? I am trying to figure out what to do with my CT3 tank.

YES.