Contrary to the title, the story actually starts a few days before the old girl made her trip to the local DMV to get her official inspection. For a start let's bask in a bit of the awesome looks.
Now if looking awesome would have been part of the registration process, yup the old girl would have totally nailed it. Unfortunately good looks don't quite do, for a start, within 5km of doing testrides the old girl would ruin a tail-light bulb. And not just ruin it, obliterate is probably more to the point.
... and another. Turns out, if you install the holder the right way round, the bulb doesn't touch the lens.
That's a nice tach - what's wrong with it today? Oh the two screws came loose? Yeah, just take the glass off. Easy fix.
Yeah, nah. (Bought another tach, fitted it, job's a good 'un.)
Then the sidecar seat was definitely missing a decent locking mechanism. I wanted it beefy and rust free. Over-engineered? Would be rude not to.
Another thing I discovered, as I had several rotors and stators, is that not all work equally well with each other. Resulting in a top-speed of about 80-85kph and REALLY difficult starting.
See how the big coil is in a different position? And so is the triggering nose on the outside of the rotor. (Take this as a sort of public service announcement that at one day might come in handy...)
Then asked the ever so helpful Günther (you know, who you are), whether I could borrow his trailer, loaded the old girl up and got all the paperwork in order, which was pleasantly unexciting, if I am honest. (Aside from having to get up at 5AM as I had to drive quite a bit to pick up the bike and trailer then get back to the DMV and then drop of the bike and return the trailer...)
Got this really expensive little book to go with the bike...
... and then registered the old girl.
First shakedown run went as good (or bad) as one would expect, made it all the way from the workshop back to Linz to pick up some bolts and longer rivets for the tarp and made it back with no real drama.
Also swapped the rear brake adjuster for something that can be used without tools.
Now I have to express my hearfelt sympathy for all sorts of noise regulations out there. Really, some stuff is just obnoxiously loud. But the old girl with my homegrown was now 10db (or about 3 times as quiet as the paperwork allowed), yet the header pipe was bluing faster than I could spell the word blue. Or in other words, a more free-flowing solution had to be found.
Take a big M14 washer and put it in the lathe...
... some 1.75" tubing and a bit of TIG-magic...
... and another washer with what looks a lot like a nipple. So exhaust gasses have to go round a corner once. Result a bit louder, but still under the registered limit due to a really old testing method at only half of the max. RPM, which in other words is just slightly faster idle on the old girl.
At the same time, the header pipe lost its support, to make installation a bit easier.
With the exhaust side sorted, it was time to tackle the inlet and I started (for now) by removing the airbox-snorkel.
As the rear brake lever hit the exhaust pipe, I gave that a bit of a tweak and guess what, when you can press that lever all the way, that drum brake is more than just "quite alright".
Now if you happen to buy Konis... make sure you buy them from a reputable source. My only saving grace was that I had bought the exactly same type before and as such I still had a spare.
Oh and a bit of eye-candy - replace the manky old breather port bolt with a nice, shiny M5x12 stainles allen head.
Time to use the old girl "in anger" for the first time and about 90km in a go. Final score:
Speedo cable came loose multiple times.
Lower front engine mounting bolts (M8x20) - both gone.
Taillight bulb - death by good vibrations.
Long bottom engine mounting bolt - almost on the way out.
Two new bolts, all locknuts replaced with new ones and a fistful of torque sorted things right out. Just the taillight... well that LED-bulb will have some wires soldered onto it directly, because the contacts are just rubbish.
First oil-change revealed no nasties.
Two new bolts.
Angled greasy nipple on the pivot, so I can get to it with the greasegun.
Verdict-time, how does it stack up against the brutish XS850? It's obviously quite the different animal. It's light, probably just a bit over 200kg all in all and ready to go, plenty of torque. I sprayed gravel into the workshop on the first few testrides and dug some nice 4" wide trenches in my granny's driveway no problem at all. Obviously it's a lot slower, which quite frankly sounds a lot worse on paper than it is in real life. With the triple going 100kph at all times was no problem, probably even going 110-120kph no big deal, with the small thumper, 80kph feels like hitting the sweet spot. And then there's fuel consumption, even though it has probably got almost the same frontal area, it's only a single and it sits at feel-well rpms most of the time, the first refill yielded an average fuel consumption of 5.66L/100km which is almost on par with a Solo SR500 or just a wee bit more thirsty than my XT600.
Coming up next: There's still the matter of the frame-reinforcement plate for the headstock, I think after some playing around with the jetting some holes in the airbox-lid might be beneficial and probably a 15T instead of the current 16T sprocket may work wonders for top-speed. Also the new tach seems to have an issue, as it doesn't read anything over 4000rpm.
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