The longer you work on bikes and cars the more likely you are to develop some habits, one of mine is to always pull off the oilpan on bikes that have been parked up longer, because at the very least you end up cleaning out lots of old schmoo, which can't be too bad in its own right. Every now and then the very same procedure just proves itself though.
If you can remember every single bolt and where it goes... well, congratulations, I can't and these little pieces of card board really come in handy when literally every single bolt is a different length.
Oilpan off and just as I suspected: lots of schmoo and...
... more than just schmoo
Ally debris trapped inside the oilpump mesh. Nothing dramatic, but it shows (without opening the right side engine cover) that I have to plan for a primary chain swap in the not too distant future.
Half-cleaned oilfilter-housing
Spotless oilpan.
And the whole engine assembled again with Dirko-HT RTV as I seemingly only bought a top-end gasket kit and not a complete one! (It's fine if you use it sparingly.)
I guess you already get bored by this picture, but I promise: This is the last (planned) engine swap in a while on the XS!
My mate Gregory and me are actually getting a bit good at this and have perfected our technique: fifteen minutes for the engine in and out is probably even faster than what Yamaha expects their professionals to get it done in. In other news: three cans of brake cleaner were required to get the internals into their new found state of shinyness!
If you suffer from a bit of a deja vu, well you may have seen *just* that before. After some grinding of teeth and some mumbling and grumbling, because of the other f*cked 850 I finally decided to take the "other" XS Triple sidecar apart and nick its working 850 from it and install it in my sidecar and as a substitute install the old 750 in the other sidecar. At this point I do have to stop and thank my dad for spending his Sunday afternoon with me and swapping round engines. (It's much appreciated, really!)
The starting point, not too bad, if I may say so. (Front brakes have been bled once more as I had almost run out of brake-fluid last time and now it's all fresh and good to go!)
Airbox and carbs out, all the electrical connections disconnected.
Sidecar taken off
850 Engine out.
750 engine in. (There's about an hour between these two pictures, but not because it was such a tough job, but because this one doesn't have a centre stand and that new motorcycle lift wasn't exactly working satisfactory...)
Sidecar reattached.
So now I have a working 850 engine sitting in my workshop, waiting for its turn and this one is waiting for a 750 wiring loom transplant. Next job will be to take the sump of the 850 out of this one and clean it out, while it's still out of the frame and also install some new spark plugs and then if my plan works out, I can put it back in second half of the week (other tasks permitting).
The morning started rather decent with me and Mr. Meow picking up the slightly crusty 850 from storage...
(There's about 20km between those two pictures!)
Post lunch it was get-the-old-750-out o' clock
The 4 driveshaft-bolts have to be removed
Oilfilter-housing has to be removed as well
... and it comes out rather easily.
Glory/gory shot of the oil-cooler-sandwich-plate
And is in before you know it.
Exhaust installed again and everything's fine.
Everything? No. Unfortunately one of the pistons rusted to the cylinder bore and I am not entirely sure anymore whether it spun over when I bought it or not and this was because it was a bit damp when being stored... Which in turns means, next week, the other XS-Triple-Sidecar will donate its presumably flawless engine to this cause and the other XS-Triple-Sidecar will receive the 750 (which runs fine, but re-registering my 750 to an 850 after getting all the paperwork done is a nightmare, which means I have to get all the mods I want to have in the papers in one go or pay stupid amounts of extra money...)
Alright... quite a bit of work has gone into getting the other XS-triple fixed up and it shows:
Brakes are completely overhauled incl. all new stainless brake pistons, steel-braided brake hose and cleaned master cylinders.
This is officially "a lotta junk in my trunk"
Crusty...
And secondly a metric sh*t-ton of elbow grease (thanks dad) and paint. Lots of paint really.
Nevertheless the bike's almost ready for sale now. I have to install the headlight, clean up the wiring a little more and fit a sidecar-position-light.
A very wise man once said, you can fix everything up, if you only throw unlimited amounts of ressources at it. Luckily the other XS Triple Sidecar turned out to be a lot nicer than anticipated and in reality only needs very few technical fixes, but admittedly quite a bit of cosmetical work.
The list of absolutely necessary parts is pleasantly short:
new (stainless) brake pistons and seals
overhaul kits for both brake pumps
new ignition lock
new footpeg rubbers, because they disintegrated and "the man" would consider them a risk to injury in case of a crash (and it looks rubbish)
Not shown but also coming up:
new tyres (these are properly rotten and the sidewalls are cracked)
new battery
So it's probably going to be about a full day with (hopefully) some help from my dad and we can have a first test ride around his house!
In other news, earlier this week, I've visited my mate Don Carlos and was able to take these two pictures, which show a (relatively) unmolested wiring harness of a '77-model on both the main loom and clocks and that is what I have to replicate on mine. (All of this is gone on mine and hidden in that blob of black tape...
And finally a small bit I can't show you, but which pleases me even more: I now have the confirmation, that I will be legally allowed to put my spare 850 engine into my '77 750 frame and officially run it as a (fully legal) 850. It's not like I haven't planned installing that 850 somewhere down the road, but to be fair, it does make things easier to have it all in the papers.
I have to admit, after looking at the mess that one of the pre-owners created when installing a non-stock ignition-lock, I was in a bit of a dark hole, plus I also had the other XS-Triple to play around with and the always prominent life-got-in-the-way kind of excuses.
That's just the nicer part of the butchered mess...
So the other triple had to donate a few parts (mostly the headlight and some other cosmetical parts), which involved some major surgery in order to get to them.
That's what an unmolested loom should look like...
Now one of those "bad" habits of mine is to paint the inside of headlight shells white as it massively helps with identifying cable colours when it's slightly dark.
And that's a shot with the new (flexible) indicator fitted instead of the stock "fog-light" it came with.
The other thing I finally managed to get done (with the intention of starting to paint the forks) was to weld on a tab for the front mudguard, which came out uber-shiny compared to the initial state.
Upper part done, lower in initial state
Unfortunately Mr. overachiever in me decided to move the brake-arm-mounts to behind the fork-legs, so that's a lot of extra work that needs to be done, but hey, it's not a sprint, more of a marathon.
Now you may wonder, why my progress on the sidecar is a bit slow? Well I tend to be a friendly guy and help other people. This time it actually was two on the same day:
First I met my friend Carl and helped him dial in and service his XS750. First step was to adjust the valves, which were basically all set up incorrectly by the p.o., because the stock valve settings are: 0.15 - 0.20 on the inlet and 0.20 - 0.25 on the exhaust valves, which is quite a bit wider than what you'd normally find on a bike (so can't fully blame them).
Now here's a little trick on how to do the valves on a Yamaha Triple, if you forgot your shim-tool at home: You losen all the bearing cups and remove the cam-chain tensioner and you can actually tilt them out of the way, making the whole process quite bearable.
Blessed is he, who hoards shims...
There's no pictures on how to use a strobe-light or how to sync the carbs, because there's nothing too special about it, but to hear a well tuned XS750 Triple go through the rev-range, well they are special.
Second step of the afternoon was close to being even more fun. Never worked on a CB125 Twin before and with it being the smallest production fourstroke twin available over here, I was indeed expecting a little buzzing bee, but in all fairness... It revs to the moon and back and then you're only in second gear.
Should you ever have to swap out the carbs on one of these for a set of 110cc dirtbike Mikuni clones, the kind of jetting that seems to work (half decently) with some cheap pods is: #12.5 pilots, #100 mains and the mix-screw (unlike the real Mikunis these have mix-screws and not air-screws) 2 turns out.
Still, mighty fun for a basically guttless bike, but after an afternoon of dialing those carbs in, she finally rev'ed to 12,000RPM again and did the uphill test pulling a steady 80 to 85.
Oh and just in case you're worried... there's news on the sidecar as well, but that's for the next post.
