XS65 barn find.

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This is an XS650 Yamaha I bought as a non runner a while back. Mostly just a pile of rust, all fixings were binned along with seat, mudguard, exhaust and engine cases. The shifter drum, bearing housing along with a large flapr of aluminium on the upper crankcase were torn oFf by a chain I believe. The aluminium bits and pieces were badly oxidised and damaged by tool misuse, anything made of steel was rusted beyond repair.

I bought new, secondhand engine cases, I had it rebored, bought new pistons, rings, gudgeons, cam chain and a few other bits and pieces, ground in the valves, replaced gaskets and seals, bead blasted the cases, barrel, head, rocker box and painted the lot silver. I made up a wheeled stand to put it together and started it up. Ran beautifully after synchronising the carbs, but, decided I didn't like the colour so did it all again, this time painting it black. In retrospect I should have left it with the bead blast finish, but?

A lot of metal polishing so far: Ground the tyre lever marks off the rims and polished them. Trued the hubs on the lathe and polished them, polished the triple tree, brake distributor, hubs, brake backing, lower sliders, carb tops and bottoms. I also blasted the throttle and handlebar switches, rewired them and polished them up, also polished the rocker inspection plates and engine side covers. Oil pipe, breaker cover and rocker nuts have been re chromed.
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I've bent up a new battery carrier from 3mm aluminium plate, still have to weld the side plates on yet though, I also beat up a couple of aluminium sidecovers from 1.5mm plate, and polished them. Last job I did today was to shape some engine plates from 10mm aluminium and polish them. Next job is a sheet metal seat base. The seat will be around 50mm narro wer than the original. Haven't decided on single seat with rear hump or a pillion???

Unfortunately, due to stuffed hands, arms, shoulders, neck and feet from psoriatic arthritis, I'll never be able to ride it. With stuffed hands It takes 100 times longer to do anything, particularly polishing and causes lots of pain, but, it keeps me off the streets at night I suppose. This'll be an end of life project so, I'll probably never finish it. Due for finger joint and elbow replacement surgery to keep my hips and toes company, so, that'll slow me down a little. I'm hoping new fingers will give me less pain and more dexterity, we shall see!

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Here's a video of the first engine start up and another of the homemade manometer in use. I've since made a better, neater looking manometer, but this video gives an idea of its use.