My first bike

Been reading here for awhile, first time post.

Picked up my first bike today; an 82 650 Maxim for 600$, wasn't running when I got it but compression was fine to on the back of the truck it went.

Unfortunatly, Canada foiled my plan of taking it for a quick ride before stripping it down. Got hit with pretty much a blizzard on the way home with the bike on the back of the truck.



So lots of time for this snow to melt I guess, stripped it down and checked various bushings bearings etc, ordered new gaskets and seals all the routine junk. Couldn't really find anything wrong with the bike other then the chipped drive pinion gear, it was missing a tooth, this is why the guy sold it. He didn't want to split the crankcase to put the new gear in, he gave me the new gear with the bike.

I discovered pretty quickly that the crankcase didn't need to be split to put the gear in.

But running mismatched crown pinion gears is obviously going to cause some problems and the backlash in those gears were horrible when I put them in with the original drave shaft flange bearing shims. The bike had a 12thou and a 15thous shim for 27thou which was probably 4 or 5 thou backlash because they were original mated crown and pinion. When I put my new pinion gear in it had a backlash of 2thou and probbaly would've disintegrated when I drove it.

So, out comes the dial indicator and a chunk of metal to fabricate myself some 10thou shims.





37thou shims set the backlash for 8thou which is a little loose but probably for the best with mis matched gears.

After reading on this site for awhile about carbs/valve clearances, I checked the clearances and cleaned the carbs, but I've yet to make a yics tool to sync them.

A few beers and a few hours on the buffing wheel with the engine side covers, stator cover, starter and various other pieces of aluminum I was done:



Bike starts and drives great but idleing is hit or miss, It idles too high with the choke on and stalls with the choke off. Could this be attributed to not having synced the carbs yet?

YES the carbs are clean, SURGICALLY clean. I know these ones can be temperamental but in the winter time I race a couple snomobiles of mine and know all about cleaning carbs

Other then the idleing everything is good, and my total money invested was 687$ start to finish.

 

Great job on the engine. I don't have the patience to polish up the engine like that so I just painted it instead.

You should have synced the carbs when the engine was off the bike. Sometimes in the cold weather I have to ween my choke off, I can't just cut out the choke right away. Did you try that yet?

 

nice color, My friend just painted my Old XJ750 the same color.

 

My gosh - awesome job!

 

what colour is that .

 

Looks like a great ride! do you have the side covers?

 

Unfortunatly no I don't. They didn't come with the bike.

Also, i'm not 100% on the what color it is, I know its got alot of metal flake in the paint though, If i get side covers i'll have to match that color and I have a feeling it will be a pain in the butt.

Yeah, actually now that I think of this my bike is the same, And it is pretty cold out here still.

 

Very nice looking machine. I wish I knew that much about mechanics and machining parts ...

Be sure to take a motorcycle safety/training class. It is not the same as snowmobiling nor riding a bike. Most rider caused accidents occur in the first year of riding. These courses are *critical* to keeping you from getting in trouble.

 

Yeah, I intend on taking the course and really learning how to drive the machine on the back roads out here and getting used to it.

The biggest thing I drove before was my old '75 honda xl250 hahaha. And this was years ago. My friend found an old 76' XS 650 in a barn and we fixed it up and I took it for one test drive to the end of the road and back and got the taste for it I guess thats why I bought my XJ.

And you say it's not the same as snomobiling etc. But there is one thing that IS the same, the golden rule for anything that has any amount of power: Respect it and it will respect you.

 

don't even worry about the idle till you sync the carbs
any clue from the PO how those gears got broke ?

 

what he said was that he drove it all last summer, and sometime around august he heard a noise coming from the bike when it was moving. He took off the side cover and the gear was missing 1 tooth and ½ of another one.

He could be lieing about it maybe, but he has been extremely honest with me about everything else so I doubt it.

here's a picture of the old pinion gear:


He said he cleaned the shrapnel out, I double checked as well to be safe.

On a different note, heres another picture of my bike parked next to the 76 XS my buddy found in the barn.



He's trying to polish his pipes on my buffing wheel.

 

i don't think i ever heard of problems with those before but hay, stuff happens
you guys should take another look around that barn

 

Not to change the subject, but is the header wrap a popular alternative to painting or replacing the pipes all together? It looks nice on your bike, i've been thinking of doing it to mine.

 

Great find and fix!

 

Yeah, don't know why it broke but I'm a little worried about the shrapnel from the pinion damaging the crown a little, there's some little marks in the crown that lead me to believe the gears case hardening has been compromised, I'll probably put a new crown/pinion in next season.

And I don't think there is any other nice finds in that barn unfortunately :<

I'm not 100% sure on the subject but what I've heard from various people is that it helps the engine make a little more power by keeping heat in the exhaust. It also protects the pipe.

The wraps are actually only warm to the touch, you can grab them after driving for hours and it's hardly hot at all.

One thing I've noticed is that on other bikes I've taken for a drive on hot days after driving for awhile sometimes when you stop at stoplights or signs you'll get a blast of heat in the face, dosen't happen with the pipe wraps.

As far as cosmetics go, I didn't like them at first but they grew on me pretty quick and now I actually like the look of them on that bike, plus they saved me a few burns when I was working around the engine after it was running.

One bad thing: Dirt stains, I may try and bleach them to get the brown stains out sometime in the future.