Steber's 81 XJ550 Bobber

Looking great! Can't wait to see this one done. For paint, I used VHT primer and paint and it's holding up well after 14 months. As with any paint job, 90% of the finished product and durability is prep work though.

 

Who knowes the dimenzion OF ORIGINAL FORK OIL SEA for
Yamaha xj 550 maxim 1984
And
Yamaha xj750maxim x 1986

 

What a long day.. Finally got a bunch done today. I was able to get down and prep, tape, paint and stab the engine in. Very happy with the paint, damn near close to a match of the stock color. Lots of polishing left to make the engine look the way i want, but everything else can be addressed on the bike now. Pretty exhausted, so i'll just upload a bunch of pics for now. Some before and after on the paint, and then with the engine in the bike.

 

Big thumbs up! Liking the way it is turning out. Well done. How stiff is the monoshock?

 

Thanks ,its starting to look like... well something. As for the shock it feels good, possibly a bit stiff, but I really didn't go into adjusting the shock for preload and dampening as its got a few adjustments that can be made. It's better than a hard tail, which well, was my goal (after I decided not to hardtail it)..

 

I strutted mine so I know exactly what you mean. Buddy of mine gutted an air ride seat out of a dump truck so now even though his frame is rigid he's riding on air. I dig the monoshock look. I had an idea to do something similar on a future build only using a semi cab mount bag and shock

 

Hardest part is monoshock takes up a lot of realeastate.. bye bye battery, airbox, fuseboxes, tci.. unless of course you have a rear tunnel on a cafe. I still have a lot of work ahead of me figuring that out but pretty sure I have a few tricks up my sleeve for that. Also, hardest part of monoshock was finding one that wouldn't raise the back end up from the shock being too long.

 

Yea I could definitely see that being difficult. Buddy conned me into cramming all of his electrical, to, regulator/rectifier, fuse block, and air gauge all into one of those fake oil tanks. That was interesting to say the least. With what I see so far I'm sure you will figure those things out and it will turn out well.

 

I'm really at a loss on what to do with the headlight and cluster. Looking for some solid advice.. I would like to clean it up since i am wiring everything from scratch. So new headlight, maybe with a small all in one cluster inside of it? I've seen a few around, anyone have a good combo for what i'm thinking of? Would love to see examples in any bike.. On the same token i dont want to spend hundreds of dollars, i could very well throw all old stuff back on and shorten cables. Hence why I'm at a loss?

The taillight is going to be a side mount plate combo.. I fully plan to hand signal on this bike (not that cagers know what they mean) and I would also like to include minimal turn singals, no lolipops. My intuition wants me to put some sort of bar end light into the frame pieces directly under the seat, preferably with a dual filament bulb because i feel the distance the lights are together (yes probably illegal even) would make it hard to distinguish if just one light came on. Again, just spit balling. It will have a very small short fender on it that will end maybe TDC of the rear wheel.

Anyways, enough rambling... Its just a lot to visualize. Spent the morning wiping down all the parts going back on the bike. two or three things i need to get down and sand blast before i paint, but the rest is ready for assembly or a quick painting. Also wiped down the TCI and rectifer and other things, just to shake the cob webs out of the 36 year young bike. All in efforts for it to hopefully look a bit more refined when finished.

 

Will you be using a different headlight mount all together? I mounted some small led signals on each side of the factory bucket where the bolts would go in on each side to hold the actual bucket to the mount. The rear signals are mounted to tabs off of my sissy bar and I used a flush mount led tail/brake light mounted vertical on the left side strut with the plate light and plate underneath it

 

Yes, I've been thinking on going to ones the mount on the forks, similar to this.



Also, I really like the idea of the cluster in the headlight also like pictured in my example. Just trying to track down ones that will work is the bugger.


I've seen a few on ebay.. but finding a reliable one, one that will work, is the question. I like how many have the idiot lights built it, to me thats important. My tach never really worked except when i was syncing the carbs, and I dont think i'll miss it if i step down to something like this.

Theirs models like this that are around the $100 mark... I prefer the daytona of these two i think
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Daytona-Vel...6d86e5c&pid=100005&rk=4&rkt=6&sd=272576114586

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Spe...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

Theirs also models that are much cheaper, im around the $30 price range.. such as this

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Universal-M...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

 

Seems that what I've come to find it that the bucket I'm looking for is made by Daytona which makes the gauges along with the bucket. Only problem is I'm having trouble finding a vendor state side instead of across the pond. Pics attached seem to feature the same bucket, any leads state side would be appreciated.

 

While I sort out my silly left side right side headlight lens issue I welcome the mail call today. Got my wiring and colored shrink wrap. Still waiting on a few connectors I ordered, but patience is a virtue. Should be enough colors not to get myself too confused.

Oh, and the red and blue aren't doubles, one set is a striped wire.

 

Wow, lots going on. Now that the bike is back home I can tinker nearly every free second. While trying to beat the heat I set out to polish up a few things on my buffer. Much cooler in my basement, although my buffer needs some new pads. Still got the job done, it's aluminum it'll need to be polished again before this thing is done anyways. So I didn't try to hard. Very happy that I found a better idea for mounting the battery, Fab should be interesting. Also looking to find dual filament lights to fit under the seat in the posts. Kind of like bar ends, but project out. Anyways, any progress is good progress.



Any ideas for that welcome. Thanks for reading

 

Looking good!

 

The heats got things on hold. Can't walk outside without sweating buckets. Just finishing up design of battery box. Think I've got it all figured out besides mounting to the bike. Once I've got it in steel I can start welding brackets and such. Still looking for lights under the seat, been talking with Len, need shorter brake cables and a few gaskets. Once I get the battery box installed I can start wiring,I guess. Still in the air how Minimal I want to go and what idiot lights to keep.

 

I've decide I don't want to bend/weld my own, and have been working closely with a company that will tig weld one up out of steel, to whatever i want and use mechanical fasteners to keep the battery in. They currently don't make them for deltran batteries, but they seemed very willing to work with me. I'm going to get some final measurments over, and maybe make one side bigger to be able to weld it to the bike. If my measurments are right, you'll be able to access the battery with the terminals facing the back, it'll all depend on how i mount it honestly. will give more details when i have them, but i want to get this box on before i start any sort of wiring.

And yes, i should have thought about this when the bike was apart, but the problem with that was the bike was apart. I would have never known how far forward towards the engine i could place the box until the engine was in the bike. So yes, one step forward and two steps back. But its still progress!

My template is just for me to address fitment issues, i have to toss the chain back on and account for cleararance, consider a better thicker shield on that side. I dunno yet, but Im very happy with the placement, it'll keep the look i was going for without being a huge box.

 

It's been a long few days of massaging the harness to work on this frame. Hindsight I could have probably wired it from scratch to save time, but things seem to be working well by moving bits here and there.

I wired in a blade fuse box today, not to mention starting pulling all the slack out of the harness. Everything seems to have a home, and im hoping theirs no gremlins as I have not modified anything but the position of the relays. The starting solenoid got a custom bracket, i didnt really now where to put it and didn't want to run heavy gauge all over the bike. I'm fairly happy with the mount, it should work in the end.

slow and steady wins the race, still waiting on a battery box, but I haven't gotten to the bottom half electronics yet, won't have much time to work on it until next week at this point.

 

Would you consider photo 2 to be a completed harness? Didn't know you were making a rat(nest) rod!

 

That's mid chaos, top picture is the most recent.. but boy the way it was wired from factory, all xjs are rat(nest) rods!