XJ650 Starting issues

Alright, looking at more stuff, it seems the "spark plug CAPS" were out of spec, but I couldn't seem to remove the inner caps. If I am understanding this, the caps are supposed to come off, right? If the inner ones are hard to remove, they could just be corroded or stuck, but a flathead and some wd40, and elbow grease should get them off?

Is there no way to check the resistance of the coils without pulling the tank off too?

Ideally for the XJ650 1982, 5k resist boots, no resist sparks?

 

Fork upgrade.
Between models there are differences in stanchion diameter. So if unsure get the triple tree also, along with brakes, wheel and discs. Big job!

Spark plug caps.
If you mean "come off the spark plug" then yes definitely.
If you mean the cap off the wire, if they are standard coils and caps, definitely yes also. If non standard then they could just be a crimp on the wire which isn't removable.

Indicator replacement with LED gear definitely drops a lot of current usage. I'm all for it.

Good luck!

 

I'll have to see when I'm over there probably next week, I'm not sure. I am sure however that they "appeared" non-removable for 2/3. The caps look like the wire went "over" the cap ends, and could be slipped out, whereas it looked the other way around for 2/3.

Not my image, but they look very similar to this:


Left is 2/3 and right is 1/4, so you have an idea what I'm talking about. The left caps don't look removable and they were pretty on there.

 

All of those are removable. You must unscrew them from the wire. The cap might be stuck a little by the waterproofing boot but they will come off.

 

Crimped are like this.

 

Cool, thank you for the context!

I've been trying to google as much as I can, to figure out as much as I can on my own, but stuff like this helps.

Wish I had a bike mechanic in the area I could be like, buy them a beer and we just futz around on the bike for an afternoon lol

 

There are a million pictures and write-ups here.
The 'diy how to' forum is super interesting.
I know I read most of them when I started this xj voyage.

 

I've certainly read those and have gone through the xj4ever catalog repeatedly learning as I go. Not the same as having someone knowledgeable next to you to soundboard things off of, unfortunately. Also, some of the how-to's here have dead image links from posters who may not be around to fix, which makes things a little trickier.

 

Yes I noticed a thread I did has dead images. Although they are there. There are policies to allow information from other sites to display which are the norm nowadays, anti spam etc. Try opening the image separately and it may be available. Right click action stuff on a computer.

 

Is it possible to convert a master cylinder that comes on the XJ to something more modern, with a detached reservoir? I have to disassemble the master cylinder anyways since something is leaking and I just assume upgrade it.

I'm trying to find a kit or...something but I am not really seeing what's good here. I don't really like the reservoir integrated with the front brake handle designs (hard to see levels with a crummy little bubble as your only visual reference, and I don't like how much space it takes up on the handle bar if I wanted to mount other stuff), but I also realize the size of the reservoir matters in order to keep things the same, for example.

Or should I just suck it up?

 

Your bike, do what makes you feel good. It is all part of making it your bike your project. I think the only thing you have to keep in mind would be the size of the MC. The plunger size of the system needs to be kept the same or very close. After that I think you can do what ever you want to do.

 

The yamaha master has a mount for the mirror if that is a concern
Also wiring for brake light just plugs in
If you can't find a good Yamaha Mc there are cheap Chinese ones plug and play
I can't vouch for them may be worth a try

 

I don't have a better photo right now, but I have this one from before I cleaned the bike of the Master Cylinder. Is this the "type A" sight window? or do I have to disassemble it in order to find out? The PDF on the parts catalogue wasn't super clear.

 

Messed around with the bike this weekend, quite a few updates here:

Finally got the bike started in my GF's garage. It would not start, even with a brand spanking new, fully charged AGM (YT12C) battery (to replace the leadacid YB12A-A one that was there before. I had replaced the old one with a new one but that still seemed to have issues so, I just did an upgrade instead to agm), so I shoved a bit of Seafoam in the tank, blasted some starter fluid in the airbox, and cranked it. Still nothing, so I touched what I believe is the idle screw (for some reason I assumed this was an actual screw but it's a knob instead you can just stick your hand in there and turn clockwise to increase) for the first time since getting the bike, and slightly turned it clockwise (towards the right side of the bike).

Blasted some more starter fluid in the airbox, tried again:


I had pulled back on the throttle when starting, so when she started with the choke on she kinda screamed immediately into 5000 rpms, and I kinda in shock let go of the throttle. Kinda like someone had startled you awake, certainly made us both jump. Monitored it as you can see here for a bit, before she was idling around 600/700rpms but I increased it to just a hair over 1000 on the tach, to better fit the 1050 suggested rpms for the xj650. I tried screwing the bottom screws, thinking they were the fuel mixture and quickly realized those were the fuel drain screws, and closed those right back up, after losing a few drops. I don't really see an easy way to reach any screws on this, but not important for right now.


Installed brand new caps (5k Ω) onto BP7ES (non-resistive) spark plugs! Apparently, they were running (I think) DR8ESL spark plugs in here, but I didn't take a photo so I don't really know (I can find out two sundays from now if anyone wants to know). I really hated these rubber dust cover boot things on the plugs, and I went 3->4->2->1 so by the time I got to 1 here in the photo, I just left the original dust cover on the cap because it was such a massive pain in the butt, and the dust cover was fine anyways.

I then moved onto working on the rear left blinker, which you may have noticed a slight problem before...

oopsie...that happened because I was an idiot and didn't tie down the bike properly bringing the bike to the garage.

But that's okay! because we have solutions. Solutions like someone was selling their XJ parts after a restoration and didn't need their blinker assembly, so I asked them to kindly send me rear left one. I technically got sent the rear right one. But that's okay, because we can just do some magic tricks and it all ends up the same in the end.


wait, what?


Left is what came with my bike, the right is what came with the replacement. What in the world?


well....I guess that's a solution that was decided by...someone.

When the PO of the other xj owner's rear blinker, had decided to have that blinker replaced by a non-oem part (the exterior, rather squishy aluminum? chrome? housing) they did two things. They had the original shaft I'm holding here, along with a new outer shell for the light bulb, that's aftermarket. They did not, apparently, have a hollow screw and a nut, like the original does, so you can feed it through a hole in the rear fender to pass through the cables for the wire. They did have a hex bolt, that they cut the length off of, so they could use that to hold it in place. However, where do the wires go? Ah yes, lets cut a V into the original shaft, and feed the wires up through the gap in the outer blinker housing, a tight fit that resulted in some of those wires having a bit of the plastic housing cut because they were jammed in there.

I suppose the person doing the modification thought they were clever, but they literally were just making more work for themselves when they could have gone to the hardware store to pick up a hollow threaded screw, instead of a hack job. I guess this is a situation of "not my problem, it's the next owners problem now, lol".

I was going to just reuse this new shaft, because the chrome is in better condition, and the V cut can be ignored, but the threading on the shaft is different and doesn't fit my hollow thread, and I wasn't going to implement the PO's crappy hackjob, so I took the outside casing (which itself wasn't oem) and blasted some Kroil and some elbow grease and mushed the two ends together. At this point I realized why the V cut shaft was also sanded down....because it does not want to go inside the replacement endpoint very well, it is very tight.

For some reason, last summer the blinker was working, even though the part was smushed:


It wasn't working, so I assumed something must have happened to my original lightbulb connector, and decided to take a chance that the replacement's was working (since it seemed like the FB guy replaced the lights to upgrade them, rather than there was something wrong with them).


With the replacement blinker assembled, I tested the blinkers. I turned the bike on, and the right blinkers worked as expected. I hit the left blinkers, and got a steady light instead of a blink. Apparently, if the relay doesn't detect the resistance/voltage drop from both the front and rear blinkers on that side, it doesn't blink, as opposed to just, blinking the light that is available, and ignoring the one that isn't present. I assume this is normal behavior if one of the lightbulbs dies, but this doesn't really seem very smart to me. Blinkers should...well, blink.

Anyways, I couldn't be arsed to look at the manual, that was 30miles away, to see whether the brown was positive or the black was positive, but what I could do, is turn the blinker on and touch the wires together and see if the light came on at all. Once the connection was correct, the blinker in my hand and up front worked as expected. I connected the two correct wires (as seen above) with a butt connector and installed the light back on the bike. Huzzah! I now have working blinkers again!

At this point both of us were tired, as I was working on this all afternoon and she was working on a nice homemade motorcycle lift for us.


Motorcycle lifts are expensive, but making one out of wood? When she hates carpentry? Priceless.

The following day, we're finishing up stuff in the garage, I'm trying to figure out what is going on with my bike, that I have to blast her with starter fluid in order to get her to start, and I put the battery back on the 1A charger while I look, for what feels like the 40th time over every inch of the bike, trying to find something "wrong". I don't see a single frayed cable, I don't see anything burnt, I've been over the entire wiring harness, having cleaned the major contact cables, scrubbing the heck out of any electrical surface I can find, I've replaced the fuse box with ATC fuses (though I used the template to screw it into the airbox, it does not fit under the seat in that position, it needs to be further back, and the risers do not help. It doesn't raise it up far enough, so there is an extra drill hole in the airbox I need to fill, and the fusebox just kinda....floats under the seat for now.) and nothing really is solving the issue.

The issue being: hard to start, and if I try too many times, this discharges the battery enough that the bike won't start up, until I put the battery back on the charger for a while, and then she starts up. Once she starts up, she's fine and will stay running....until she gets to like an intersection, I go to lower the RPMs and pull in the clutch, and then she just dies. Choke on or not, doesn't matter. She'll even do this when we're just doing figure 8s or whatever in the parking lot. When I got her started with Seafoam, I just let her idle for like 15 minutes, figuring that might help clean out whatever might have been stuck over the winter.

You can see me playing around with the choke here after having started it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1GU5EtFdb0Q

I'm a bit hesitant to let her run too high in neutral with full choke, having increased the idle screw a bit, it does now idle much better, but I haven't been able to test it on a ride, because, well, the front forks have a problem and are leaking. I did test the brakes a bit, and it seems that the front brakes work well, and I don't see a leak anywhere, though, there might be the smallest smallest one in the brake cable towards the MC. I also found that there is technically two brake hoses for one caliper. The upper one that goes to the midpoint of the fork stem, and the lower one that goes to the caliper. Why is it set up this way instead of one long brake tube?

In any case, that potentially saves me some money, but I'll want to come back to it and replace with a steel braided cable, but that's less important than the forks. They seem to be leaking from the top, so that's gonna take a rebuild, and unfortunately that's several hundred dollars. The forks are very soft right now, feels awful, and it's leaking all over the rim and tire.

But hey, at least it starts!

And look what we did!


Now we can work on the bike while sitting on rolling seats instead of on the dang ground! She was a heavy girl to get up on this thing, absolutely not a one person job. We tested with her Honda Rebel and that was way easier than this bike. Unfortunately, I can't think of a good way we can lift the bike up to do the fork replacement on this, and this design won't accommodate the center stand being put down, which would have solved things a bit.

While the bike was on the lift, it had been a few hours since I started it last. She went to start the bike and it started right up without any starter fluid. All this to say, it does really seem like carburetor issues. I really didn't want to have to pull the carbs and clean them, that's another several hundred dollars, plus the almost $200 for checking the valve clearances, and then carbtuning them.

I also noticed something peculiar...the right side oil pump cover (where the YICS logo would be) should be the same as on the left, right? well, the right side is missing the YICS logo, and there's some suspicious screws there that don't look stock (slightly stripped screws). I'm wondering now if the bike had gotten dropped at one point on its right, and they had to replace the cover on the right, and that would explain this very weird "frame guard" piece of metal that's kind of just bracketed to the frame (the metal that is attached on the left to the orange straps in the photo above), perhaps after that fall, the PO put a guard up. It does at least come out a few inches on each side of the engine, acting as a pseudo frame slider.

I'd like to get a matching pair, for the symmetry, but it's not very high priority.

I was looking over my rear brake pedal, trying to fix the rust on the chrome...only to find there's no saving this without paying someone to re-chrome it, or replacing it. I have a better idea:


Once it dries, I need to add another coat, and then some clear coat, and it should be good. Speaking of which, the sissy bar in the back has absolutely seen better days (along with the caliper, which you can just finger peel the paint off of). I need to figure out how to get this bar off (the rear shocks are attached to it) so I can paint this too (and to buy new gold stripe stickers from xj4ever to replace the ones on here (and the tank, eventually)

Anyways, next on the docket is fork repair! See ya in a few weeks!

 

Some future upgrades/tasks I'd love to do to this bike:
take everything off the frame, sand it down, repaint frame. It's both gross and there's rust cropping up here and there I want to deal with.
paint down everything but the aluminum surfaces black. Polish aluminum to a nice shine.
Upgrade to XJ750 forks for dual caliper brakes. Upgrade to slightly better rotors
Upgrade to XJ750 tank for larger tank size (will the rotation of the forks touch the tank?) Fuel sender maybe? I'd love a fuel indicator light.
switch over to LEDs so I can hook up a USB device, and grip warmers. I'll lose out on the auto-off relay which sucks, but oh well.
Upgrade rear shocks to heavy duty shocks
convert built-in MC reservoir to detached so the handlebars aren't in the way
replace right hand control module with something that just has an off-on switch instead of 3-pole
upgrade to a digital tach and speedo, perhaps all in one, would be preferable.

dream wishlist would be figuring out how to make this EFI, there's a walkthrough for an XJ1100 by a guy who used to work at NASA but that's so far down the pipeline for me.

 

That's a lot!
Starting and running wise.
2 things
Fuel and spark.
The fuel side is ALWAYS a problem on a bike that's sat for a bit or has been running about for 40years.

Once the carbs are fully tuned and cleaned and refurbed, if you have spark, then if you're still having dying issues you can move to the spark side.
Carbs are the heart of it.

When the bike is running it's great but I always feel like I need to do some more carb tuning after a couple of 100ks. Never ending tuning!