What did you do to your Yamaha today?

Yeah super sweet deal. He’s got a very nicely finished Maxim, not sure what size.

Another sweet deal!

 

Attached some cheap, but seem ok, Coleman saddle bags, loaded them up, and rode up to Keystone Colorado for the weekend. Took the route over Loveland pass at dusk. 128 miles. Elevations from 5200 to about 11000 feet. Fun ride, though it got a bit cold over the pass.

 

With parts kit from chacal, 'how to' instructions from xj4ever.com and a bit of assistance from a gearhead friend, rebuilt my dead starter.

Murphy showed up, but we beat him again...

This site is great. I'm doing repair projects I never would have dreamed I was able to do.

All is right with the world.

 

How did it do at elevation? Any noticeable difference?

 

thanks-that is exactly what I do counter steering and power through the turn.
Just getting more confidence

 

The 12th of July 2018 a Thursday my friend Chris and I went for a ride to the Coast. Mainly due to the 104 degrees, 63 total miles and the coast was great 61 degrees and foggy LMAO.
Sarted in Medford Oregon and rode the back roads to Grants Pass then onto the hwy.99 just into California and made a U-turn onto 101 north to the coastal beaches.
Stopped and ate at the Hungry Clam, great Fish and chips-right out of the fryer and onto the plate .
Xj700X - was getting 49 MPG Amazing!
Also just got 73,000 miles on the bike as well

 

Sandblasted and painted gloss black the seca drum, ready to go on the maxim. This was after a scare that the thing had a crack half way across the stabilised lug. Had to grind back and reblast it to check. Gold inlay tomorrow, brakes on Monday
Oh, one difference on the drum, the brake lever is shorter than my other one - anyone know why?

 

seca and maxim hubs are different sizes

 

I had meant to bring my tuning cable so I could check, and maybe tune, up here in Keystone (9280 feet). But I forgot. My impression is that the mixture is a bit too rich up here. Starts fine, and rides well in cold air, but, during the day, when it was hot out, throttle response was degraded and there was a bit of bogging.

Cripple Creek / Victor are closer to my home and still 10000 feet, so I'll probably take a ride up there one weekend with the laptop and cable and see how things look.

I have a separate MAP sensor for ambient baro, but, last I never agreed with the Megasquirt community's ideas about baro correction. Last I checked, they basically feel you should just use lower portions of the map for higher elevation, and vice-versa. the problem with that is that you have to either tune your engine at several different elevations to fill in the whole map, or make some good guesses about what goes in the higher and lower parts of the map based on what you've actually touched in your tuning. I'd rather scale the whole map based on ambient baro.

BTW, I got 51.5 MPG for the trip up here. I'm a bit disappointed with that.

 

here's what to do for that stuff. we have something called Dr,Scholl's foot spray, it comes out a dry powder. Spray your part with penetrating oil, wipe it off pretty good then spray that powder on it, if it's cracked, it will show right up

 

Dr Scolls crack testing kit then..
Yes 550 I do know (now) that a seca drum is bigger, that's why I had to buy a used one to go with the Seca wheel on my Maxim.

 

the levers may be of a different length to align with brake rod or give you different leverage on the brake shoes

 

I reckon it's the latter?

 

yes it makes sense , 650 maxim has smaller shoes if you can use the longer lever you may be able to get better rear braking. it would require less force from your foot but you would have to push down a little more due to the travel in the arc

 

Well I have a tatty seca drum with a long arm, and the ebay one seca - (the one I painted), has a short arm. I suspect the short arm may have come off a maxim, or at least something with a long brake "pedal".
If it all fits together I'll see how it feels, can allways change it.

 

Should have left it as is, but NOOO not me . I was playing with my new colortune, it had been awhile since I synched my carbs ,so broke out my synch manifold , they were not far off , but I tweaked them all out ,got 1,2,4 reading good ,but number 3 was barely indicating . After about blowing it up finally got all 4 reading almost spot on and idle at 1100 is where it is happy. Took it out for a quick ride seemed okay, letting it cool with a fan on it now .

 

Rode back this morning. First I pulled a plug just to get idea of rich vs. lean. Looked a bit rich. Need to recheck how all the baro compensation is set... Took a more scenic route on the way back... some great scenery and twisties. That was more like 150 miles, but mileage was better... got 55 MPG on the return.

 

Brought it home and started the long cleaning process.

Also rode the other Yamaha and got out the selfie stick for some fun.

 

The xj's have officially moved into their new home! Along with the rest of us of course. Been a long time coming and plenty more work to do not including motorcycles but a good feeling none the less.

 

This time of year in NC, to cool off, you go up.
The past weekend, trailered my 650 maxim (first time I ever trailered a bike to a destination- at my age the saying "half the fun is getting there" does not apply) up to the beautiful southern Virginia Appalachian mountains for a weekend full of hairpin turns, switchbacks so abrupt I thought I would run into my own taillight, steep uphill grades to mountain tops vistas and decents to the beautiful valleys. Took on challenging motorcycle loops known as the eagle's nest, the bootlegger, and claw (not tail mind you)of the dragon, all routes way too severe for my large touring motorcycle. A 2 day total somewhat over 500 miles, nearly 16 hours of seat time. Motorcycle riders everywhere too. At every stop my XJ initiated interaction with other riders - most common from the older crowd - Sounds good! I had one of those; what year model is that? or I learned how to ride on one like that. From the younger folks, is that a Seca? or, nice bike, my Dad had one like it. Ahhh - kids. This was also my first experience riding something in the mountains that weighed less than 1000 pounds, and it was fantastic. Little bike has opened up a whole new book of motorcycling fun for me. This trip was the 1st chapter of many more to be written. Cheers!