Newly Licensed -First Bike

Hey all. Got myself an 83 Yamaha XJ 750 Maxim. Just passed my beginners course and just registered the bike. I am super excited! I didn't get to ride it yet because it rained today and was kinda late in the day after getting it registered and writing the written portion. So the other thing is I keep hearing 4 cylinder bikes are t great for beginners. Any thoughts? Kinda getting weary after reading all the negative thoughts of beginners on these types of bikes. I like torquey bikes... thoughts?

 

Welcome suvoth, and congratulations!

I would say these are fine for beginners, especially compared to a 1600 cc harley or a Hayabusa.

I wasnt new to bikes when I got my XJ650 9 yrs ago (grew up on bikes). But it was a re-entry into owning and riding one. I wouldnt look back and change anything, especially now familiar with other bikes.

Suggestion: scour this forum and learn about all the RIGHT ways to maintain your maxim.

 

Just take it easy with your right hand until you have a few months of riding time behind you.

As an old-school rider I'd prefer that you had something under 40 horsepower as your first motorcycle, but if you're mindful of your limitations the bike won't bite you.

Get a copy of Proficient Motorcycling by David L. Hough if you haven't already. Read, learn, practice, and Be the Bunny (<--- click the link).


Oh, click the first link in my signature too.

 

Just got my 650... First bike.
I love it. Took the windshield off and high back rest. I take my course next month.
Spent 10 hours cleaning her up

 

Is this a reply of some sort?
If not you really should be making your own thread.

 

Thanks! I definitely will!

 

I'll take a look for sure! I am not a speed demon.. although the best part of riding in the course was definitely the higher speed stuff, cornering etc. I'll definitely be taking it easy! Little scared..or probably just nerves. Gonna take it out tomorrow in the neighborhood

 

Just sharing in the excitement of being a new rider with a beauty bike.

 

Great news on the new bike and becoming a new rider. Now it is time to put your head on a swivel and never stop looking for others not seeing you. I am supper happy you took a rider class, got to ride their bikes first and get a feel for it. I am guessing their bikes were smaller bikes? As k-moe said, just make sure the rand wrist is in control. The fun of twisting that throttle and feeling the power of the bike is one of the reasons I still ride. Just make sure you twist when it is safe and low traffic. With all the other things you have learned in class I will add one more thing. If you feel the need to pass a vehicle in front of you and notice a road or driveway ahead on the left, so many drivers no longer use turn signals. Most deaths in my area happen from bikes getting turned into when they are passing a vehicle.

Be safe and have a great time with your new bike. Enjoy and get out there!

 

Thanks for the tip! Yeah, the bike I was on for most of my course was a TW 250..big difference. Gonna go ride my bike for the first time after I've had a few coffees lol plus I need to get an octave booster because there is old gas (4 years old) and new gas in the tank.

 

I’m not sure how an octave booster will help a motorcycle, but maybe @hogfiddles would know.

 

OK. When I first saw your post you hadn’t written the text yet.
Carry on

[EDIT] Chack the codes onyour brake lines. They look original, and that is not a good thing.

 

Well this isn't going well! First, my license plate frame is too big so I can only put one screw to hold it on. The. I checked the gas .damn near empty so I got a Jerry can of gas and was putting it in..yeah, dripping it everywhere then I noticed it dripping fast out the bottom of it near this black case. Blood blister is from pinching myself putting on the license plate. 2nd pic is where it's leaking from

 

All fixed! This bike doesnt off. I have it on pri thinking that was off

 

If you have fuel dripping out whether on prime or not, your carbs need attention

 

It appears you have a stuck float. Check you oil level and open your oil fill cap and take a whiff to see if it smells like gas. I wouldn't recommend riding the bike until the problem is solved.

 

I'll have to check that. Drove it around after fixing the leak..that was user error..had it on pri. However, it seems to be dropping Rpms and stalling out..my friend was here and he gave me a boost because one minute the bike was running, next the battery was drained. Seems to be losing charge and the guy I bought it from put a new battery in it..so looks like it must be an alternator problem..sigh

 

Even on Pri (prime) the carbs still shouldn't leak.

 

Hmm my mechanic friend told me it's supposed to fill up the carbs on pri. But we switched it on and it stopped immediately. Gonna test the alternator tomorrow by removing the negative wires from the battery while running to see if it shuts down immediately

 

STOP RIDING IT!!!!

Your crankcase is full of gas. You will damage the engine in a very expensive way if you keep running it with that problem.

If the floats and float needles were doing their jobs correctly the fuel could not have gotten into the crankcase.

STOP RIDING IT UNTIL IT IS FIXED!!!!

That black case is the airbox, and fuel/oil only comes out of that if the crankcase is overfull.

Get a new mechanic. Seriously. He's right about how the petcock works, but missing that a float isn't working correctly is an unforgivable error IMO. Thinking that the stalling and not charging is because of the alternator is even worse. While you could have an alternator issue, that isn't why the engine is stalling.
If he's not familiar with how carbureted motorcycles work, then he really shouldn't be helping you at this time.

Be your own mechanic. We'll teach you how.

Heck, we'll teach your friend too.

 

Suvoth, you need to really listen to k-moe on this issue. It does not cost that much to check the oil and even drain it. If you drain it into a clean container and if the oil is still good and clean you can reuse the oil. I think you will find as stated, that you have gas in your oil.

The gas will thin your oil and cause the bearings and anything that are metal to metal to fail sooner! Almost all of these older bikes that have been sitting for a while or years need to have the carbs run though. It is just common with motorcycles with carbs. If by chance you were using ethanol enriched gas, this could be even worse as the ethanol starts to brake down if now moved around in about 6 months.

k-moe has links at the bottom of his posts, please take the time to read them and to take a look at the top of each page. There you will find the "XJ4EVER" icon, follow that and you will find so much reading and great information.

Once you decide to pull the carbs just be patient and follow "The church of Clean" from the reading material. Bottom line it is your bike, you do with it what you will, we are here just to make things easier for you and I hope save you some money and aggravation.

 

Woah uh oh. Guess I shouldn't have driven it those 5 blocks. I'm gonna re read what you said. But buddy who sold is to me says he cleaned the carbs. So what I need to do now is drain the oil and if necessary, change it?

 

Ok, re-read everything. So I need to buy float needles? Are there 4, one for each carb? And I need to change the oil

 

I don't see a link for the information?

 

Step 1 is to open the oil filler cap and sniff. If it smells like gas then drain the oil, but don't refill it yet.
Step 2 is to read. You need to understand why the failure occured, and what to do about it before you put new parts on.
Diagnosis has to happen before you spend money.

THE SECRET LIFE OF CARBURETORS
IN THE CHURCH OF CLEAN
Inside your Carbs
Setting the fuel levels
You might not need this last one, but if after remedying the fuel overflow issue you find that you have other carb-related running problems it may become necessary to break the rack, at which time it is HIGHLY reccomended that new seals be fitted.
Replacing your Hitachi throttle shaft seals

 

Some mobile devices won't show the links in our signatures.

Read This First
Choosing Oil for a Wet Clutch Motorcycle

Those are in addition to the links I provided above.

 

Note: your used oil, if it is contaminated with gas, is perfect for lawnmower use as a fuel. You might thin it with a bit more gas though unless you have a 2-stroke lawnmower.

 

do not remove wire when bike is running it is a bad thing to do .
go to this thread and read about your charging system and how to test it with a meter
The Ultimate Relay, Switch, Sensor, and Diodes Guide

prime is to fill carbs but it should not cause your fuel to leak out of the carbs

 

Thanks so much! My friend, well, another friend is going to help me this weekend. I got a "trickle charger" can I still use that before I do all of this?

 

Another friend. I like the sound of that.

You can still use the trickle charger on the battery. Just don't bother starting the bike until you know that fuel isn't (and can't) get into the crankcase.
That has to be taken care of first.
You can do several of the electrical checks on the charging system without the engine runnimg. You just can't check the charging output voltage.

 

yes you can . if your battery is a lead acid battery check the fluid level and top it off with distilled water. the lead acid batterys boil off the water in the battery when charging.

 

Ok so I think what you are suggesting after reading some of the carbs stuff is that I should take apart the carbs and check them first before buying anything and also obviously drain the oil first

 

Normally it would make you play At least one octave higher, depending on how much the octave is boosted. A one octave boost will increase your octave by doubling it. So A440 becomes A880, etc.......

If you are going to extrapolate that into mph, then 55mph becomes 110mph, etc.......

Now,maybe you just want to sit on the motorcycle in the driveway without the key on-- you could go Brrrmmmbrrmmmmmbrmmmm at about an A220 to pretend you're idling......you could make low rude noises with your lips, too. Kick in the octave booster, and you could even kick in the turbo boost, and make screaming noises above 880.....even higher, if you have that kind of talent.... with your voice while making elephant sounds with your lips. Boost the decibels, and you could really be FLYING past every cop on the highway while sitting safely in your driveway.

To get a 4D experience, put a giant fan in front of you on full blast, and leave the helmet sitting on the driveway surface next to you.

It's almost like the octave booster that we'd get when we clothes-pinned our Mickey Mantle baseball cards to the fender brace on our bicycles so they'd buzz against the spokes!

 

Yes.
It might be that the floats are just stuck, but more often than not there's more to the story. In either case carb work is much easier with them off of the bike. You can't even get but one of the float bowls off with them on the bike.

 

Lol that was a good read hogfiddles the reason for the octave booster was because it had 4 year old gas in it topped a little with new..or so I was told

 

Octane boosters are for gas, not octave boosters.

 

Woops! Haha slip of the spellchecker

 

I think what you mean is octane booster hahahaha. I would just like to second what everyone else is telling you. It may seem daunting now but with careful ready, attention to detail, the proper tools, and this forum, you can have your machine running top notch. The ear to ear grin you get from a properly tuned XJ is well worth the effort. Take your time, ask questions and you'll get there.

Edit: @k-moe beat me to it! Haha

 

Going to see a friend who owns a bike mechanic shop. No, not one of the many friends who gave me the initial information. Lol he doesn't want me playing around with the carbs by myself.

 

Good call. Route him to here for model specific info. Hitachi carbs are a bit different, and since your bike has the YICS system the carbs are set up a bit differently from most.

 

Will for sure mention it to him! Thanks again, you guys are awesome

 

you should just drain the gas and replace with new gas

 

This is why I said in my reply to your post, Suggestion: scour this forum and learn about all the RIGHT ways to maintain your maxim. I did exactly as you did when I bought mine, took the word of the previous owner - who claimed plenty of maintenance was done to it - and rode it around before any serious work. I was lucky that it was actually in decent shape, but still needed TLC.

See my noob story here: https://www.xjbikes.com/forums/threads/my-xj-story-since-it-may-help-another-noobie.33995/

I had seen other posts about the gas-in-oil issue being due to left on prime, but its not the only cause. In my case, running it unstuck the floats, and I didn't get into full-throttle carb maintenance until after riding it some. But once I did all the due diligence - carb cleaning, valve clearance, fuse box replacement, wheel bearings, and then some - I easily doubled the horsepower, response, and handling. Plus, made it a sh**load more reliable.

 

Can someone point me to carb rebuild kits? I looked at the xj4ever whatever but couldn't find them on there. Can someone copy and paste that section so I can see the price and stuff...which I presume is in America dollars? I have fuel leaking out of my petcock. I was so proud of myself...I changed the oil, oil filter and cleaned the air filter (kn oil filter, resprayed and all that) but yeah. I need to rebuild the carbs and potentially replace the petcock. I'm proud I did it myself, but I don't have a garage and rebuilding the the carbs are way out of my league (just learned how to use a ratchet lol)..so gonna buy the parts and get someone to do it for me. Little disheartening

 

he list them in this link. first is individual parts then his 2 levels of complete kits
https://www.xjbikes.com/forums/threads/xj-parts-catalog-section-c-fuel-system.44642/

Each set of our HCP18721 Hitachi standard complete rebuild kits listed below include:

- HCP18795 float valve sets (4)
- HCP9855 float valve screens installed onto the valve seats (4)
- HCP862 standard bowl gasket (4)
- HCP895 mixture screw o-rings (4)
- HCP896 mixture screw washers (4)
- HCP6573 mixture screw springs (4)
- HCP11141 choke plunger valve rubber dust caps (4)
- HCP15785 fuel bowl brass straight-slot drain screws (4)
- HCP38B throttle shaft seals (8)
- HCP3991 throttle shaft shim washers (8)
- HCP1348 throttle shaft butterfly valve screws (8)
- HCP905 throttle shaft e-clips (2)
- HCP2421 fuel supply tube o-rings (10)

HCP18721 Aftermarket Hitachi HSCxx-series carb STANDARD COMPLETE REBUILD KITS, for use on all XJ650 (except Turbo), 1985-86 XJ700 air-cooled models, and all 1981-84 XJ750 air-cooled models. NOTE: these kits contain ten (10) of the fuel supply/overflow tube o-rings, which is enough to accommodate the HSC33 series carbs; owners of the HSC32 series carbs will find that they have 4 extra o-rings leftover, as those carbs only require 6 of those o-rings for the fuel supply tubes. Also included are eight (8) of the throttle shaft plastic shim washers, which will leave you with one extra shim (HSC32 carbs) or three extra shims (HSC33 carbs). Contains all the parts needed to do an entire rack of carbs:

his delux complete kits have upgraded parts

Each set of our HCP18863 Hitachi deluxe complete rebuild kits listed below include:

- all of the items in the HCP18721 standard complete rebuild kits but with the following upgraded parts:
* the HCP15785 brass bowl drain screws are replaced with the HCP8878 allen-drive bowl drain screws.
* the HCP862 standard bowl gaskets are replaced with the HCP18411 hi-performance bowl gaskets

HCP18863 Aftermarket Hitachi HSCxx-series carb DELUXE COMPLETE REBUILD KITS, for use on all XJ650 (except Turbo), 1985-86 XJ700 air-cooled models, and all 1981-84 XJ750 air-cooled models. NOTE: these kits contain ten (10) of the fuel supply/overflow tube o-rings, which is enough to accommodate the HSC33 series carbs; owners of the HSC32 series carbs will find that they have 4 extra o-rings leftover, as those carbs only require 6 of those o-rings for the fuel supply tubes. Also included are eight (8) of the throttle shaft plastic shim washers, which will leave you with one extra shim (HSC32 carbs) or three extra shims (HSC33 carbs). Contains all the parts needed to do an entire rack of carbs:

then partial kits

 

if you go directly to his web site there is an email address
www.xj4ever.com

or just start a conversation with member chacal he is xj4ever

 

Thanks...275 usd huh. Wow plus shipping I'm sure. Bumming hard I appreciate it though. With that part number I found it and took a screenshot

 

you need to dissemble the carbs first then decide what you need. I replace all orings and seals, and any parts that are damaged.
needle valves need replacement most of the time you can just replace needles or the whole body assembly.

while it is nice to just to replace all parts some in that come in the kits are still good.


- HCP18795 float valve sets (4)
- HCP9855 float valve screens installed onto the valve seats (4)
- HCP862 standard bowl gasket (4)
- HCP895 mixture screw o-rings (4)
- HCP896 mixture screw washers (4)
- HCP6573 mixture screw springs (4)
- HCP11141 choke plunger valve rubber dust caps (4)
- HCP15785 fuel bowl brass straight-slot drain screws (4)
- HCP38B throttle shaft seals (8).
- HCP3991 throttle shaft shim washers (8)
- HCP1348 throttle shaft butterfly valve screws (8)
- HCP905 throttle shaft e-clips (2)
- HCP2421 fuel supply tube o-rings (10)

items listed in blue may not be needed unless broken on dissambly.
Items in red may not be needed if you use a fuel filter float valve screens do not need to be replaced or used your original may still be good , springs not rusted

drain screws only if yours are messed up on dissembly
float valve sets, you may want to just replace the float needles.

 

Thanks, that does help a lot!

 

Replace them anyway while you're there.