Not sure how much more progress I'll be able to make until I get some parts in, most of which are coming from overseas so the updates may slow down for a little while. My fault for not ordering them sooner.
So to make up for it I thought I'd throw up some pics of my wifes XS400 I built for her last winter.
How we bought it on Christmas day:
I wanted to do every feasible part in powdercoat that I could on this bike, do a complete rebuild of nearly every single part and also do 100% of the work myself, from metal fab, wheel building and truing to paint, electrical and even sewing a seat cover.
I had just started to do powdercoating for myself and this was going to be a good learning curve. Previously I had only been doing smaller parts that would fit in a regular kitchen oven I picked up for $20 which made it a pain so I decided I needed something bigger for this bike. Quick look on kijiji I found a $10 filing cabinet. Few hours later I had this beauty. Works great and heats up very quickly with the 2 elements.
With that built so I can do bigger items I could start getting a feel for the colors she wanted. Decided to go with strawberry red and white with some black here and there.
Blasted the old dirty rims and hubs and put some powder on them.
Go from this
To this with new spokes.
Carbs were next. 100% powder.
The engine had only 30 psi compression so it was time to rebuild it. After tearing it down the rings were completely seized in the pistons. No matter how much heat or soaking I did, the top 2 compression rings wouldn't free up. New pistons, rings, gaskets and seals were ordered.
Had the bores measured and were still in spec so I just honed them as they had no crosshatch left. Cleaned up the ports and valves and lapped the seats. Luckily that's mostly all it needed. Then it was time to paint the engine, powder coat the cases and reassemble.
Next up was frame work. Quickly cut the triple back bone out to fit a smaller tank. Slugged and replaced the backbone with a single .120 wall. Had to make new side and rear tubes. Later re-did the rear tubes as I didn't like how they were.
New rear tubes and hoop. I bent the hoop with an OA torch, winging the dimensions to fit a CBR taillight I wanted to use. Was shocked it came out nearly perfect the first time.
Electronics box
Ignition and start button
