I picked up a 2000 Yamaha V-Star 650 then proceeded to chop it, nothing major but love the old school look so chop chop chop, I noticed the xs650 Yamaha was was real popular and seemed to have a cult following and i could see why …just a real sweet bike and Kick start ,,, thats old school…
I would look for xs650’s on craigs list but guys asking top dollar for some hacked up bikes so continued to search every day…after about 2 months i found a 1981 xs650 in good shape for $950 so i called the guy and he said he had posted it about 30 mins ago…it was like 10 pm so i asked him what time he wakes up in the morning he said 8am i said i would be there at 7am, when i got there 7am he came out and his cell phone was ringing off the hook with people asking about the 1981 xs650 but too bad i had cash in hand so sold ! ! ! …sweet…
I am new to building and new to carbs timing ignition stuff so i did lots of research and found this builder “daddy G” or Rich is his real name in my home state of New jersey…Rich welded a TC brothers hard tail on for me and did a few other things like the tc brothers foward controls, but most of all Rich gave me tons of real good real world advice which saved the build, i could not have finished the build if it were not for daddy g…so shout out to you Rich !
I started the build around june 1st and it took about 2 months, i had lots of problems, first off the tci ignition box went on me so i had to install a pamco ignition, (thanks to pamco pete for advice too),
when i got the bike running it ran like Sh&t so i cleaned out the carbs and Daddy G said i should go from the 130 main jets to big ass 160 jets to i went off to the local yamaha dealer and picked up a pare of mikuni 160 jets and Bam it did the trick starts with 1 kick now…
I had to do some creative fabrication but that always half the fun of any project,,, well i may be looking for another xs650 to build over the winter maybe a brat bike…hmmmm
also thanks for the good advice from the guys over at xs650 garage…
Mike
