– Finished!
Hello, My name is Mike McFadden and I live in Owensboro, KY and work out of my shop beside my home going by the name of M&M Customs below is the info on the “Salt Shaker” build. I finally finished up the XS650, as you can see here. The bike came to me from a Yamaha District Manager after talking about a 72 CB500 Café I was working on at that time. The bike was sent to a local Yamaha dealer and I picked it up with the Bill of Sale in hand. The bike is a 1980 XS650 Special and has about 8000 miles on the odometer. It hadn’t ran in awhile due to some brake issues up front. I brought it home started to cut and just went with what I could do in the garage.
My goal was to fabricate everything in my shop with basic tools and also do the finishing work as I’ve painted and done metalwork for over 20yrs. The sub frame was made from a company on the internet with a drop seat design at 5” over on the stretch. I was not thrilled with the final product and the 7 months that had gone by before receiving the frame. I ended up having a friend, Brad Greenwell, to eliminate the drop seat and go with a sleeker look. Brad did an awesome job on getting it set up. I wanted to have a bike with a “Booneville Look” and look fast sitting still. I fabricated the tail section and battery tray under the seat to house the wiring harness. Next up was to do something different with the exhaust. I’ve seen too many bikes with your typical pipe kit and I was looking for something that would be hidden.
The chin spoiler was made out of stainless the first time around but weighed just short of a ton. I molded the second one off of it out of fiberglass and saved a lot of weight. The wheels are 21” Invaders from Scotty at Invader Wheels. www.invaderwheels.com and the tires are Pirelli Scorpions. The Copper pieces came from Mr.Lucky’s.
The motor has just been cleaned up and freshened and I added some new carbs from Mike’s XS and also including new bolts and nuts. The bars are made from the original buckhorns and some 35mm clip on clamps. I wanted the bike to have an old basic black and white porcelain look so I sprayed the black and used vanilla shake from PPG on it.
The seat was made from an old leather jacket of my wife’s. She hadn’t used it for years, so I took it to the shop and cut it up. The bike is pretty quick and doesn’t ride to bad being a hardtail. The exhaust wrap made it on this bike and my other builds because in our area the wrap has become popular with the Hot Rod crowd. I was contacted through email that Yamaha would like to have it under their corporate tent during the MotoGp race in Indianapolis at the Indy500 track alongside some of their newest bikes and older racing classics. This made my day as you can imagine.
Update: After presenting the bike to the Yamaha representatives during the 2012 Indianapolis MotoGp race. They have decided to take the bike for the next year on tour for the Progressive International Motorcycle Show Circuit throughout the United States. To say I was floored would be an understatement. The bike will be the main subject for their booth and rumor has it tie into a new triple or XS line coming in 2014. I haven’t been told anything to those rumors just hear say. The bike was picked up by Yamaha at my house and taken from Kentucky to Cypress California to the Yamaha headquarters to prepare it for the upcoming shows starting in Atlanta.
Thanks
Mike McFadden
