Dale – Canada xs650

Downward spiral

The bike was a ’74TX650A originally with a ’78 XS650 Special engine. It’s style was “updated” some time in the ’80’s which began it’s downward spiral. I messed around a bunch with the engine the first year setting it all back to spec.

The frame, as I said, was hardtailed by a buddy, HamBone Kustoms. He also fabricated the battery box. The rest of the fabrication, mounting tabs, light mounts, foot board mounts, and the like were fabricated my me with very primitive hand tools. This includes the sissy bar which I bent up with a mapp gas torch and a homemade jig. Took some 1/2″ round stock stainless, bent it up, and bashed the tips flat and drilled them for mounting. A technique I found in an old chopper magazine from the late ’60’s.

There’s tonnes of OEM bits left on the bike. I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada so we don’t have a lot of great parts dealers around unless you want to buy more old Japanese OEM parts from the hillbilly brothers.

Sooo we make old new.

Pretty simple stuff. Make the front fender the new rear, rewired a signal light to be the tail light, moved the brake switch by drilling out the hole in the drum brake where the brake shoe warning light was mounted. The vintage chopper parts mostly came from Egay. The front wheel is off of an old Canadian CanAm dirt bike and is gonna remain functionally knobby.

Saskatchewan has the largest municipal (grid) road network in Canada, totaling 165,000 km. And yes we explore those gravel roads on the weekends on hard tails. I did a rough estimate of costs and the whole bike all up is likely around $1200 with a full tank of gas and fresh oil. Being in S’toon probably $500 of that is shipping.