Proud owner of a beautiful Yamaha XS650!
I bought the frame from a friend of mine. He had it for a couple of months but didn’t do anything with it. I already had the engine so it wasn’t much work to transplant it. We took the gas-tank from a xs750 but since it\’s bigger than the original we had to move fixtures. On the bottom fixture we also attached a big bolt through it as a leverage-point for the seat.
We originally had two spings for the seat but they were to weak for my enormous weight (190 pounds at that time). I came up with the idea to use just one thick spring. I welded a piece of pipe underneath the seat and one on the seat pan.
The spring slides over it and is pressed between the two. I wanted to do something different with the exhausts but didn\’t have access to a pipe-bender or good pipe for that matter. We went to a plumber and got weld bends and gasspipe which we bend with a little handpump. Attached nice chrome ends on it and the result lookes and sounds amazing. Ordered an old ape-hanger through Internet for a couple of bucks. Extended the brake-lines and shifter cable.
Just for the look of it I made a thin chrome moulding that goes over the middle of the fenders, gas-tank and seat-pan. This gives it a kind of nostalgic look and feel.
So, after ten or twelve Saturday’s I finally had the bike I always wanted. For a good price at that. Total costs around 800 dollars. Estimated price if I want to sell the bike is round 4000 dollars. But this is irrelevant. The main thing is that I’m a happy and proud owner of a beautiful Yamaha XS650!
I never thought that I would and could build a bike like this. But with the help of some of my best friends at Phoenix-AZ Motoren in Best (Netherlands), anything is possible.
Thanks Tijn Buschman.
