Reed valve engine breather.

[toglhot]

Painted.

[Whoremonger]

Beautiful craftsmanship, beautiful bike!

[toglhot]

Here it is, another fuel distributor block - number four. Just couldn't help myself.

I moved the inlet spigots closer together, milled a step at the front, round off the edge either side and mounted the block in the battery clamp holes, so it sits further back than it used to, thus giving more room to get at the air filters.

But, the old mounting holes are now visible, I'll address that later on.

Fuel filters are easy to get at, and a bit more obvious than I'd like, but, they are the only 90 degree filters I could find.

No more fuel distributoer blocks though, everywhere I look in my workshop, there seems to be an unused one sitting around looking for a home.

Happy with results now: Looks good, I can get to everything reasonably easy and I have somewhere for the engine blowby gasses to go, and I'm not feeding blowby particulates into the intakes.

[toglhot]

A little neatening up under the tank.
I had the cable splitter between the top engine mounts, difficult to get at and it was a little busy in there with two wiring looms, throttle cable splitter and clutch cable. So, I made a small bracket to hold the splitter on the outside of the left engine mount. It is now held securely in place, instead of just flopping around.
While I was at it, I attached the clutch cable to the right side, top engine mount via two small P clamps.
The cables that came with the VM34s had a curved stell tube which locates inside the top adjuster. This puts the cable in the way of the petcocks when removing/replacing the tank. To remedy, I made two new cables, minus the curved tubes and routed them,over the backbone of the frame.
The cables clear the petcocks now and have just a slight curve to the carbs.

[TriNortchopz]

Great concepts and beauty fabrication.

Is that splitter plastic? I see they make stainless ones with a brass slider for the Brits:

another project perhaps?

[toglhot]

Already made one of them when running BS38s. Except mine was fixed to the top engine mount so,it wouldn't flop around. Aluminium body, brass slider and home anodised.

[TriNortchopz]

aha, very nice, along with your other parts, great concept, design, excellent fabrication and fitment.

[toglhot]

Couple of pics of the finished bike, plus a quick video fly around. Lots and lots of mods on this one, not a great deal of Yamaha left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCiit3y8NMA

[farmall]

That's an unusually tasteful Yamaha cafe and the workmanship is exceptional.

By all means keep posting your work.

[toglhot]

Test ride.
I can’t ride anymore, buggered hips, fused fingers, buggered toes and no elbow joints left make it impossible. But the time had come for the bike’s first test ride, so, I started the bike and rode it gingerly out of the workshop and up to the garage, legs stepping as I went, and there I stopped. I was going to give it a shot and ride it up the street for a test ride, by the time I got to the garage I just didn’t have the confidence I could hold the thing up without dropping it. So, I stuck my head over the fence and asked Stuart next door if he’d like to take the bike for its first ride, ‘yep’ said he. Stuart and his brother Adam were the guys that got the 74 TX650 of the trailer when I first brought it home. I remember Adam screwing his face up when he first saw it, asking ‘what is it?’. I told him it was a 74 Yamaha TX650, probably made before he was a glint in his father’s eye. ‘What you gonna do with that pile of $#it’ he replied. Anyway, I pushed it around to my workshop and started work on it, that was three years ago.

Anyway, when I rolled the Roll a Door up, there stood Stuart and Adam, helmets in hand. They’d heard it a few times when I’d started it up, but probably expected to see it in much the same condition, only now it was going. Both Stuart and Adam’s eyes popped when they saw it ‘beautiful’ said they, a number of times. So, Stuart donned his helmet and I grabbed my camera, too late, Stuart was gone, roaring up the street. But I managed to catch him on his second lap. On his third lap he never returned, so, Adam and I set off on foot to find him and met him halfway back, pushing the bike. When I looked at the bike, I noticed the fuel tap was off and said ‘you ran out of fuel, didn’t you’. ‘Don’t know’ said Stuart ‘it just stopped’. I then explained that old bikes had manual fuel taps you have to turn on and off by hand. ‘Oh, that’s different’. Stuart and Adam both ride modern technicolour nightmares.

Stuart pushed the bike back to the garage, about 100 metres. I turned the taps on, waited a bit for the fuel to go through and started the bike again. By the time I picked up my camera, Adam had jumped on and was taking off. I managed to catch him roar out the garage and up the street before stopping the camera.

When he returned, he was trying to find neutral, I said stick it in second then tap it down, which he did, easy peasy. So, if your XS650 is difficult to get into neutral, tap it down from second, never fails. I suspect the difficulty is because of the very short throw of the lever.

After Adam returned, I quizzed both on how it went: Brakes worked well, started easily, gears changed nicely, handled well around corners, seat was comfy, bars were in a good position due to risers, motor ran beautifully, everything worked well and best of all – the sound!

So, the 74 TX 650 has been roaded, nothing left to do. Perhaps!

Sorry about the sound, this tablet of mine makes everything sound like it’s under water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaFxHRc3C-Y