'80 XS400 whiteout

How about the forks? I was wondering if they were aluminum, I'd like to anodize them if possible. Can I strip the chrome if so and still do it?
 
So i've been doing some work to get this bike all done for this year.

Painted the front fender to match the tank. It came out great, however I feel the bike looked better overall with it being black. It's more noticeable now and also is more noticeable that there is no rear fender. Installed an electronic tach and it seems to be working, albeit a little delayed it seems. I just connected the trigger wire of the gauge to orange on the coil wiring, is that what others did?

On to more important stuff - I added a ground from the regulator wiring to the frame in an attempt to figure out what is going on with killing the batteries. I taped up a multimeter to monitor the volts. At idle with headlight on its around 13-ish volts. Cruising it's at 14.7v, never went above that. I only went out for a few short minutes so the regulator never really got warmed up but while that is on the high end of the spectrum of charing I think it's still in the accepted range. Also considering there is only an LED taillight, 35w headlight and a few LED backlights on the gauges that are drawing anything from the system aside from the ignition. I'm going to take it out for an extended drive this weekend maybe to see how it goes.

Secondly, has anyone used an IR gun to take readings of the head and headpipes while idling or just after riding? If you have I'd love if you could share your readings so I can compare. I don't want to burn up valves or pistons and these headpipes seem very hot after even just a few moments of the engine running. If it's running too hot I'll have to look more at my jetting.
 
I havnt checked in a while but if i remember correctly mines usually around 215F on the exhaust side of the plug after a solid 30 minute ride around town. The left side of mine runs about 10 degrees hotter than the right.... and I use Rotella T Triple 15w-40.

those IR guns are the most fun Iveever had with a tool ever...
 
I too have Rotella 15-40 in it. White jug.

I'll have to check out what it says. The pipes are wrapped so that would probably skew readings of the exhaust pipe.
 
Keep in mind that the readings of IR guns are greatly affected by the properties of the surface material.
Chromed pipes would be tough to get an accurate reading on because of the extremely low emmisivity of the chrome (.10).
The wrap itself will be slightly cooler than the pipe but you'll get a much more accurate reading than you would have if the pipes were exposed chrome.
The wrap is probably above .85 emissivity so you're going be reading 75% more of the actual energy that the IR gun would have missed if it were reading on chrome.
 
14.7 is where the cutoff point should be, and 13v at idle is just right, so your charging system sounds up to snuff. I haven't looked through the old posts yet, but if you are using a cheap small battery with E-start and thin wiring to the starter, the battery will be toast in no time.

What brand of tach is it? The cheaper the tach, the slower it will refresh, which will be seen as a delay in the reading. No getting around that unfortunately. My speedhut gauge is quick as can be, but my Chinese digital readout tach only updates every half second, and boy is it slow to catch up to the Speedhut.
You have it hooked up right, that's the negative side of the coil. If it's not jumping around all over the place for no reason, it's a good hookup with no interference.
 
I use an I.R. gun. For a good plug color, a temp of around 270-285*F at the exhaust side of the plug is what I get on all four of the bikes. Stock and modded. This is on a 75-80* day and 50 miles of 55-60mph riding.
 
14.7 is where the cutoff point should be, and 13v at idle is just right, so your charging system sounds up to snuff. I haven't looked through the old posts yet, but if you are using a cheap small battery with E-start and thin wiring to the starter, the battery will be toast in no time.

What brand of tach is it? The cheaper the tach, the slower it will refresh, which will be seen as a delay in the reading. No getting around that unfortunately. My speedhut gauge is quick as can be, but my Chinese digital readout tach only updates every half second, and boy is it slow to catch up to the Speedhut.
You have it hooked up right, that's the negative side of the coil. If it's not jumping around all over the place for no reason, it's a good hookup with no interference.

It's just a cheap ebay Chinese deal. It doesn't really matter that it's a little slow. She just said she had to have one. It doesn't bounce at all. I figured I'd have to add a resistor like I had read about but it seems okay.

To sum up the battery issue. It would kill a battery in short order. By kill, I mean dead cell, not drained. One battery died after about 45-50 minutes of riding, one after about 5 minutes and had a dead cell the next morning. Each with different amounts of starts. Another one died after about 40. The starter wiring is factory from the starter to solenoid and solenoid to battery. The ground is new 4 gauge I believe from engine to battery.

Whenever I would test the voltages at idle or revved they seemed to be in order so I didn't know what was killing them since the battery wouldn't be hot or showing signs of swelling/explosion. I added a rubber boot to the battery cables to make sure it wasn't somehow shorting out as well now. One thought is that the regulator is failing after it heats up and they are overcharging or somehow the reg can't dump all the excess through the wiring so I've added a ground to the frame right off the regulator pigtail. I'm going to keep an eye on it. If it kills another battery I'll be at a loss as to what the problem is.
 
If the dead cells are on the ends of the battery, I'd be checking the rectifier as one (or more) of the diodes is probably blown. This would have an A/C ripple feeding through the system, and the battery is acting like a capacitor and dampening it. This is obviously hard on the battery.
 
I do remember testing the rectifier and it testing out okay as well. I'll have to double check it but I don't think I posted previously about it. These are sealed agms so I don't know if I could test individual cells.
 
Got it all plated and insured finally. Battery seems to be working after the changes I made. Not enough riding time to know for sure yet though. Hasn't gone above 14.7x while riding yet so that is a good sign.

Made a tach block-off today for it.

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Would love to get out and get some good photo's in a nice back drop soon now that it's on the road.
 
What would you want for another tach block-off?

$20? Not sure if CanPost will accept it in an envelope or not as a letter.

Wife rode it for a short ride today, spiked at 14.77 volts but no higher and battery is still good.

Used the IR gun on the head, exhaust side of plug was about 275*. Exhaust with wrap was 475* by bottom middle of engine and 550*ish IIRC near the head. Going to measure more spots and try to measure oil temp next time. I'm thinking I could adjust the carb needles to richen it up a little and see how it reacts to that.
 
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Hutch are you an upholsterer?? You so non-challantly reported about the seat you made (long while back I know) and it looks bloody awesome!

Awe inspiring man, you've got your hands in every single pot :p Bike looks amazing by the way. Great colour choices! Hilarious that you forgot the wrist-pin. I haven't done anything funny like that, just stripping important bolts left right and center.
 
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