What did you do with your XS today?

Dave, I'm curious, what did you do for packing? metal scrubbers wrapped around the baffle?

Yes. The mufflers I currently have can't be disassembled. I had inserted SS pot scrubbers into the body of the mufflers via the inlet. They eventually got packed too tight and were causing too much restriction, though the noise was greatly reduced. I removed the scrubbers and then inserted 2 of them into the baffles from the exit. Still louder than I want, but flowing better. No problem hitting red line in 4th gear. :D

I'm thinking that there must be some weird resonance going on, as I'm currently jetted rather lean, I had to lower the needles 1 notch below stock. I may try going back to the stock needle height and lowering the float level as I think it is slightly lean right now. Just ran out of time today. Don't want to be ripping around late at night and pissing people off when they are trying to sleep.
 
Today I had two good long rides, one with my fiancee and one by myself. Got new tires on the bike on Friday and it's amazing how much better it feels. We're headed to the mountains for the next few days and the bike's staying home but I'm already daydreaming of a long-haul bike camping trip next year.
 
So I went with my XS400D on a first longer ride after I went through almost (!) the whole bike because it was sitting for unkown period of time. However i didn´t dig into the bottom of the engine, just the top. :banghead: After about 5 kilometers today the engine just made a loud bang and stuck so I made a long black strip on the road with my rear tyre and I nearly fell down. It was sudden, no vibrations, no loss of power, no overheating, smoking... Just nothing suspicious :shrug: So far I couldn´t dissasemble the engine because it is stuck and I cannot reach one bolt on the cam chain sprocket. Only thing I know is that cam, valves and pistons are alright. Luckily I´ve already found the tutorial by Volcom how to dissasemble it from the bottom. Gonna try it tomorrow. Wish me luck!
 
Got some baffle material from Helix to wrap the baffles in my ,new mufflers. Will have to wait until tomorrow AM to hear
the effect as its now late and I do want to annoy my neighbors... ,

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Got new Headlight, looks good so far, I will try to mount it next week, Waiting for clutch for the car, (the real priority) Clutch arrived

Bikemaster Halo, which will accept the HID kit I bought last year!
http://www.bikemaster.com/chrome_angel.html

I seen the real reason we don't follow horse trailers, I was cruising, and notice the tail go, and stuff fall down. Good thing I was in the opposite tire tracks. Shouldn't the owner clean up that stuff?
 
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I got tired of other motorists not seeing my front turn signals, so I replaced the dim $10/ea LED bulbs with $80/pair LED bulbs. Yes, they are ridiculously expensive, but also blindingly bright from 10' away in direct sunlight, and have a lifetime warranty. I installed them in the parking lot of the shop and rode about 200km in city traffic and on the highway the rest of the day. I noticed an immediate difference in how oncoming motorists reacted to me when I was turning. They weren't fixated on my headlight, red jacket, or hi-vis yellow helmet, they didn't wait for me to go straight through an intersection because they hadn't seen my signal light, they reacted to the signal light flashing as I would expect them to.

Now that I've replaced all the cheap LED bulbs (mostly due to failure) with good ones, I wish I'd just spent the money wisely the first time and bought good ones. As a German friend of mine says: "I'm too poor to buy low quality". Lesson learned, again... :doh:
 
From a local shop. They are one of the few around that have stock, and even better will allow regular customers to install / try parts out. These are the bulbs I bought, in white, 1157 type. Most of our bikes would take 1156, but I converted the turn signals to 1157 last year to also have the marker light. I tried the amber version, but they didn't appear as bright through the amber lens.
 
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Fine tuning carbs is so much fun. :) Center notch on the needles is slightly rich, and one lower is lean, so I chose the lower notch and shimmed the needles. Much easier than messing with float heights. Made and installed 0.25mm thick aluminium washers. My neighbour has a metal punch and I had a pop can. I made a couple extras, just in case I need them.
 
Changed the head stem bearings to tapered roller bearings from pyramid parts. Also rebuilt my forks with new seals, cut an inch off the springs, made some 1 1/4 inch spacers for the damping rods and filled with 15w fork fluid 6 inches from the top. The seals were completely blown out before but it will be interesting to compare against my mates cb450 to see how firm they are with the mods
 
Have been converting and old english miller bicycle headlamp to an h3 single beam will put pics in my build thread in day or so. My rebel. Headlight was to big this 3.5 inch miller is gonna be much nicer.
 
I removed the starter cable today. I want to remove the entire unit, but I don't want to deal with finding a way to attach the cover back on without it..I'll do it eventually.
I also replaced my float seats and needles! Feels much better now.

Gotta replace the oil and gasket tomorrow, as well as rerouting the clutch and brake cables! I put on euro bars today. :D
 
removed the metal scrubbers i was using as baffling... Bike was only running on one side after installing them. Maybe too much back pressure on the one side? She started up great and ran fine with them out. Just brutally looud!

just need a sync!

lost my new starter button. bought it a while back and i swear i put it in this one nuts and bolts cup on my work bench! cup is still there, but no more button. could be anywhere in that mess of a garage.

Im sure ill find it moments after i order and install a new one....
 
I did the same thing once upon a time. It ran okay at first, but it always sounded like it was working harder. After a while the carbon build up on the scrubbers caused even more restriction. It was much happier when I gave in and spent the extra money on replacing my shorties with a used stock exhaust.

I thought about trying the $50 megaphones from Mikesxs but I wanted the OEM feel.
 
Dave I hope your led lights give you more vis that you need,sometimes I don't think it matters bcause I had people look dead at me and still turn out in front of me.
Anyways despite my bike needing issues fixed the wiring and ignition issue I haven't had time lately to do anything to the bike.You can read what I have been doing in the lounge section if interested.:wink2:
 
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