1982 XS400 Heritage Special - Teardown and Rebuild

Jon

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Hi all,

I've posted a couple times on the board in the past, but wanted to give you guys the full story of the 1982 Heritage Special rebuild into a brat / cafe style ride. Took me about a year and a half. Other than a few odds and ends, she'll be ready to ride as soon as the rest of the snow melts here in New Brunswick (CAN).

I picked up the bike for 700$, and it was actually in pretty good shape. Only had 12,000KM, which is crazy. I could have left it as it, but hey, what's the fun in that. The picture below is not mine, but looked exactly the same.

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Got her home and started the teardown. Pulled the engine and tried to remember where all the parts went. (Took a lot of pictures on my phone).

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Once I had it down to the frame, I cut the back end and welded on my seat hoop. Turned out nice, but the hoop metal was thinner than I thought, so ended up being pretty hard to weld without going through. I reinforced the rear frame with a steel bar that you can't see under the cross section.

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Next I started scrubbing, polishing, de-rusting, scrubbing some more...

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The carbs were in good shape, just needed a good cleaning. I ended up rejetting the main jet and pilot jets since I was installing Uni pod filters. As others suggested, I went 2 up on the main jet and 1 up on the pilot jet. Also moved the needle 1 position. Air/fuel mixture screws are now turned 3 turns out. I also synced the carbs using a homemade manometer, and glad I did since one side was pulling quite a bit more than the other. (Now it idles and sounds great, no hanging revs).

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Brought the pipes back to life too...lots of scrubbing on those. Mostly just Coke and aluminum foil though...quite amazing what it can do.

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...on to part 2
 
Once I got tired of scrubbing, it was time to move on to the electrical tray. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to do and how I was going to fit everything, I cut out the pattern, bent it into shape, and welded it to the frame.

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Once everything was ready, I dropped off the frame, wheels and tank to get powder coated. Got a pretty good deal on everything for 400$ professionally done. The guy really liked what I was doing and had an XS400 of his own when he was younger.

While I waited, I set up a lesser professional paint shop of my own to do the smaller pieces. Most pieces turned out nice though, so it worked well.

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(I ended up not using the headlight brackets that go over the forks, didn't like the look as much)

Once the frame was back from powder coating, it was time to put the engine back in. For the engine, I repainted the block and covers, then sanded down the edges of the fins.Polished the valve caps and other stuff, turned out nice. I removed the starter motor and plugged the hole leading to the starter gear and chain. I ended up lightly gluing the cover on since I couldn't find a cover bracket and didn't feel like making one.

Worked on my electrical tray some more and figured out where stuff would sit. I went with a small 2.3amp/hrs battery. Since I'm doing kickstart only, I just need enough juice to excite the coils to start the bike. My handlebar switch also allows me to have the headlight turned off while kicking, so it doesn't drain the battery on start. From my rough calculations, I can run the bike for about 12 minutes before draining the battery. This should give me enough time to get going and have the charging system kick in....but I'll be testing out that theory soon enough.

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Here's the bike with the wheels back on and everything with the powder coat look. For tires, I ended up going with Kendra Challengers. The tread pattern looks pretty cool, and the overall look is pretty aggressive. Got the fork gaiters on too and new handlebar. Took the rear shocks aparts and polished those too...although compressing them to take them apart was a challenge. I (very carefully) went with the zip tie method found online.

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On to part 3
 
Next it was on to electrical. I pulled out the original wire harness and redid everything custom. Since it's kickstart only, I removed nearly everything but the basics. I think the diagram I made and used is posted in the forum somewhere (the diagram database thread). My rear tail light is LED with integrated turn signals, so I had to get a new relay for that. The headlight is original. I learned a heck of a lot doing the electrical...like how to read an electrical diagram.

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I bought a universal switch for the bars so I could run my headlight, turn signals, and horn off the same switch. You get what you pay for though, and I ran into a problem with the copper connector not making proper contact to turn on the headlight. It was made faulty and couldn't be modified. After having a beer and thinking about it, I thought, hey the aluminium in this beer can is a conductor of electricity. So, I cut out a piece and fashioned a new connector. Put everything back together and now works great. (Ichiban moto...badass)

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After some other progress, I was still stuck on how I was going to make the seat pan. I didn't want to try and make a steel pan, and I had never worked with fiberglass before. I went the fiberglass route since I wanted to try something new. I prepped the area with tape, then aluminium tape. I built up and formed the hump with some shop towels and cardboard before taping over it. The fiberglass process went pretty well, and I'm glad I did it since the pan has a perfect mould and fit to the frame.

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Once the seat pan was done, I had it upholstered. It turned out exactly how I wanted, so I was real happy about that. I also put the Yamaha plastics back on the tank and installed it as well. Here is the most recent look, and it's starting to look like a finished bike now. Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge and experience rebuilding these XS400s. I learned a TON on this forum, and can't wait to take this rebuild for a ride.

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Last edited:
Specdog, I just randomly pulled that picture online, what the odds of that! The only picture I had of mine is when I first picked it up and it was pretty dark (not sure why I didn’t just take another).

Thanks for the comment, and i’ll keep the forum in mind when I have questions or run into any issues.
 
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