sayosen
XS400 Addict
About a year ago, I stumbled onto a few pictures of 70's era Japanese bikes modified into cafe racers, brats, bobbers, and street trackers. Honestly, I wasn't looking for Japanese porn... ok, maybe I was, but I found the bikes instead and was amazed! So, I showed a few of the bikes to my friend Dave. As guys often do, we reminisced about riding back in the day (more than 20 years ago) and thought it would be cool to build our own bike. As it turned out, Dave’s sister had a ‘81 Honda CM400E (Carolyn) sitting in the shed and just happened to find a ‘71 CB100 (One Lung Mabel) on Craigslist for $200. So… we picked them both up the same day! And then over the next five weeks, we picked up a ‘75 Kawasaki S3 (The Reluctant B*tch) and two 1978 Honda CB400 TII Hawk II’s (Betty & Veronica). Holy crap! We went a bit overboard, but we now had some bikes to rebuild!
A year later, Mabel’s brat style rebuild is done, we just dropped the rebuilt engine back in the B*tch, Veronica was rehabbed and sold, Betty has been parted out, and Carolyn is going to be a long term project… mainly because we can’t decide if she is going to be a street tracker or a bobber.
So about a month ago I picked up a pretty clean 1978 Yamaha XS400 2E for $600 on one of the oddest road trips yet that included a toxic spill, an evil GPS, black ice (Remember kids – the bridges freeze first!) and some backwoods farm road mudding! As for Lola – the seat is toast, there is one tiny dent in an otherwise clean tank, and we got her to fire after 10 minutes of tinkering. Now to take her down to the frame, clean her up, and figure out what I want to do with her!
Not that we have been building long, but we have learned when you get a new bike, the first two things you do are buy a service manual and join the right forum - both have been invaluable countless times! I plan to start a build thread as I know I will have a bunch of questions for you guys!
~ Tim
A year later, Mabel’s brat style rebuild is done, we just dropped the rebuilt engine back in the B*tch, Veronica was rehabbed and sold, Betty has been parted out, and Carolyn is going to be a long term project… mainly because we can’t decide if she is going to be a street tracker or a bobber.
So about a month ago I picked up a pretty clean 1978 Yamaha XS400 2E for $600 on one of the oddest road trips yet that included a toxic spill, an evil GPS, black ice (Remember kids – the bridges freeze first!) and some backwoods farm road mudding! As for Lola – the seat is toast, there is one tiny dent in an otherwise clean tank, and we got her to fire after 10 minutes of tinkering. Now to take her down to the frame, clean her up, and figure out what I want to do with her!
Not that we have been building long, but we have learned when you get a new bike, the first two things you do are buy a service manual and join the right forum - both have been invaluable countless times! I plan to start a build thread as I know I will have a bunch of questions for you guys!
~ Tim
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