Ilovemountains
XS400 Enthusiast
Does anyone have a scanned shop manual, it’s been a few years since I’ve wrenched on an XS400, I got the new to me 79 running Sunday morning, surprisingly it didn’t take much at all, fresh gas, fresh battery, choke and 3 kicks and it fired right up, Im just glad it had a key with it. Whoever the genius was that owned it before me was should have NEVER been allowed to work on a motorcycle though, the fuse box is gone; they hard wired the wires together in place of fuses. They also painted the forks, shocks, engine, tank etc. all black with rattle can paint. The best thing wrong I found was the crankcase FULL of oil, it had so much oil in it that even the stator housing was full, at least 4 quarts came out!!! The good thing is it does have a 2-1 header, the front tire looks to be less than a year old, the disk brakes both work, and it runs, quite well, it idled smooth and had good throttle response, sounded good and all the lights / tach worked. It is going to need some work though, I need a clutch cable, some carb seals since I’m going to break them down and give them a quick once over, and a chain before I’m even going to test ride it though I don’t anticipate any issues. Any ideas as to how to remove the black paint from the engine? I was thinking about trying the pressure washer just to see it it can blast it loose, if not I can wire brush it off, mainly the jugs and head, I don’t care how it looks for now more concerned about heat transfer. Let me know about the manual! ~Matt
