Thinking about building an off-road XS400. Advice?

[JordansCustoms]

A guy who lives near me has an '81 XS400 Special II sitting in his barn. I don't think it's been used in a decade. It has a little over 5,000 original miles. A little surface rust is coming through the tank on the outside. The fork seals and tires are rotted out. Everything else is in decent shape. I figured if I could get it for $500, it would make a great build. I have a dream of turning it into an off-roader. My biggest question is this: would I be able to take forks and a wheel and tire from a scrap dirt bike and stick them right in the triple-tree of the xs400? (I'm assuming here that I would find forks of the same diameter). I feel like this would save me a lot of time and money trying to rebuild the stock forks and buying a new dirt bike tire for the front.

Any advice would be great!

 

[BBS360]

Front-end swaps are tricky. Anything can be done with enough fabricating.
Fork diameter is one thing, but fork-fork distance has to match between the XS and the dirt bike if you want to use the dirt bike wheel.
Axles and other spacings need to match if you want to use the XS triples, dirt forks, and XS wheel, plus fabricating brake caliper mounts.
Using the whole dirt bike triple might be feasible if the dimensions are close. If the height matches you may be able to find bearings with the dimensions to make up the difference, or have spacer machined.

Certainly not impossible but know what you're getting into.

 

[Ethanl]

personally I would look for a dohc with a mono shock before starting to try to rework the sohc frame the mono will handle off road riding smoother than the dual from my understanding.... haven't ridden both down forest service roads to prove yet and if time money and effort are no issue anything can be done! look forward to seeing and hearing about the road the build takes when started!