I've been looking for a bike to do a cafe racer build with for a couple of months now. Yesterday after graduation my dad showed me a picture of a bike and suddenly I realized that it was in our garage. I couldn't believe it!
They picked up an '83 Maxim 400. I think it has 17,000 original miles, and it runs really really well. I'm pretty stoked about that because everything I found had to be rebuilt. I would also have had to pay for the stuff I found..so that's a pretty huge plus.
Since the bike is running so well I'm almost scared to start taking things apart to look for problems, but it is an '83 so what are some things that I need to check up on? I've done some minor work on my race bike, but nothing with carbs or any real motor work to speak of.
Right now I think I need to replace the chain, redo the forks (there are pools on the seals
) replace the front pads, and change the brake fluid. Today I pulled front brakes and LOL nothing happened. I mean there was menial pressure, but the forks didn't even compress and that's saying something because those things are dead. It dives when I shift gears. I also think that the front forks may be slightly "skewed." One seems to reach out slightly further. They don't seem to be bent so I think I can take the wheel off and unbolt the triple trees and it'll straighten up. We'll see. Considering it's age I'm amazed that it's in the shape that it is. My parents are awesome.
I've seen lots of builds with XS400's and XS650's, but mostly with the CB's. At first I wanted to do a CB750, put modern sportbike forks on it and eventually do a monoshock on the back, but scrapped the monoshock idea because I didn't want to deal with changing the rigidity of the frame. Now that I have the Maxim 400 the monoshock is here to stay. I've seen some threads with people building these, but I haven't seen a complete one yet.
I saw someone put a stock xs650 tank on his. In the thread it seemed that he had some problems with the petcock. I'm not sure. A couple people were hijacking the thread. Basically I'm looking for a way to streamline the top of the bike. In short this is the final look that I want with different paint and eventually with modern sportbike forks and dual disk brakes:
They picked up an '83 Maxim 400. I think it has 17,000 original miles, and it runs really really well. I'm pretty stoked about that because everything I found had to be rebuilt. I would also have had to pay for the stuff I found..so that's a pretty huge plus.
Since the bike is running so well I'm almost scared to start taking things apart to look for problems, but it is an '83 so what are some things that I need to check up on? I've done some minor work on my race bike, but nothing with carbs or any real motor work to speak of.
Right now I think I need to replace the chain, redo the forks (there are pools on the seals
) replace the front pads, and change the brake fluid. Today I pulled front brakes and LOL nothing happened. I mean there was menial pressure, but the forks didn't even compress and that's saying something because those things are dead. It dives when I shift gears. I also think that the front forks may be slightly "skewed." One seems to reach out slightly further. They don't seem to be bent so I think I can take the wheel off and unbolt the triple trees and it'll straighten up. We'll see. Considering it's age I'm amazed that it's in the shape that it is. My parents are awesome. I've seen lots of builds with XS400's and XS650's, but mostly with the CB's. At first I wanted to do a CB750, put modern sportbike forks on it and eventually do a monoshock on the back, but scrapped the monoshock idea because I didn't want to deal with changing the rigidity of the frame. Now that I have the Maxim 400 the monoshock is here to stay. I've seen some threads with people building these, but I haven't seen a complete one yet.
I saw someone put a stock xs650 tank on his. In the thread it seemed that he had some problems with the petcock. I'm not sure. A couple people were hijacking the thread. Basically I'm looking for a way to streamline the top of the bike. In short this is the final look that I want with different paint and eventually with modern sportbike forks and dual disk brakes:
