Recent content by El Bandito

Picked it up. Thanks!

The 79 is the SOHC - much easier to find parts, but a little different from mine. If you haven't already found them, the guys at www.xs400.com are really knowledgeable about the SOHC engine.

I didn't think anyone cared, so I stopped posting. Thanks for reminding me! So... things have moved along, but I got lazy and stopped updating. So here we go. First, the painting is done. What a pain. So much sanding. I don't have a sander, so everything's been done by hand. That means...

In the end, I couldn't resist, so I took off most of the black paint. Now that is a clean engine: If I was going to cafe this bike, now is when the metal polishing madness would start. But I'm not going to. It looks great as it is, I think. A couple of things are happening simultaneously...

Whew! It's been a long weekend. My plan had been to get the entire bike painted, or at least primed over the Easter long weekend. Alas, my wife insisted that I actually spend some time with family, so there was a bit of a break. No worries - during the break these arrived! Which means...

Thanks for the tip. I'm actually cross posting over there, and they've got some great ideas.

All right, so where were we. Here are the DOHCs: Which were carefully removed. Now it's a NOHC: I love egg cartons for this kind of work. It's like having little small parts dispensers that can get covered with oil, while making sure that I don't lose anything, and all the parts stay...

Ugh - wrong gaskets. I hate delays.

Last night I had some time, and no gaskets, so I turned my attention to the frame for a bit. For the most part, it's in really good shape. There isn't even much surface rust, and so I'm not going to have to touch it. I was a little concerned about the gunk on the swingarm, though. Here's the...

Sorry for the delay. I've been better for a bit, but I've been very busy. I decided that my daughter doesn't need a morning nap anymore, partially so I can have a longer uninterupted period in the afternoon to work on the bike, but it seems that instead she just isn't sleeping at all. But...

Unfortunately, I had the flu these past two days. I won't go into details... but I'm feeling much better today. So much better that I decided to take 30 minutes this evening and take out the engine. Step 1 (if you ignore all previous steps, which I do not recommend), remove front sprocket...

Efficient in which way? I already own a dremel and the cut off wheels, so this costs me 0 additional dollars. A CT grinder, while faster I'm sure, would also have to be purchased. Cost efficiency is lower for the grinder, time efficiency is higher. A grinder is on my wish list for someday...

Once my wife was home, and dinner was done, I was able to take some time with the Dremel to take off the old exhaust. I love my Dremel. I think of it as the motorcycle of power tools. Small, nimble, with a 17,000 rpm redline. Cuts through anything. The biggest challenge was finding the...

Hum. They all show for me, but I've uploaded all the pics to my server so they hopefully can be viewed. Worky?

All right, I only had an hour today between stuff to do, so let's get down to it. First priority was removing that screw. Handy easy out screw remover and a drill bit did the job. Once I got the cap off the carb, everything looked great, except for the cap and the screws. So I grabbed my...