I soon decided that the XZ550 Yam was one of those bikes you either love or loathe. On good days it was brilliant, the rest of the time it was a right bastard. It all started when a mate got so fed up with his '84 machine that he let me buy it as a non runner for just a hundred notes. How could I turn down such a bargain?
It had, in fact, been left standing for a couple of months out in the garden. Rusted steel and corroded alloy were the result of such neglect. For a machine which was then just four years old and only showed 7800 miles on the clock it was in a terrible state. It was carried gently over the threshold and deposited in the kitchen cum diner cum workshop. Various culinary implements were cleared out of the way and the great strip begun.
The deeper I went into the watercooled vee twin engine the more I told myself I had been a big fool to start on such an ambitious project. Pitted camshafts, burnt out valves, shagged camchains, shot small ends, scored pistons and scratched bores were amongst the more expensive discoveries. Close reading of the back pages of MCN revealed a breaker with an engine for sale and two hundred notes poorer (sob) I was back in business.
Unfortunately, this one had been in a crash and had a crack, hidden under the dirt, that ran through the crankcases, so much hard work followed combining the good bits of the two engines. I was also less than impressed with the state of the chassis. The fork seals were shot, the forks pitted, the steering head bearings loose, the swinging arm spindle seized in solid, as were the spindles in the monoshock linkage and the back wheel.
All the disc brake calipers were seized up and the pads were worn down to the metal. Even the tyres were barely legal. Everything needed stripping down to bare metal, polishing and application of protective coatings. By the time I'd listed all the bits I needed, the total expense was horrifying. Back to the breakers to salvage what I could from his crashed bike.
The total cost of getting it on the road came to £545. I could have bought a good runner for that kind of money. Mind you, stood in the sunshine of my garden it sparkled like a new bike. But would it start? Not a chance. I ltried everything I knew but no way would the motor utter even the slightest misfire. Turned out the original carb jets were full of crud. The jets were also seized solid in the carbs. The spare set were exactly the same. Back to the breakers again.
It eventually coughed into life. Getting it to run cleanly was another story. Everything had to be set up perfectly. The slightest leak in the exhaust system, the merest hint of dirt in the fuel supply, a speck of dirt on the spark plugs or incorrectly spaced valve clearance turned the machine into a temperamental bastard. Refusing to rev beyond 5000rpm, cutting out at traffic lights or backfiring through the exhaust were three of its many tricks.
When correctly set-up, it went pretty well. It left a friend's CX500 standing, much to my amusement, and could crack along at the ton with no apparent ill-effects upon the motor. Handling was adequate, it often felt twitchy and unstable but never actually threw me off. Wet weather riding was another ballgame, though. Imagine wheels that went every which way and a motor that cut out at inopportune moments to get an idea of the kind of fun you can have. The bike needs brand new Metzs to brave wet weather and a tin of WD40 a day. Expensive or what?
I did 5000 miles in the first year and was reduced to a nervous wreck. I was determined to get some value for money out of the bitch! No chance. At the end of the first year all the pads had worn out, the calipers were sticking on, it desperately needed a new set of tyres and various spindles had seized in solid again. Bubbles of rust were appearing under my immaculately sprayed paint and the alloy needed daily application of Solvol to avoid the dreaded white plague.
I fixed all the problems as best I could, afterall what else was there to do on cold winter nights? The next problem was total disintegration of the exhaust system. When I gave a silencer a kick to see what all the rattling was about it fell off! The only new system available was an extortionately priced Yamaha item. No thanks. I welded up the holes in the downpipes and shoved on some universal megas.
It looked okay but the bitch refused to run cleanly until I'd expended hours and hours modifying the carbs. I could get it to run well below or above 5000rpm but not both, until I'd replaced every available jet. It was an expensive nightmare to do but less costly that handing over the dosh to Yamaha for a new exhaust.
After that experience the machine seemed to settle down nicely, running for the next 7500 miles with few problems, just so long as I changed the oil and filter, and adjusted everything at 1000 mile intervals. Then power dramatically disappeared.
One of the things that endeared the machine to me was that it could lug along in top gear in a most relaxed manner or scream up and down the six speed box like the nastiest of multis. But the power disappeared to the extent that it would not hold fourth gear even on a flat road.
I stripped the motor down full of foreboding. It could have been worse, the piston rings had fused with the piston on the back cylinder. The bore was standard and without blemish, so a new piston and rings, had the machine back to its old standard. Only for a short while, though. The engine started to overheat, coolant fluid disappearing at a frightening rate.
The cylinder head gasket on the back cylinder had gone. For some reason I was never, subsequently, to get more than 1200 miles out of a cylinder head gasket. Worse still, the front went out in sympathy and its replacement did the same trick. I became an expert at rapid engine removal and tearing off the cylinder heads. Unfortunately, this was done so often that the studs retaining the cylinder head started stripping out of the engine alloy. I soon became an expert at using helicoil kits!
The next problem was caused by the gearbox. It had never been excellent, but usually a reliable change could be achieved if a bit of thought was applied to the act. At first it was all false neutrals, then it started slipping out of gear. I had to replace almost every bit of the change mechanism with bits from the spare engine because they were all worn out.
The engine had been apart so many times that almost all the screw threads needed helicoils, and even some of these, if too much pressure was applied to the screw, would turn in the soft alloy. Consequently, it was difficult to get enough pressure between engine casings and crankcases to stop oil leaking past the gasket. As I had given up trying to keep the engine free of corrosion, the residue of oil that covered most of the motor was no bad thing.
Another six months and 4000 miles went by, the bike decaying before my eyes to a state not dissimilar to that when I'd purchased it. It wasn't much fun to ride, the longest I dared travel in a day was a round trip of 300 miles. Any further and some problem would develop that meant a day in the workshop. I occasionally still got a kick out of riding the bike over fast A roads, where it could be thrashed along like few other 550s, but the cost of replacing all the bits that kept wearing out was becoming ridiculous.
I did another respray to the main cycle parts, touched up the frame and other bits, spent an hour with Gunk and a hose-pipe cleaning off all the grime, then half a day polishing up the alloy. It looked pretty good and ran well, but I could feel the gearbox about to give out again and the power was starting to fall off at the top end. I roared down to the local bike shop as quickly as possible, wiped off what little oil had seeped out and offered the bike as a trade in against a new GPZ500 Kawasaki. The foolish man must have been desperate as he gave me a thousand notes off the list price!
Two weeks later I went back to the dealer for a free service. He wasn't a very happy man. He took me over to a dim corner where the Yamaha had been flung against the wall. The mechanic had used it for a couple of days, the engine was covered in oil, both head gaskets were blown, rust was breaking out from under the paint again and it looked a real dog. He suggested I take the machine back and he'd add £800 to the HP. I just laughed and went away to do my own servicing from then on.
Pete Howard
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Seven years with a 1983 Yamaha XZ550 have been interesting, infuriating and occasionally stimulating. The vee twin engine has not been as bad as press reports have suggested, it lasted for 57000 miles until it was necessary to perform a thorough rebuild, using spares from another machine that I had acquired.
Subsequently, the clock has reached 105,000 miles, but not without the odd moment of trauma! I bought the machine as a non-runner for next to nothing. Three years old, it had stood for seven months after a mysterious electrical failure, all the alloy turning to a horrible white crud which subsequently took a month to clean up - after the first dose of rain it came back worse than ever! A similar rottenness had taken over all the wiring; once the machine was rewired it started after a lot of churning over on the starter.
First impressions were mixed. The transmission felt more like that which afflicts a Beemer boxer, the clutch was heavy enough to satisfy a Ducati fanatic and the general handling wouldn't have impressed the owner of an ancient CD175. Power flowed in smoothly and strongly enough to turn my hair white when I realised that the discs weren't going to work.....the calipers were corroded in solid, something I'd forgotten to check.
Even back then XZ's were rare beasts, so it took little to persuade me to fit a whole front end off a newish XJ600, as I'd already noticed that the forks were badly pitted and there didn't appear to any damping left. The new front end in its tenacity showed up the rear mono-shock as a load of crap. All the bearings were shot, so I made the local Yamaha's dealer's day by buying some new bits and bought an after-market shock. Right, that's sorted the handling I thought, but on the first 90mph run the rear tyre blew out.
Some moron had fitted an undersize inner-tube which had more patches than real flesh. The bike wobbled all over the road, almost causing a car to drive through a hedge......pushing the bike home I had to suffer the horrid odour of soiled underwear!
I invested in a brand new set of Michelins, was then able to enjoy handling that was fairly stable up to 95mph but would degenerate rapidly once past the ton. Nothing seemed to stop the bike weaving and wobbling all over the place at high speeds, the only thing to do was to keep below 95mph. Annoyingly, between 75 and 90mph in top gear both pegs and bars were blitzed by vibes fierce enough to numb extremities.
The answer was to fit a larger gearbox sprocket that removed the buzzy nature of the 65hp engine, making 85mph a very relaxed, vibration free cruise; at the expense of terrible graunching noises from the gearbox area if you tried to use top gear below 45mph. As the box was imprecise and unpredictable, a tiresome amount of foot action was needed to keep the plot on a smooth course. My left hand soon firmed up under the influence of the ultra heavy clutch. Funnily enough, the gearbox became no worse with age; indeed, after about two years I seemed to get the hang of it and could change gear with the best of them.
Pad wear was okay, about 9000 miles a set, whilst the Michelins lasted over 10,000 miles before wearing to an extent that threw the bike into vicious wobbles at about 75mph. Fuel worked out at an appalling 38mpg when I bought the bike which went down to nearly 30mpg when the engine was in need of a rebuilt, improving to around 44mpg after newish bits were fitted.
Maintenance was fervently demanded - the carbs went out of balance every 600 miles, easy to know when they need doing as the vibes reach a level that would disconcert even a Norton Atlas owner. Valves needed attention every 1250 miles, whilst the camshafts needed replacing every 25000 miles, the hardening on the lobes being of especially poor quality, although the dreaded camchain tensioners lasted about three times as long as your average Honda set-up. The ignition coils were so idiosyncratic in their operation that I soon dumped them in favour of some Kawasaki items.
Overall finish also needed constant attention, non-essential bits like silencers showing a worrying tendency to turn to dust as you were trying to cut a dash miles from home. Once the baffles rusted away, carburation response was ruined, with loads of flat spots. Even worse, anything non-standard that came within a yard of the bike sent the engine into convulsions.
The corrosion was so virulent that even non-standard bits were rapidly affected, I went through many tins of rust prevention liquid and spent many an unhappy hour attacking afflicted chassis bits with a wire brush to little avail. At 98,750 miles the rear seat subframe collapsed, luckily, whilst I was leaping up and down on the seat in the garage. Fortunately, the spare frame had fared much better and was soon brought into use. Also mono-shock, steering head and swinging arm bearings but rarely lasted for more than 15000 miles, nasty weaves appearing as they ran out of life.
The aforegoing list of complaints might make the bike seem a horror story, but to be fair I had many a pleasant outing on the Yamaha and it only rarely failed to get me to work every day for the past seven years. Once serviced, cleaned up and filled with essential liquids, I had few qualms about taking the bike on long runs. I managed three long holidays on the XZ without incident. There was usually plenty of warning when anything in the engine was going to cause trouble, usually in the form of excessive vibration.
I did run the radiator dry once, which caused a partial seizure of the pistons. They freed off once the motor was allowed to cool and the engine fired up without any apparent ill effects once the radiator had been refilled. I don't know why it happened or for how long the radiator had less than the necessary level of fluid....it had varied so little over the first year that I became very complacent. Needless to say, after that event I checked it every week, with the predictable effect that it never needed any attention.
Batteries also liked to run dry, they rarely lasted for more than six months. Probably something to do with the voltage regulator but putting in the spare one did not help. After I'd rewired the bike, there were few other electrical problems other than switches falling apart eventually. Whenever I could, I replaced XZ bits with items from different models in the Yamaha range, as XZ components appear to be of especially low quality.
As a long distance cruiser the Yamaha just about makes the grade. The large tank mitigates the horrendous fuel consumption, the seat is quite comfy and the bar/peg relationship suits both town or 85mph cruising speeds. Town work is also reasonable, the engine being narrow, knocking out a useful amount of low speed power and the chuckability factor is reasonable once used to a slight tendency to fall into corners. The only problem with fast A road work is that the bike can be sent way off line by bumpy roads - I often ended up on the wrong side of the road until I adjusted to the machine's suicidal tendencies.
The human body has amazing powers of adaptability. I roar around on the Yamaha as if there was nothing really lacking in its functionality. Swapping bikes is a revelatory experience for both myself and the other rider. They invariably end up a bit shocked, slagging the bike off as an old heap that should be put out if its misery, whilst grudgingly admiring my riding abilities (as I can usually keep up with them). I'm usually impressed with the handling, smoothness and power of the other machine - the poor old XZ initially feels like a real tractor when I swing a leg back over it but I soon submerge its many, er, idiosyncrasies.
It can't be that bad. I haven't fallen off yet, nor hit any cars; nor been burnt off by too many other bikes or cars. It's impossible to keep the bike polished for more than a day, the corrosion afflicts it like nothing else I've come across. Until the engine blows up I'll keep running the beast but I don't expect more than month or two of life out of it......I'm not that worried I've bought a Norton Electra which I've just finishing restoring - yes XZ ownership does do funny things to your mind.
Eric Gregor
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XZ550's are a very variable quantity. There's no saying how long the watercooled vee-twin engine will last, or even how well it'll run, especially in the winter. I've owned two of the buggers, one reasonable, the other a constant hell. Perhaps it depends on how the past owners treated them. The good one had just the one owner but the higher mileage at 27000 against 19000 miles and no less than six owners.
I'd guess that the troublesome bike had been passed from owner to owner as soon as they realised what a horror they'd bought and the mileage was low because it couldn't get out of the street without breaking down. I only paid three hundred notes for it, after clocking the rotted wiring and assuming that was the cause.
How wrong can you be? After spending a furious weekend replacing all the wiring, I was dismayed by the poor running. Pulling off the carbs, the manifolds cracked up and the airfilter fell to pieces. Every bolt I tried to undo was corroded in and took hours to remove. I cleaned all the gunge out of the carbs, threw the filter away and swore when it ran just as badly.
The bellow out of the rotted through silencers indicated that the cause of the poor running might be an ill-matched exhaust system. Whilst trying to remove the silencers I discovered that the downpipes were all but rusted through, a few gentle taps from my hammer caused them to crack up. That was how I discovered that XZ's are very rare in breakers.
About half the length of the downpipes were okay, so they were sawn off and some other bits of pipe were welded on, topped off with a pair of pattern Goldie megaphones. Nice noise but dreadful running, full of flat spots and no power whatsoever above 80mph. I was tempted to batter the machine into submission but managed to resist the urge.
I could potter back and forth to work at a reasonable pace, the best thing to do was dump it in third and use the throttle. The taller gears turned the motor totally unresponsive and the gearchange action was too vague to play games upon. Half the time it'd grind into a false neutral.
The bike seemed to be rotting under me, even the tyres were spitting off rubber. Corrosion was so rampant that I soon gave up trying to clean it. The plod took a peculiar delight in pulling me over and kept writing down long lists of defects and giving me a ticket, which I threw away as soon as their backs were turned.
It lasted for three months when the only XZ enthusiast in the country descended upon my residence on the only immaculate XZ550 in the world, berated me for half an hour on the state of my bike then totally redeemed himself by taking it off my hands and giving me 500 smackers. I've had more chance of getting a word in when verbally assaulted by a religious nutter.
A year later I was stupid enough to go look at a second XZ550 because it was the only bike on offer for £400. The owner had been trying to sell it for the past four months, coming down from £1000 to the current price. He was bemused by my cynical remarks over the phone and insisted that it ran really well. I couldn't find much wrong on the test ride, so the deal was done.
For the first couple of months I suspected that something would go really wrong. I just rode back and forth to work every day, with the odd weekend bashing thrown in as I became confident of its reliability. The handling was a bit rough at speed, the front end waggling around. The fairing flapped about on weak brackets. I decided to tear the plastic off, fit a headlamp off an RS250 and some flatter bars.
The fairing brackets practically fell off due to cracks in their welds! If I hadn't torn it off the plastic would quite likely have fallen on the front wheel and caused me to do a tango with the tarmac. Handling was much improved, the whole bike feeling more solid and secure. Ground clearance was good and the Avon tyres were well matched to the long wheelbase chassis, which made the bike heavy going through the tighter bends.
The engine was a revelation after the earlier one. Hardly any vibes and smooth power flowing in from as little as 2000 revs, coming in really hard during the last 3000 revs before the red zone closed everything down. Even when the exhaust began to rot, the power still flowed in well. I eventually fixed the exhaust with a pair of used stainless steel silencers meant for a BMW boxer.
In retrospect, the poor running in the first bike might've been the fuel tank rusting and clogging up the flow or some component in the electronic ignition failing. It's vital when considering an XZ to have a test ride to check out the power delivery, preferably in the wet which intensifies any possible malady.
Braking was a mixture of a good drum rear brake and twin discs out front that never seemed very powerful. This was due to the pads being worn down to the metal and rattling away like a CX500 camchain. I thought it a bit remiss of the past owner to sell me a bike in a dangerous condition after waxing lyrical about the tender loving care he'd thrown at the XZ but I forgave him when I tried to fit a new set of pads.
The retaining screws were not just corroded in, they had coalesced so completely with the calipers that the tool was more likely to snap off than they were to come undone. Hmmmm!
That was how I ended up fitting an XJ600 front end as I'd also discovered that the wheel had hairline cracks around the hub and the seals were blown. I think the wheel went after I charged across a roundabout, screaming my head off with the thrill of it and absolutely determined to burn off a VT500. The new front end had brilliant braking but didn't improve the handling, which suggested that the steering head was a touch on the weak side.
I nearly panicked when I took the petrol tank off, the frame tubes looked like they were rusted through! An exploration with a wire brush revealed that it was mostly surface rust, unless it was doing the same trick on the inside. The frame's a rather poor copy of that used in a Pantah, with the bottom half of the engine slung underneath. Some of the tube runs don't look very strong, so I didn't fancy having it all break up at 120mph! Paranoia ruled for a couple of weeks until nothing happened and I concluded that it was going to be okay.
The engine started cutting out, traced to a rusted out fuse-box. When the engine failed the directness of the final drive meant an immediately locked up back wheel and screaming tyre (not to mention rider). The bike slewed all over the road until I remembered to grab the (heavy) clutch.
The wiring was starting to go the same way as the previous XZ, which seemed to indicate that I should persuade some dealer that the rarity of the watercooled vee-twin made it a valuable classic. After 18000 miles and a year of riding, that was mostly fun and generally cheap (60mpg, 12000 miles from the tyres), I was given £950 trade-in against a new Triumph 750 Trident which was discounted to £4200. The dealer started off at £1500 and hasn't yet sold the XZ even with a £600 price tag. Wonder why?
M.L.K.