These custom nutters drive me crazy. One such had taken a 1982 XV750 and performed upon it his perverted pleasures. Garish chrome and paint that had me wailing for a pair of deep black shades. Long forks that put the wheel miles out in front. A tiny bum pad that I just knew would have my woman howling in protest. Slash pipes that allowed a thunderous racket out of the big vee-twin motor. Sat in the saddle the huge bars and forward mounted pegs did nothing for my feeling of well being.
To cap it all, the owner wanted £1500. I tried to point out that I'd have to find some stock cycle parts. No way I was going to ride around with the bike in that state. Astonishment was written on his face after this admission. After a brief, somewhat mind warping, test ride I left him my phone number. Three weeks later he'd agreed that £850 seemed a fair price and the deal was done. That was when my troubles started.
The XV is well known for having a dodgy electric starter. This one had made some furious noises but eventually fired the motor. At the vendor's house. By the time I got home, though, all it would do was whirr, clatter and clonk. The whole mechanism was wrecked beyond help, must've been bodged with Superglue and prayers. I didn't fancy trying to beat the previous owner to a pulp, he was twice my weight and half my age. Luckily, a friend had lots of bits left from his XV (it blew up with 112,000 miles done), which included a much modified starter and mechanism. Mine for £30.
The bodging, I soon found out, extended to the rest of the bike. If the owner had wanted a degree in bodging he would've been up there at the top of the honours list. They didn't all come to light at once, though, I'd foolishly assumed that with the starter fixed I was going to enjoy lots of fun on the 18000 mile engine (the speedo wasn't stock which should have alerted me). I'd also assumed that the custom guise meant it wasn't hard ridden.
I'd managed to acquire some forks and proper seat off the same mate, as a straight swap as he was getting into the chopper scene himself. Poor fool. So with the woman on the back, I was all set for a pleasant weekend's run out to the Cotswolds. About 600 miles in all. Trolling along quite nicely for the first fifty miles, I suddenly became aware of harsh vibration and heavy smoke out of the exhausts. End of outing, ran back home at 30mph. Just made it, at the last set of lights we'd been choking on the exhaust fumes.
The engine was quite easy to extract, if you allowed that two of the engine bolts didn't have any threads, the nuts were glued on. It was with a mixture of horror and fascination that I viewed the engine on my workbench The studs were intact, which is more than can be said for the piston rings. Turned out that there was a complete mismatch between bore, piston and ring size. The bores were a bit scarred at the bottom but a bit of work with emery cloth removed the worst of it.
A used set of rings and pistons gave the motor a chance of functioning properly. The gaskets were either missing or smeared with such an excess of Hermatite that there was no chance of rescuing them. A complete new gasket set added to the carnage. I spent a whole evening flattening out the cylinder head surfaces, the large nicks made by some irresponsible moron's screwdriver causing much swearing.
The reassembled motor went in without hassle, even came to life after a few minutes churning on the starter. Felt a whole lot smoother, seemed to rev cleaner and I was quite impressed with my mechanical skills. The slight oil weeps of the old machine had disappeared. So we started out on another weekend's ride to the good old Cotswolds.
This time we got all of 120 miles until one of the front calipers seized on to the disc. It must've taken off a millimetre of rubber. For once I was quite thankful for the amount of leverage resulting from the width of the bars, though they made a mockery of town riding. I had been hurling the XV through lots of curves, which helped explain the red hot heat of the caliper. I burnt my finger when I gave it a gentle probe. Luckily, there wasn't a large hammer available or it would've been smashed to pieces. I didn't fancy the rest of the weekend with a dodgy front brake.
After letting it cool down, undoing the bolts (actually snapping them off, they were so corroded into their threads) and kicking the caliper off, I was able to cruise home at moped speeds. Thankful that the vee twin had scads of engine braking. Decent calipers proved elusive, so when a whole XJ600 front end was offered for £50 I grabbed it with both hands before the vendor had a chance to realise his foolish largesse. Putting it on was a bit of a pain but I eventually pulled out, after visiting three breakers, a pair of yokes that suited both the forks and steering head.
For the third weekend I set out full of hope of completing the simple task of riding 500 miles. I couldn't believe it when the gearbox locked into fourth. The vee twin might be full of torque (just as well as there seemed a lot less power than the 65 horses claimed) but there certainly wasn't enough to let it run below 2500rpm in that gear. By the time we reached home, I had clutch slip to add to my woes.
The selectors turned out to be rather bent and a couple of gears had teeth missing. My mate with the blown engine came to my aid again. The clutch drum looked oval, so I had to put in a used one as well as a new set of plates. My mate reckoned the engine must've done at least 60,000 miles to be in such a state.
This was all getting a bit much. I hadn't even done 500 miles and I kept having to pull the monster apart. With foolish optimism I set out for another weekend's fun and games, having done a proving run of 120 miles worth of commuting. Much to my amazement, this time the rumbling rhino made it to my destination. Though, not without losing half its oil. Judging by the obscured cylinders the head gaskets were weeping, so I gave the studs a hopeful tweak.
Coming home wasn't so straightforward as the battery decided it didn't want to hold a charge. The lights started dimming, the engine began to stutter at high revs until about 30 miles from home we ground to a halt. Then the rain started and the woman went into a mega-nag. Something about motorcycles being the dirtiest, most foolish, craziest way of travelling known to the civilised world. I decided then that I was never going to marry the bitch. I dumped the bike in someone's garden and we hiked home.
After retrieving the bike, I went into a rage at the state of the electrical wiring, the burnt out alternator and blown rectifier. The battery, predictably, had sod all acid. A few raids on breakers found the parts but I had to rewire large chunks of the bike and throw away the rotten horn. I decided that I was never going to try to take the bike to the Cotswolds again. Just too unlucky.
To get some value out of the XV I used it for riding back and forth to work for a couple of months. It was a heavy, awkward old brute in town, not helped any by the way second decided it liked leaping out of gear. It left me stranded in front of crazed cagers, who were warming up for the kill, until some desperate footwork reconnected the engine to the back wheel with a terrifying lurch. Using third gear bogged the engine down at town speeds.
Apart from oil consumption and the odd blown bulb, the XV held together for about 7800 miles with nothing more than 2000 mile oil changes. I really couldn't be bothered with valve and carb maintenance, I wasn't that impressed with the bike. I felt fairly sure about setting out on a 3000 mile holiday, with the new girlfriend, a motorcycling innocent, on the pillion. Thrilling was how she described our first blast up the motorway, at all of 75mph. Well, she was perched high above me, took the full force of the wind.
75mph turned out to be the maximum speed the mild custom riding position would allow. The engine was also significantly smoother at this velocity, probably designed to please the Yanks, who seem to wet themselves at talk of going any faster. Even at such a slow speed, the chassis didn't feel well planted on the road. There was a lot of weaving from the back end and head shaking from the front. It was tolerable as it only gave any sign of going really terminal once the speedo crept above 95mph, something that was accompanied by foot numbing vibration.
It was all smiles and happiness for the first day and 250 miles. The next morning the engine proved reluctant to start. The girlfriend wasn't too amused to find herself pushing the combined weight of myself and the machine. The mill eventually grumbled into life, but power was as sullen as the frail. Carry on or head for home? Compromise by riding around the district in a big circle to see what developed! It was the same old story by the look of the smoke, rings on the way out.
The engine made it home, albeit with a boring slowness, and another pissed off girlfriend, as the rest of the holiday would consist of tearing the motor apart. This time the bores were far gone as well, no hope, even, of reboring them, so deep were the score marks. I was becoming a favoured customer of all the breakers in the area, so soon tracked down a new set of barrels and pistons.
That was a month ago. The rebuilt engine ran quite well but I had absolutely no faith in it. I knew there would be another pile of expenses further down the road. I sold it at a bargain price yesterday. Never again!
Rick Wilson