Buyers' Guides

Saturday, 20 February 2016

Yamaha XS650 Special

I paid just $600 for this bike, and I ended up despising that decision. I hated this one. The electric foot never worked, and it vibrated and rattled so much at idle that it would slowly walk itself BACKWARDS while on the centrestand -- even if backwards happened to be UPHILL. I was into the carbs seven or eight times since I owned the bike. It would rattle jets out of their holders, destroy the solder on the metal floats (which would then sink and flood the engine), the idle was all over the place, the points wouldn't stay adjusted past the end of the block, the advance mechanism stuck at fully advanced sometimes…

The swinging-arm was a hinge (I replaced the plastic bushings with roller bearings and this helped, but not as much as I'd hoped). The front brakes worked badly at best, and there was a horrible wobble at about 80mph. And it ate headlights too. But the bike looked really nice, and when something wasn't breaking it ran really good. Still, I was never happier in my life than the day some poor fool paid $900 to take it off my hands. He was looking to make it into a cafe racer, and more power to him.


Charles S