My '86 XJ 600

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misternyborg
Lookin' Around
Lookin' Around
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:10 am

Hi everyone!
As someone might have noticed in my introduction, I just bought a Yamaha XJ 600 dating all the way back to 1986. That's 4 years before my birth! And still I look older than the bike. :ponder:

The seller told me that the bike is in very good condition given its age, so I actually bought it sight unseen. 55k kms on the clock.

Here's some photos from the original listing;
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Anyway, here I'll be posting whatever progress I'll be having with the bike. I picked up this weekend and drove it 500kms back to my town without any troubles. Bike is indeed in very good condition, 1500kms ago there was installed new Michelin Pilot Sport tires, chain/sprockets, front wheel bearings and a Motad exhaust. The tank was even full when I picked it up, but not with rust of course ;) It starts like a charm with choke and accepts throttle after 3-4 minutes on the choke. The rest of the day it starts instantly.

There was also two sidebags from Givi, type Monokey, that came along with it. I always thought sidebags looked silly and made the bike less agile and sporty, but damn; they're so amazingly practical! So great just being able to clip them off with the push of a button, pack them inside and just snap em on the bike before riding. I've always been riding with a backpack, which is a pain when I take longer rides, and it was such a relief not doing that all the way back home. On a side note, the read indicators are moved from the fairing and mounted onto the givi-rack. I don't think it looks very good, and will probably be moving them back to their original position. They'll be less visible when I have the bags mounted on the rack, but I'll take my chances. Might try to integrate them into the left/right side of the massive taillight?

One thing I did notice fairly quickly that the steering wheel was a bit wobbly at higher speeds. I get pretty sore wrists on long rides, and like to take my left hand off at times. The first time I did this I noticed that the steering would wobble quite alot, I never noticed it before I took my hand off though. I really want to fix this, might be a unbalanced wheel or a damaged rim. Anyone got any pointers?

I would like to get some more sound out of the exhaust to, I find it a bit boring in the -7k RPM range. I tried googling around to see if drilling a hole in the rear baffle of the Motad exhaust would help, but I'm worried about messing up the pressure and having to do carb-work. Anyone got a clue? I don't know if it would help much at all, but it'd be worth a try unless I screw something up.

There's also some polishing of different parts that needs to be done; the givi-rack needs to be taken off and repainted, the rear seat handles needs polishing, as well as both the footrest rackets and the front shock.

I'll try to take some photos along the way and keep this as a work log; both for myself and anyone interested.
Thanks guys!

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