I have a 1994 XJ600S in blue. It is my second bike. I started on a Ninja 250 (sold), have had a ZX6 (sold), a couple ninja 500s (both flip bikes... one was supposed to be for my GF), and currently also have a little Kawi Z 125 Pro. My gf lives with me and she has a Honda Grom 125. There is a 190cc motor on the way to stuff into the Z125 and I also have a VW powered sandrail with a plate on it that I spend a lot of time breaking and then fixing.
I got the Seca maybe 8 years ago. Rode it for a couple years and loved it. I could tell after a few years it was close to needing some carb work. It eventually developed an oil leak at the cylinder base that really irritated me, and I decided it was time to give it some love.
I got her stripped down to where the cylinders were removed, but due to some health issues she sat like that for a long time. A couple years. Later I got the sand rail which I played with exclusively for 2 summers. Then my GF got into riding. After a failed attempt to get her up on the 500 Ninja she ended up getting a Grom. Perfect excuse for me to pick up a minibike of my own, the Z125. That was last year and we put about 4000 miles on those little guys in that first season.
So with the warmer weather I dug back into the XJ for the past 2 months, getting it back to riding condition. Being so old and sitting for so long, everything was suspect. I got a real bad case of, "well might as well rebuild this or replace that 'cause it is already apart."
What started as a mission to replace a leaky cylinder base gasket evolved to:
-Cylinder Base Gasket
-Head Gasket
-Valve cover gasket
-New hardware/seals for related above tasks
-Valve adjustment
-Rebuild Front and Rear Brake Masters
-Rebuild Front and Rear Calipers
-New Stainless lines front and rear to replace 25 year old rubber lines (yikes)
-New pads and rotors front and back
-New chain and sprockets
-Picked up an FZ6R rear shock
-New front fork seals, changed fork oil to 15 wt
-New bearings in front and rear wheels
-New BT45s front and rear
-Many Fuel tank related adventures
-LED Headlight
-New grips
-RAM cell phone mount
-USB charger w/volt meter
-New Battery
-New Air Filter
-Delkevic 4-1 Exhaust
-Replaced broken stock engine guard. Had an embarrassing drop when moving in the garage. Damaged a stock header (reason for the Delk) and when stripping I noticed engine guard had broken but was still attached. I think the guard was damaged before though and was the cause of a persistent metallic buzzing sound around 4k rpm I could never detect and was present even with all fairings stripped.
-Rebuilt the carbs, completely broke them down, replaced all seals, cleaned 'em up nice. Damaged a butterfly bracket in the process, was able to source a new set of carbs from CL. That was the only other time I have seen an XJS in the wild, and it was crashed out. Someone had loved it though. The carb hardware had all been replaced with stainless allen head fasteners. 20k on the crashed out bikes odometer.
-Bench sync'd carbs, then later with a manometer.
-Tuned carbs using wideband O2 sensor
-Cleaned the motor and all bits
-Polished up the plastics
-New left control bracket to replace stripped out mirror thread.
I would guess I have maybe 2 grand in parts into a $1200 motorcycle. I'm hoping though with all this work I will be good for many many years, and I would love to take this old girl north of... dare I say it... 100k miles?
Next project, after a trip in June with the mini bikes to ride The Dragon at Deals Gap and other roads in that area (12 day camping trip... getting there in a pickup but the itinerary has us putting about 2200 miles on the bikes) will be stuffing the 190cc into my Z. Will involve yanking out the fuel injection and ECU and stripping all the wiring from the bike.
After that, my sandrail is due for a suspension upgrade.
During both of these next projects I will have my eyes open for another Seca or a Maxim or something to convert into a single seat scrambler.
So after many years of lurking here and then posting a lot of questions, it is nice to officially meet you all, and again, thanks for the help.
This is where the magic happens!
O2 bungs tig welded to the headers for tuning with wideband.
Just couldn't get the collector to line up with the stock bracket. I ended up cutting the bracket and adding an extension made from some scrap metal. The black matte rattle can almost hides my crap mig welds. Almost.
Right side
Delkevic 4-1 with 14" Oval in carbon fiber. Not really any louder than stock, just sounds a lot better (baffle in).
Not looking too bad for a 25 year old bike!