Oh, I lurve it

Looks like mine has the roadster front end on it, in that case.

Eek, indeedly.

 

Well, you can double up the discs on the Custom versions if you want.

 

Something along the lines I'm thinking of doing to mine. From what I
gather the roadster and custom frames are the same; if mine has the
roadster forks already, the only real difference is the rear wheel,
which can be swapped easily.

I don't like the silly 'factory custom' look much anyway, and getting
rid of that daft small tank is a step forward too.

 

Ah, is it already drilled for a second disc? Same wheel as the roadster
I suppose then. Thinking back, all the XSs used what looked to be the
same front wheel.

I'll have to measure the discs to see what it's been fitted with;
whether roadster size or a pair of customs.

 

Nope the seat frame is different between the two
--

http://Borg.no-ip.com

XJ900 Trike GS850 Trike

Some people are like slinkys....
no real use but it makes you smile when they fall down stairs!

 

Do that. People have tried fitting the smaller roadster discs to Custom
forks, and wondered why the caliper was left hanging on its own....

 

I *think* the steering head geometry is different on the Custom, but yes
- I've seen customs converted to roadtser spec.

The thing to remember is that there is hardly anything like a standard
spec for Customs. The US got them in all sorts of guises: Heritage,
Special, you name it.

The XS650 was Yamaha's top seller in the States for *years*, and Yamaha
was embarrassed when it continued to out-sell the 750 triple. The story
is that they deliberately dropped the 650 to get people to buy the 750.
Well, that didn't happen.

Some time in the mid-1980s, I was talking to a Yamaha bloke (Japanese)
at some press do or other, and he admitted that they still had the XS650
tooling. Turned out he was a 650 freak as well - he was crazy about
them. I asked why they never stuck the engine in a better chassis,
perhaps with a monoshock rear end, and he muttered something I didn't
understand about emissions. Sounded like a cop-out, anyway.

Best of all, I remember Mike Jackson, export director of NVT and then
the bod behind Andover Norton, telling me that Norton almost concluded a
deal with Yamaha to supply XS650 engines which they were going to drop
into Commando chassis. They measured it up, and while it was a tight
fit, it did indeed drop straight in.

After all, the XS650 was/is the best parallel twin engine *ever* made by
*anybody* (not rose-tinted specs, but fact) and the Commando chassis was
way ahead of the XS's. They built at least one hybrid, and it worked
brilliantly. A punchy sweet reliable oil-tight engine in a British
frame, with all th vibes engineered out (and XS650s shake far less that
Brit twins, anyway - the the possible exception of the Enfield
Interceptor).

At the time, Norton was doing all sorts of deals with Yamaha. The
NVT125/175 Rambler dirt bikes (remember them?) used DT engines. Yamaha
supplied the XS750 in Plod trim for some forces, and Norton put a Norton
tank on it (!). So the deal would have been easy.

Anyway, at the last minute some honcho at NVT said that if it couldn't
be done for some (stupidly unrealistic) low price, then it wasn't going
to happen, and the project was killed. Bloody shame.

I put that tale in print a few years ago, actually, because to my
knowledge nobody had ever heard of it, and I've noticed it propagating
here and there since.

 

Could you measure yours up and I'll run a rule over mine and compare
results?

 

Grimly Curmudgeon emerged from their own little world to say

*boggle*

 

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember
(The Older Gentleman) saying
something like:

Arsebiscuits. At one point in my life I had a Commando frame and an
XS650 lump among all the other junk. It did fleetingly cross my mind to
do something like that, but it was another shelved idea.

It would have been impossible to have underestimated the utterly
short-sighted stupidity of British Motorcycle Industry management. I'm
sure such a design would have sold in sufficient numbers to make it
worthwhile. Of course, the die-hard rice-haters wouldn't have bought it
but plenty would have, if only to support Norton and to get something
reliable for a change.

 

I see it as a rolling conversion. First, the tank, then the rear wheel,
then the angle grinder.

TOG; still got those XS400 tanks?

 

Sure.

 

All sold. Sweller had the last one.

 

No probs. I'll be able to source something suitable.

 

Ta.

 

Bad form, blah.
300mm as far as I can see. This one has a rear disc too, I've just
remembered.

 

See if you can get the XS 650 S tank
--

http://Borg.no-ip.com

XJ900 Trike GS850 Trike

Some people are like slinkys....
no real use but it makes you smile when they fall down stairs!

 

Is that the biggest roadster tank? Any idea what capacity? If I can't
find that specific one, I'll look around some breakers to see what ones
might fit and look ok.

 

I think it's the nicer looking tank. Black with Silver trim was
popular. Holds a decent amount of juice as well.
--

http://Borg.no-ip.com

XJ900 Trike GS850 Trike

Some people are like slinkys....
no real use but it makes you smile when they fall down stairs!

 

If it's any less than 4 gallons, it's useless for me. I must dig out
some figures somewhere about the various models.

Black, btw, will shortly be the new colour of the XS; that poxy
purple/lilac is going, with extreme prejudice.