... or maybe an XL500S ?? lol

yes I know this one is not a Kawasaki either - but there is a huge amount of interest down this way at the moment - in Vinduro events. Old farts riding old dungers on private property tracks that are good fun - lots of grass-tracking, open sweeping dirt tracks and some reasonably easy single-track / creek sections. Every event differs but you get the general picture.........so

......the other bike I have spent a few hours on lately - is an old XL500S that has been up in the top sheds since my good mate Andy moved to the Gold Coast about 12 years ago. It had some gear-selecting issues and also a strange problem with the rear hub. I think the gear-selecting issues have been sorted out though....just a circlip that had been forced out of its groove on the external gear-selector shaft - resulting in about 8mm of freeplay at the splined end (where you bolt the gear lever onto) - this amount of freeplay has meant that in the past, the boys could only select 1st or 2nd - no other gears. I sorted this out yesterday and now the gearbox selects all gears......hopefully this one is fixed and good now.

This bike is a perfect candidate for Vinduro events. Air-cooled, twin-shock and drum brakes. The cut-off year is 1984 (rolling 30-year cutoff) - and the big 500 is a 1980 model.

Many years ago it had some motor work done - a larger 520cc hi-comp Wiseco piston and a Peter Allen exhaust. I have heard it start and it starts pretty easily and sounds very tight. Despite not having been started for over 12 years, I have little doubt that it will be a good runner once the chassis mods are completed....

Years ago when I built the YZ500 - one of the first mods was ditching the drum-brake front end completely and swapping in a WP u/s down front end from a KTM300. That means of course - that the original YZ front end has been sitting around doing SFA since. The stock front end on the XL500 - is skinny forks and a 23" wheel. Nobody got time for dat shit !!! So the obvious change is swapping the YZ front end into the XL. All the triple clamps from both bikes went into the machine shop last Friday with the instructions - sometime within the next week or 2, I will get back a YZ lower clamp, with a replica XL500 centre stem pressed into place that also allows use of the stock YZ top clamp.......and heh-presto...........that YZ front end will bolt straight up to the XL frame. Tapered steering head bearings ordered last week

This means 21" front tyres, a twin-leading shoe front drum - and massive 43mm forks compared to the stock 35's !!! It will still look very period but just much chunkier Rear shocks need replacing as well as they are OEM and totes fuxxored. Found some good piggy-back shocks from a distributor in Qld for about $170 pair delivered. Yeh they might be Chinese but for my purposes - they will be just fine.

The bike at the moment is just a motor sitting in the frame - once the front-end is back from the machine shop, and the new rear shocks are fitted - I will take a couple of pics. This is not a restoration or ground-up rebuild or anything like that - its simply giving all existing stuff a good tub - replacing the important bits (wheel bearings, brake shoes, cables etc) with new ones - and then going out and giving it a belting at the first Vinduro I can find..............pics to come.

There a good old banga those 500 's and very hard to kill, I am currently restoring a 82 500r and to be honest I cant wait to give it a whirl
http://vjmc.org.au/j25/media/kunena/att ... 0_1237.jpg

as you can see its not much to restore, all the tins and plastics are excellent but the engine and frame needed doing, look forward to your updates Gos as I have a bit of a soft spot for the old xl's

cool I am looking forward to a strop on this old girl as well. You are dead right - can't kill Honda 4-strokes at all.....that rig of yours looks to be in really good nick, very tidy indeed.

Yes she was very tidy with only 12,000 kms on the clock, guy bought it from new but quickly aged to much and had trouble trying to kick start it, but as previous post repaint the frame and engine she will be like new

Gos, my neighbour picked up an XL500 twin shocker last year that he's done fark all with. It also has some weird rear hub issue???? But.....If you need bits, send me a message and i'll see if he is willing to strip it for parts.

.......Gos, my neighbour picked up an XL500 twin shocker last year that he's done fark all with. It also has some weird rear hub issue???? But.....If you need bits, send me a message and i'll see if he is willing to strip it for parts.......

OK thanks mate that could be very handy.

The rear hub issue is a doozy. Honda love over-engineering things, just to prove to themselves that they are very good engineers. Problem is - when it backfires. As it did with the bullshit bearing retainer set-up on the XL500's....(and maybe some other models as well...)

The issue is simple - most manufacturers just use a spacer on the axle to keep the wheel bearing in place. Easy. Simple. Cheap.

But not Honda.....OH no, they had to use a threaded aluminium retainer that threads into a large internal thread on the sprocket carrier. Of course what happens over the years is that the internal thread on the sprocket carrier - as well as the external thread on the bearing retainer - both flog out to the max and both threads get chewed out. But if the rear wheel is still held in tight with the axle nut - then the bearing retainer has nowhere to go - and manages to do a half-way good job of keeping the wheel bearing in place.

Its total bullshit. The other issue he may have is that the sprocket carrier has this really big boss that is part of the wheel hub - the sprocket carrier is retained with a large circlip - but the sprocket carrier tends to flog out the extended boss on the wheel hub - which means the rear sprocket gets a lot of play - not lateral play but rotational/fore-and-aft play. Over time this just wears out the rear sprocket and the chain as there is so much play in the sprocket carrier. Instead of rotating in 1 plane, it rotates like a gyroscope - all over the fucking shop !!

I haven't really started exploring the XL and XR forums yet to find a fix - but you can guarantee that there will be a fix from someone somewhere who is just as pissed off as most XL owners at what is a really stupid design fault (or faults actually - Yamaha have a much better-designed rear hub on the YZ/IT of the same era).

THIS THREAD IS USELESS WITHOUT PICTURES...

its like describing porn...

........THIS THREAD IS USELESS WITHOUT PICTURES...

its like describing porn...

yes OK.

Here is a bog-stock 1979 XL500S. The one I am working on looks (looked) a lot like this except older and tired. As you would expect.






You can see from this pic - the ridiculously skinny forks, the even-more ridiculous 23" front rim (Penny Farthing anyone ?) - and the massive ugly muffler at the rear......

all these are now gone. The front-end will look much more chunky with the 43mm YZ490 forks fitted, as well as the more-effective twin-leading shoe front drum. 21" rim stock on a YZ front end.......and the bike already has a period Peter Allen muffler fitted.

Did you buy that Peter Allen Muffler when you went to Rio Gos???

......Did you buy that Peter Allen Muffler when you went to Rio Gos??? ......

hell yeah

mmmmm had a bit of a splurge on ebay tonight - getting all the important bits (well some of them anyway...)

Chain & sprockets - 14/41 and a 520 h/d chain
Clutch cable
sidecover stickers
exhaust gaskets
rear wheel bearing kit
tapered steering head bearing kit
Complete engine gasket kit (now why did I buy 2 seperate header gaskets again ?? )
new rear brake shoes
new front brake shoes (YZ490)

These are pretty much most of the bits that *have* to be replaced - throttle cable and decompression cable still to come.

I did a number on the YZ490 forks last weekend - many years ago on a trip away, the fork seals blew while the bike was getting trailered (long story) - but it never got sorted because the WP front-end was fitted after that trip. So I dropped the springs out, gave the forks a really good flush, then fitted some new fork seals and dust seals. Filled up with 15W - almost 1/2 a litre per leg FFS !! then put everything back together and they feel heaps better.

Also did a number on the OEM yamaha front wheel.......there were a couple of dings that were easily seen when the wheel was spinning ...and then I found a crack in the rim as well - only small but down each lip directly opposite..... so the original plan to have this rim re-rolled straight was out the window, as the rim fully cracked in half once the spokes were all loosened up prior to removal - it was only the spoke tension that was stopping the rim from cracking completely so its probably a good thing that this was found with the wheel off the bike - rather than up in the air in 4th gear !!! . Yamaha rims back then used tricky Z-spokes - and only 32 of them. So I have to source a 1982-84 front rim now that will suit this pattern. That will be the only hold-up at the moment for that front end.

Things should move along a lot quicker once the triple-clamps have been completed.....hopefully sometime next week I will get the call.....

Good old ebay!! Let me guess the saying from your better half every time the mailman turns up or theres a pickup slip in the mail.
With a little roll of the eyes and a noticeable head shake " WTF have you bought this time blah blah blah " Anyway mine does

......Good old ebay!! Let me guess the saying from your better half every time the mailman turns up or theres a pickup slip in the mail.
With a little roll of the eyes and a noticeable head shake " WTF have you bought this time blah blah blah " Anyway mine does .......

nothing comes to the home letterbox - everything goes to my PO Box and straight from the car into the shed...

the only thing I have to make sure of - is that all the receipt emails and Paypal emails go straight into the ebay folder - otherwise I am fkcued !!!

short update on this build ....

some ebay parts arrived last week - wheel bearings, cables - that sort of thing. Fitted where possible or put on the rack for later where required

Mick at the engineering firm will have finished the steering stem conversion this week, so the forks will be bolted up next week. Due to the problem with the OEM front rim and hub - I spent some time last weekend out at the local wreckers. Old mate was happy to let me dig through his stock of old Yamaha dirt bike front wheels - and I finally found a TT250J or K front wheel - 21" - which has the same sized front axle and more importantly - the same drum brake dimensions as the YZ490L front wheel. This means I just need to sort out one spacer and this wheel will bolt straight into the YZ forks, and still let me use the better twin-leading shoe drum brake that is stock on the 490 (single-leader on the TT and also the stock XL front ends). The rim is also silver so it matches the rear rim - happy with that.

The new rear shocks turned up this week so they have been bolted in straight away. Red springs to match the front gaiters - but they look heaps chunkier than the skinny stock rear shocks and are also a piggy-back canister style - so they look the goods for sure.

Will update this thread with some pics when the new front end is bolted in. Until then it looks very ordinary indeed.....