THE X(j) FILES: EPISODE III

by Al

Scully: Mulder... None of that really happened out there tonight. That was all in our heads, right?
Mulder: It must have been.
Scully: Not that, uh, my only joy in life is proving you wrong.
Mulder: When have you proved me wrong?

THE X-FILES

For those who came in late: Episode I, Episode II.

I took the tank to Firebrand Motorcycles at Artarmon. Some petrol had hit the tank near the filler cap when I removed it. The paint there was all blistered and lifting. The leak was a pinhole leak, not from a seam, but from a bad repair or a rust hole.

The tank was going to take a while, so I checked out what else needed doing. There was oil on the fork tube. Coincidentally, in the box of parts that came with the bike were two fork seals.

Front end showing internally vented disks and antidive units: major cool in '83

Why fuel started coming through the paint job...

Still life with eleven hundred dollar tank and eighty dollar mirrors

The fairing came off OK. The front wheel came off OK. The tyre had tread, but it was probably fifteen years old. I took it up to the Yamaha dealer for another Lasertec.

The mudguard looked pretty bad. It had been repaired at some time and was not pretty.

The anti-dive unit on the left fork was held in place by seized Allen bolts. Impact drivers, soaking in WD40 and serious leverage only succeeded in damaging the bolt heads. I took both forks up to the Yamaha dealer and told him to drill out the bolts on the anti dive unit and replace the seals.

In the mean time, I checked the Internet for resources on locating parts. Yamaha publish their parts manuals on line, but some of them are no longer available. The machine is, after all, twenty four years old. On the bright side, they changed the following model a bit and then produced it until 1994, so lots of the parts are common to all models.

The parts manuals that Yamaha publish on line are for the USA market only, though. Yamaha sold about a thousand 1983 models in the USA, and then they pulled the model from that market.

But, there was a web site called www.xjowners.com and a mailing list at micapeak.com. And some of the XJ freaks out there had put all the manuals, specs, ads, parts lists, magazine articles and stuff together; and written a database that cross-referred all the XJ parts to other XJ models and other Yamaha models. It filled four CD-ROMs, and it cost US$10.00. I ordered it.

I got the forks back. The guy from the Yamaha dealer pointed out some wrinkles in the chrome near the top. "Your bike's been stacked", he said. "These forks have been straightened."

Great.

Then I got the news on the tank. It was irrepairably stuffed. At the bottom, only the primer and some filler were holding the rust particles that used to be the bottom of the tank together.

I rang around the wreckers, but no-one had one. XJs had the lowest point in the tank below the fuel tap. Water vapour used to condense in the tank, drop down, sit on the seams and rust it out from the inside. I finally found that Yamaha had one tank left. In Japan. And it cost $1117.20.

I ordered it.

Antony, the mechanic at Firebrand Motorcycles, had shown me his SR500 tank, which had been treated inside with a hard epoxy (I think) coating. When my tank arrived, I took it to him and got the treatment done. Another $120.00.

Ant likes playing with old Yamahas. His SR500 makes about 45bhp at the rear wheel. He told me what a great bike I had. I said I'd probably ride it around for a year and then sell it.

"You won't." he said.

"Why?"

"They're a great bike. They do everything well. You can't get a bike like that these days. You can tour on it, you can ride to work on it, and you can take it to the track. They're shaft drive, and they're incredibly reliable. I've seen them go around the clock twice without having the head off them. They even won the Surfer's Paradise Two Hour production race back in the eighties. And they got fifth in the Six Hour."

He gave the tank back to me a week later. "Oh, and I'd strongly advise you to get a new fuel tap", he said.

What would he know. He's never even seen the tap.

So I put a few litres of juice in the tank, mounted it, and connected the fuel lines. The spigot on the tap snapped off.

I went and bought a new fuel tap.

I fitted it, re-mounted the tank, and cranked the engine. It caught a couple of times, and fuel started leaking out of the fuel pipes. About this time my business had was starting to get very busy and I was running out of time, so I got it trucked up to Ant and asked him to get it going and registerable.

He looked at how I'd set up the carbs and laughed. "They're vent tubes", he said. "You're pushing fuel into them. That's why it leaks."

He looked at the battery. "Two dead cells", he said.

"It's only a couple of months old!" I protested.

"You got the cheapest one in the shop, right?"

"Yeah."

"Yuasa is the go, mate."

"Replace it."