The Hot New Thing seems to be power cruisers. Honda’s got the VLX1800 and, the true Behemoth of Power Cruisers, IMHO, the Valkyrie. Yamaha’s Star Warrior is nothing to sneeze at. The Harley V-Rod is, in a word, awesome. Surely the nu-tech Harley, based on the VR1000 superbike motor, is blessed with one of Motorcycling’s Great Engines (never mind that they didn’t set Superbike on fire. That motor rawks!!). Kawasaki has their new 1600cc go-cruzr. Suzuki seems to be lagging, but BMW, Triumph, and yes, even Moto-Guzzi offer cruiser-style bikes possessing very respectable performance. But these bikes all have one thing in common – they’re big heavy brutes! :-)
Now, understand that my idea of a customized bike, a hotrod chopper, remains a bike that has been stripped. Look back at the Harleys® and Indians® and, yes, Limey bikes that started the whole American Chopper Movement, back in the 40’s and 50’s. They were an engine, frame, tires & wheels, and not much more. Oh, unavoidable little bits like throttles and shocks and carbs and spark plugs. Big Unavoidable Bits like seats and gas tanks were pared down and made as small & light as possible.
No, you didn’t add a bunch o’ chrome and crap and end up with a 700-pound heap, fercryin’ out loud. Rather, you went for a svelte sub-500 pound bike that maneuvered like a cat on a shag rug, was easy to pick up as a Beale St hooker, with a smallish engine that was rideable but would, nonetheless, rip when you wanted it to. You want a favorable power-to-weight ratio above all.
So, that brings us to the XJ700N. It’s a 1986 model, and uses a 699cc version of Yamaha’s middleweight DOHC transverse-4 UJM powerplant (the bike was built expressly to avoid the Federal Save Harley-Davidson Tariff on imported bikes of 700cc and above, of course). This little bike has been a real eye-opener for me. It weighs, according to the Yamaha Factory Service Manual®, 494 pounds. With a full tank of gas, and all oils and fluids. Sounds heavy to a newbie, probably. Hell, as a diehard dirtbiker, it sounds a li’l on the porky side to me.
But, compare it to my ST1100 PanEuro at 654.7 pounds. Dry. Add in 7 gallons of petrol, 4 quarts of oil, ¾ gallon of coolant, a quart of fork oil, 15-lb Givi® tailbag w/ brackets, and another 10 or 12 pounds for the Hotgrips® heated grips, tools (complete down to the Honda® Spray & Clean®, rags both polishing & shop, duct tape & shop rags. (Heck, even a Tom Swift Roadside Tubeless-Tire Repair kit®)). Another 2 kilos for the maps, rainsuit, bottle of water, & Jack Link’s® Beef Jerky strips that Travel With Me Always (hey, what can I say, I was a boy scout. Be Prepared. <grin> Anway, you’re looking at a grand total of maybe 720 to 730 pounds, ready to ride..
Folks, that is a 236 pound difference. That’s a whole motorcycle’s difference.. albeit a tiddler like a YZ125. Still, let’s look at the P/W ratio. The XJ700 gets about 75 horses. Heck, 80 horses, if it’s tuned just right. That works out to a P/W ratio of .1 hp/lb for the XJ, and .075 hp/lb for the PanEuro.. maybe .085 to .09 assuming the bike was running just so, and if I removed all the bags & emptied the under-seat compartment. So.. do the math. J
The PanEuro will knock off low-12 quarters in experienced hands. 12 flat under ideal conditions. But the XJ, once you get the trick of launching the howling little multi reasonably hard, then learn to bang it off it’s 10,000 rpm redline just right as you row through the five gears.. well, mid 11’s ain’t out of the question. Shoot, I reckon Pewee Gleason could notch off low 11’s with the thing! All the while it feels as light and agile as a Schwinn bicycle, if you’ve just hopped off the PanEuro… ;-)
Repairs done to the bike.. well, with 8,400 original miles, it only needed a thorough fuel-system overhaul. 3 years in storage, the first one outside, yielded a fuel system full of the nastiest, smelliest varnish you’d ever want to see. I say ‘only’ a carb rebuild, but of course it turned into a clusterf.. err, fiasco. Yeah, A clusterfiasco.. ;-) The carb bodies had to be dipped in Berryman’s®, and so the throttle seals had to come out. This proved impossible without destroying them. They were weird, square-section o-rings, basically. After I’d ruined three (two per carb), I tried goin’ ahead and soaking them in the Berryman’s. That screwed ‘em up even worse.. :-/ I thought I was gonna have to make seals, fercryin’ out loud. Indeed, I took a stab at CNC-machining a mold and casting them out of ATV silicone sealer before I discovered that a reg’lar ol’ round o-ring would work. I did have to custom-machine a 3/16 OD x 1/8 ID washer that I managed to lose..
I started the job in Sep. 02 and pronounced the fuel-system overhaul complete on May 18, 2003. Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. Nearly 8 months for a carb overhaul. Hey, I may be slow, but I do it right.. =:-) The results were immediate and gratifying. The bike romped to life on the first stab of the starter button, and has been running like a champ ever since. The bike just wanted to run.. heck, I had it running on 1-cylinder with the varnished gas!
Some old bikes are just like that. They want to run. My CB350/Four is another. But anything can be taken to an extreme, and this VJ700 wanted to go too much. So, while it ran fine, after 2 or 3 days the doubled-up throttle shaft o-rings (x4 per carb) started to cause binding. I cursed, I installed an auxiliary return spring from Home Depot®. That took some cussin’, but made the bike rideable again. Yeah, the *&$!ed throttle action was so stiff it was like working your wrist on a Bowflex® all day.. ];-) ..but rideable. For another 3 or 4 days. Then more binding. The bike became a handfull.. it was hard to shut it down, plain and simple.. Yes, I started fearing for my life! ];-) (Interestingly enough, Jay Leno describes riding his turbine bike as “You have to look forward 2 seconds, and give it the throttle it’ll need 2 seconds from now..” This bike, at first, would have been a perfect trainer for the turbine bike, ‘cause it was exactly like that. At the end, it was more like a 3 to 4 second delay…)
Nothing for it, then. On May 26 I pulled the rack o’ carbs back off, split ‘em, pulled the throttle shafts & removed the extra pairs of o-rings, and reassembled. Being an experienced XJ7* Maxim Mechanic now, it took only 3 ½ hours for the entire job. Ahhhhh.. perfection! J
I’ve put 500+ miles on the bike since, and it is a sweet li’l bike. The riding position is an excellent compromise between the sportbike crouch and cruiser layback ergos. Sort of like straight chair vs. Lazy Boy®. Add a small windshield, and I could easily live with this as a commuter bike. Indeed, I offered the owner $800, and was turned down.. what, you thought it was was my bike? J
No, it belongs to Pam’s cousin, Jan. I did it as a labor of love. The shop rate at a dealer shop is $560 on this job (full fuel system overhaul). That’s just labor, mind you. Another $40 per for the carb kits, another $100 or so in misc gaskets and supplies, and you’re looking at more than the bike’s worth. It’s like a VCR – they’re so cheap it’s never worth it to have them serviced. Just throw it away & get another at Wal-Mart for $44…
After 100 miles I changed the oil & filter. Still to be done: tires, first and foremost. The wear on the old (maybe the OEM original) Bridgestones is clearly evident in the 530-odd miles I’ve put on them. It’s getting new 130/60-16 and 110/90-19 Kenda Qualifiers® from Chaparral®. After that, I’ll drain & refill the differential w/ 80W90 (this’s a shaftie, remember), and also drain & refill the brake fluid and fork oil. After that.. well there are still two problems.. :-/ The vacuum-operated petcock plain doesn’t work. It is, basically, in “prime” position all the time. A new one, which is available, is $80. Ouch. Also, the Kreem coating failed me on this one. Came apart in bloody great sheets after 3 weeks. L It was hell fishing that stuff out of the tank. :-/ I got enough out that I would trust the remaining bits ‘n pieces of Kreem not to clog the fuel pipe (Honda uses a great standpipe design), but it’s theoretically possible. Jan doesn’t want to spent another $100+ on the bike, on top of the $200 she owes me for tires & sundry, so we’ll likely pronounce it Close Enough For Rock N Roll and leave it be…
What I haven't bored you to death yet? More?! Well, click here for a pic of my most favorite Yamaha XJ, the water-cooled 700 Maxim-X from 1985. Awesome litle bike, this. This rascal pushes 85 to 90 horses, yet weighs little more than the N models. But ditch that pair of heavy-as-a-brass-cannon OEM smog mufflers for a light 4-into-one, and you might come in under the N model. O course, that means that an N model with light pipes could tip the scales at as little as 465 pounds.. especially if you're lucky enough to find one of the beatiful light-as-a-feather single wall pipes that Kerker made for these bikes!
All in all a fine little motorbike.. one I'll be sorry to give back to the owner! :-)