I tried to remove the brackets on the underside of the XT500 seat. I had applied WD40 the night before, but I still managed to break the first bolt, and the second, and well, all of them. They had to be drilled out as the “nuts” are actually small plates moulded into the plastic. After removing the seat cover and the foam, it was obvious that they could never have been unscrewed. They were completely fused to the plates by […]
After several weeks into this project I realised that so many parts were either incorrect, missing or needed replacing through damage or corrosion. As I looked online for these parts I came across a donor bike, a 1983 XT500 1U6 for sale in Rome. It arrived by courier in July 2020. It was in a mess, without documents but cheap (€1000 plus €280 shipping) considering the prices they fetch these days. It was missing the clocks and bracket, kick start, […]
First off, I had the incorrect forks for my 1980 XT500 G. They were from an earlier model that had the axle mounted ‘inline’ on the underside of the of the legs (1976-1979). They were also a different length, the earlier type should protrude above the top clamp by 35mm to 55mm. There is not enough space to do this on later models. The 1980 and later had leading axles, i.e. mounted to the front of the leg. The triple […]
Cylinder head, valves and rockers got scrutinised before moving on to the cylinder and piston. Removing the rocker cover, inspection of the rockers and tappets and cam shaft revealed some wear but I’ve seen rockers and tappets a lot worse than this but they still showed enough wear to warrant replacement. The cam shaft shows more wear than I’d hoped and even some flaking on the edge of one of the cams. This is an expensive part to replace new […]
12 June 2020 After using WD40 and an impact driver I was able to remove the battery box and air box, and discovered perhaps why there was an idle problem, as the above photo shows. This is a common problem with the XT500, the connection from the box to carb cracks and brakes off, sometimes because the owner tries to squeeze in the carb without loosening all the mounting points of the air box. But maybe also due to the […]
