contact cover

Seeing as I am on a roll, I had been toying with the idea of using Halfords metallic VHT paint. It says black on it but its more of an anchorite grey, which looks nice. I've used it before on a CB125 exhaust and if prepped right, is hard wearing and hard to scratch.

so this is what I came up with

looks cool! thinking of doing the cyl head only and leaving the jugs alone

Oil gauge mount

today I managed to do a couple of hours on the bike. The Temp was about 1'C so working outside was bearable.

I had the problem of how to mount gauge cover from a previous post and looked into a 2 1/2 " Munsen bracket. They are not cheap and tried to borrow one, but no-one had any.
Whilst mooching in the car i came across a clip bracket for my car extinguisher. Brilliant, it fits

also had an alloy footrest off a go kart. I now decided to mount the gauge at the side of the engine rather than clutter the headstock. So I made a cardboard template and cut out the ally using the angle as the mount for the clip.

now to give it a polish, and there we go. The standard NPT fitting on the oil gauge fits the thread on the pressure switch so its a direct replacement

rear lamp support

Because of the rear lamp and combined reg plate. there is a lot of weight jumping around especially over bumps.

i decided to reduce flex by bending some cheap tubing and weld to the stainless plate. I have special welding rods which can weld stainless to ferrous steel.

just needs a clean up and should be good

more on the blue spot caliper

The caliper came today so I gave a it a thorough clean. what a really nice bit of kit!

the body has a blued coating so won't need painting and the pins etc are stainless.

so I've ordered new EBC pads from Ghost bikes in preston and it's good to go.

I've spoken to another xs400 friend in London who has had made a caliper bracket and he warned me that the original caliper holes are not perpenducular to the fork leg. Looking closer, he's right and will need to take this into account when designing this. I do have a couple of diagrams that I can use for the mounts and spacer, I'll post them here even though it says SR400 the mods have fitted brakes the same side as the XS.

15.4 mm spacer

10.6 mm spacer

I'll post which one i used after its done

Electrics and mounting

Managed to weld in some tabs to bolt a piece of diamond plate ally.

there is only 20mm of space, so anything I do in there will be tight.

I have a combined regulator/rectifier that I got off ebay years ago, so to make it fit and look (and be) a bit cooler, I have sunk it into the plate so the fins for the reg/rec are in the cooling air.

here's the top of the installation

the connector is from RS components and costs a whopping £20 delivered the intention is to have a neat cabling solution and still be able to part the component if there is a problem.

I am going to install a couple of relays in front of the battery along with a couple of inline fuses. The relays are for the headlamp low/high beam and one for the horn due to the lightweight switches on the handlebars.

paint job

As with all specials, you start off with an image and then you create that inage. Then you change your mind, add anopther paret, change your mind again.

Any way this is my latest idea.

Drab green tank, matt black, orange writing, red speed blocks. White and orange stripes on top.

matt black front mudguard, satin black seat with white and orange stripes.

crap PS image

brakes

I got looking around the net and felt that the brakes i have on the front won't do any justice. So I got a TZR125 disk from ebay and fitted that!

looks good

now I've looked at this site http://srx6blk.web.infoseek.co.jp/SR/SR-DiskBrake.htm


and seen the blue spot calipers on there that fit the SR (same braking system but on the other side) and seen that the XJR 1300 has these so I've just gone and bought one off ebay.

so we'll see when it comes if I can get it to fit. The disk will need spacing and a bracket made to fit the caliper, other than that I don't envisage any probs!!