1980 XS850 Midnight Special "Custom"
This bike actually started as a non-Midnight, a 1980 XS850SG. The short story on it was that it was given to my Dad around 2011 as a project after sitting in his coworker's basement (allegedly) for about 26 years. With the amount of rust on the thing, I'm pretty sure it was outdoors for a time. But the fact remained it had not been started in over 2 decades.
My Dad doesn't ride, but he brought it home in the hopes that it could be resurrected and become a safer bike than the Ninja I had. I'd never worked on a motorcycle before and I already had a running machine, so I left it sitting with my Dad until around 2015 when I finially decided to see if I could get it to fire up. So I removed the carbs and cleaned them up as best I knew how, which admittedly was not a good job at all. But when I put them on the bike and hooked some cables up and jumped it, sure enough it turned on.
It ran really rough and wouldn't stay on for more than a few seconds at a time. So I removed the carbs again and cleaned them some more, threw them back in and now it would stay on if I was cranking on the throttle, which I did until the muffler turned blue. Satisfied enough, I left it for another month then I got my first of many petcock leaks. I ordered a kit and quickly learned how to rebuild them. Fast forward another couple of months, and I threw the towel in (this would not be the last time) and trailered the thing 100 miles away to a coworker's place who at one time used to race bikes. He pretty much knew them in and out, and better yet, his brother had bought an XS brand new back in the day.
He spent a few weeks going through the bike enough to get the rear brake working, the front ones unstuck (but not grabbing, even after rebuilding the master), and had the bike running without dying. He called it good to ride home. So I picked it up, ended up blowing oil everywhere on the freeway and was barely able to stop it. The only working brake was trying to grab a rotor covered in oil. Scary stuff. Back to his place it went for another 3 weeks when it was ready to go again.
I rode it 100 miles, still on only the rear brake, but it felt good having it on the road finally. Once back in my town, I pulled into a gas station, and the bike would not turn on after filling it up. Turns out the charging system fried. Intimidated by the mess of wiring, I let it sit again for 5 more years, outside. I was able to move to a new place that actually had a garage, and moved it inside for another year before COVID lockdown hit us.
I was bored out of my mind and purging old stuff from the garage and decided that this basket case of a motorcycle either needed to go away or I needed to dig in. I couldn't possibly make it any worse than the shape it was in at this point. A bucket of rusty, crusty scrap metal. This is where the real rebuild finally started. I found the fried, melted plugs coming off of the stator (I had know clue what that even was at the time, other than it acted like an alternator). Those plugs got clipped, I hard wired some things together and tried firing it up. Lo and behold…it was running and better yet, charging. It was a weak charge, but it was working. So I went all in.
The following is just some of the stuff I went through while getting this machine to the show quality it is today.
Hacking Wires
This is where I started cleaning up the mess. The plugs between the stator and regulator/rectifier were clipped off and hard wired together. That 12.6 volts was later increased to 14.5. I initially bought a cheap $25 R/R, which wasn't much better than the voltage you see here. I spent the money on a good one from Rick's Motorsports and it made a huge difference. One other little hack I did was with the new R/R. I split the ground wire so it connected to both the harness and also the frame. It's been several years later now and it charges like a champ.
Carbs
I finally got to cleaning these things more thoroughly. After they were all cleaned up (so I thought), I painted them black. I hadn't yet decided to go gold at this point, so the silver caps remained. Eventually, I ended up rejetting these, using 146 mains and 42.5 pilots to compensate for a 3-1 header and a hi-flo K&N in the airbox. Rebuilding and jetting these carbs was only difficult because it is REALLY hard to find any info on them. These Hitachis were only on the 1980 XS 850's. Most people give up and go Mikuni, but I can say for fact that once these are set properly, they are beasts and the bike pulls hard.
Of note, after my friend had these things “clean”, I later found out that I was only running on 2 cylinders. Two areas both he and I missed were the emulsion tubes, and the screens underneath the valve needle seats. If you are running rough on Hitachis, or notice one cylinder is way cooler than the others, or you just can't sync/tune it, look at those screens.
Engine Paint
Listen…I got laughed at for using rattle cans on this. Even more so for doing it without removing from the frame. Go ahead and spend a bunch of effort and money removing it and, totally breaking everything down and powder coating. If not doing that yourself, you are talking big money.
Or, do what I did. Tape off REALLY well, spend $30 on VHT high heat engine primer and top coat, then bake it in by running the engine per the instructions you can find online. For smaller parts, throw them in the oven. It stinks though, so keep the windows open for like 6 hours. It works. It comes out looking great. There is a catch though… gasoline WILL melt the paint. Obviously this is totally not great for a motorcycle where you are bound to drip gas on things.
How I solved this issue, is I again went over the top coat with Rustoleum high heat BBQ paint (hand brushed), heated it up again by running the bike, then I brushed on a layer of Exo-Armor from Eastwood. I swear by that stuff. In fact, I coated a lot of other things on the bike with it. It is clear and basically protects with a layer of plastic that is heat proof, petrol proof, prevents bare aluminum from yellowing, protects my paint and little details…over 3 years later and it has shown zero signs of wearing out. This whole job with all I've described cost me about $100.
Wheels
How did I get amazing looking wheels? Well, I didn't do all the work other guys do of removing them and sandblasting them, then pouring money into powder coating. I like less work, less money and same beautiful results. I wet sanded these rims and just rolled the bike around to get to areas that were previously out of reach. Then I hand painted with Rustoleum for the black, POR-15 Olds Gold for the accents. POR-15 Black would have been a great choice instead of Rustoleum, too, but it's pricier. After painting, I sanded again. Check out the rotors, too.