YZF600 engine stuffed into a 90 blaster

Not much of an update but i glad to say I am finally finished the exhaust. Learned a lot to make things easier for next time I do some when I do another swap like this.

Cut the pipes off at the collector so I could weld all around them. Fit them back on the engine and tacked the 4 pipes together, then made a diamond piece to connect the 4 in the middle. Then refit the collector and welded around the 4 pipes. So glad to be done this part of the swap.






On another note I made a new friend. A stray cat that is friendly as ever and won't seem to leave my side. Going to pick up some wood tonight and make a shelter for it for winter.

Made a little house for the cat so it's back to the bike.

I replaced the stripped plastic headstock gears on the lathe with some metal ones and just made my first ever part. About as simple as they get but it's a start. These are spacers for the foot pegs to clear the exhaust.

Made the rest of the peg spacers. Also mounted the rear brake master cylinder but I may redo it. Think it might look better if I just cut a new piece of steel and have it sit flush with the master rather than the current straight piece with spacers.

I was worried about that as well but the third bolt where the heel protectors bolt to the subframe really stiffened it right up. I bounced on each side with all my weight and they didn't flex.

I'm not against strengthening them though. Have any ideas?

I spun up some bushings for the 400ex shock but I made them out of 6061 aluminum. I'm thinking I should make them out of steel though as the shoulder thickness is only .65" which seems like it could be somewhat easily sheared.

Frame bracing 95% done. Few more to make. One to span the lower frame rails behind the a-arms and the last one will span across the top tubes after I make the gas tank to make sure it clears the tank and carbs. Next up for now is frame gussets

Finished the lower frame rail tube brace behind the a-arms.

Got started on the electronics box. Need to make a top for it and drill the holes for the taillight.





Doesn't look straight here but it is, think it's the flat left rear tire throwing it off.

Taillight mounted



Electronics. Best I could do with using the OEM harness. Will change the battery terminals over to the correct ones for this battery.

Started on gas tank while I wait for some parts to finish everything else.

Have to cut out a piece for the front still and add cap and bung.

Welded it all up. Going to pressure test it when I get my bung and cap.

OConnor Racing said:

Boss, you have my utmost respect for taking on a project like this! The fact that you have limited resources grants you god mode. I want to ride it!

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Thanks Ken. I've been putting the angle grinder through hell with this bike, haha.

Not sure how much more progress I'll be able to make until I get some parts in, most of which are coming from overseas so the updates may slow down for a little while. My fault for not ordering them sooner.

So to make up for it I thought I'd throw up some pics of my wifes XS400 I built for her last winter.

How we bought it on Christmas day:




I wanted to do every feasible part in powdercoat that I could on this bike, do a complete rebuild of nearly every single part and also do 100% of the work myself, from metal fab, wheel building and truing to paint, electrical and even sewing a seat cover.

I had just started to do powdercoating for myself and this was going to be a good learning curve. Previously I had only been doing smaller parts that would fit in a regular kitchen oven I picked up for $20 which made it a pain so I decided I needed something bigger for this bike. Quick look on kijiji I found a $10 filing cabinet. Few hours later I had this beauty. Works great and heats up very quickly with the 2 elements.




With that built so I can do bigger items I could start getting a feel for the colors she wanted. Decided to go with strawberry red and white with some black here and there.

Blasted the old dirty rims and hubs and put some powder on them.

Go from this


To this with new spokes.


Carbs were next. 100% powder.




The engine had only 30 psi compression so it was time to rebuild it. After tearing it down the rings were completely seized in the pistons. No matter how much heat or soaking I did, the top 2 compression rings wouldn't free up. New pistons, rings, gaskets and seals were ordered.





Had the bores measured and were still in spec so I just honed them as they had no crosshatch left. Cleaned up the ports and valves and lapped the seats. Luckily that's mostly all it needed. Then it was time to paint the engine, powder coat the cases and reassemble.






Next up was frame work. Quickly cut the triple back bone out to fit a smaller tank. Slugged and replaced the backbone with a single .120 wall. Had to make new side and rear tubes. Later re-did the rear tubes as I didn't like how they were.



New rear tubes and hoop. I bent the hoop with an OA torch, winging the dimensions to fit a CBR taillight I wanted to use. Was shocked it came out nearly perfect the first time.





Electronics box







Ignition and start button

Banged out a seat pan, glued some foam, shaped it and then after many hours of youtubing how to sew a seat cover and even many more hours with a sewing machine it was covered.






Painted frame (wouldn't quite fit in my oven easily, unfortunately) and powdered swingarm.


Start to put it together







Now the fun part, tank paint. Lots of masking and hoping it turns out. Got some paint mixed up to match the strawberry red powder I used, exact match I'd say. The pattern is tablecloth lace. Spray some glue on it, stick it down tight, paint over it and then remove. Works great. This was spray-can base. This was before I applied a 2K clear.





After making a wiring harness from scratch, shortening clutch, brake and throttle cables it was finished. However, this year I'm going to paint the front fender to match the tank and change out the speedometer to a black one.




Here you can somewhat see the mini handlebar switches I knocked off from some expensive ones. They control signals and headlight. Wiring is ran through the bars and come out in the middle by top tree.

Larry's Shee said:

Whoah dude, that tank gave me a flashback. Haven't seen lace painting since the 70s

A+ on this project !!

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It was actually much easier to do than it looks as well. If only they made readily available lace in designs other than flowers.

I bent some tubing to add to the bumper to protect the bottom of the rad. Not sure I like how the bumper looks now. What do you think?

Charles hoffman said:

Man I checked out this entire thread.... You sir have SKILLS lol hopefully you will get a vid out of it in action when you are finished looking forward to the rest of the build

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Thanks. I've been working on it still, just haven't uploaded any pictures. I should have this thing atleast running by end of March. Then the paint and powder coat will take a little while.