Finally found some time to work on the Yamaha. Moved it to my storage unit to have the extra space to work on it.
First order of business was to remove the gas tank. I'll post up a pic of the inside before I send it out to a radiator shop to get it boiled out. The inside looks like gas had varnished, then someone tried lining it with Redkote on top of the varnish. The gas I poured out of the tank was stained red from the liner failing.
So one thing I love about old bikes like these is that I get to discover all the weird fixes the previous owners tried. Here we have the the petcocks removed from the tank, and what appears to be some sort of silicone gasket along with the normal gasket. Trust me, it was pretty nasty before I scraped most of it off.
Next thing I found was when I removed the airbox to get the carbs off. The bottom of these airboxes are held in with wingnuts, like so:
The top side of the wingnuts are held in with a small clip, pictured on the left. On the right you can see where the PO decided that a bread tie was easier to use than a clip hahaha.
One other thing I discovered was the headlight. If any of you are familiar at all with the XS1100 series then you know that Yamaha made a Standard model, and a Special model. Each had different styling characteristics such as a round vs. square headlight, round vs. square turnsignals, and other such things. In my very first picture of the first post to this thread you can see that this bike has a round headlight, but is a Standard model. I assumed someone mounted the (in my opinion) better looking round headlight off of a Special, but upon closer inspection I discovered this:
Yep, you read that right. The headlight buckets is stamped Suzuki. They made it work, and it doesn't look too shabby, so I'll leave it on there.
Also discovered the original tool pouch when taking the carbs off, I always think they are pretty neat.
And finally, here she sits awaiting a clean gas tank and clean carbs. In the meantime I need to rebuild the stock front master cylinder I picked up from an XS11 forum member, as well as rebuild the rear master cylinder. Then rebuild the forks, and rewire the part of the main harness going to the nonexistent electrical panel (which I've also sourced from ebay).
