In Oct 2011 I pulled this weathered old 3 cylinder out of my grandpa's boneyard to see if I could build up a motorcycle for myself. It was inspired by a few friends, one that I worked with that got me hooked and another who built the XS650 bobber below.
At first I was going to for the bobber look but the more I thought about where I would be riding and the more I fiddled with the bike I realized that I would be much happier building a sort of dual purpose bike like a street tracker or scrambler(example, Honda CX Tracker below by RGK).
To get things going we first had to make sure that the bike was worth any time and money for parts. Just playing around my father-in-law and I filled the tires with air and they have held air to date. We got the engine started after going through the fuel system quickly and realized that the carbs will need a lot of work. My grandpa used to own a motorsports dealership and said that the bikes that didn't sell when he retired had something wrong with them but that he couldn't remember the situation with the 750. Once we got it running we took it for a quick and scary ride (brakes still seized) around the yard and realized that the trans was really struggling to get in and out of 2nd gear. As I did some research I learned that with the XS750 2D and other 750s there has been a notorious problem with the spacing of the gears that eats away at number 2. Luckily there are many tutorials for remedies to this problem on the interweb and we can fix it quite easily, in theory.
Since those discoveries we have fitted new master cylinders for the brakes, an original kickstart, a temporary old/new stock seat and some period correct dirtbike bars. The obstacle most difficult so far was the wiring harness which had two major short circuts causing others and melting a lot of wires. This is it so far, I will give more plans and updates as I make more progress in between university and my full-time job and wife.
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