Intro and thanks

[fintoleft1]

Hey all,

My name is Frank and have been lurking in the forum for a few months since I picked up a 79 xs1100 sf. It was a craigslist find for 325 delivered. It looks road hard and put away wet but only has 17k on the clock. Just about everything on her needs work. This week I took vacation time and dug into the carbs. The bike sat for about 20 years so I didn't have high hopes. I've got 2 cracked brass floats and the other 2 are beyond cleaning. The jets were rough even after cleaning so I ordered rebuild kits from georgefixs and plastic floats from mikesxs. Hopefully i'll have the carbs back together by the end of the week. Otherwise I just wanted to say thanks for all your great posts. I would be lost without them. I'll try to add some pics later.

[mack]

Welcome

Since you have been lurking, you already know some of the things to look for. If you scroll down through the forum page to miscelanious, you'll find a post in there on what to look for on a neglected XS. Some good reading and lots of things you may not have thought of. If it's as rough as you say then a close look at the wiring harness is probably in order. These bikes are notorious for electrical problems, which can generally be traced back to loose, or dirty connections. If you pull the harness out, just number the connectors with a marker and you won't mix them up on the reinstall. If your wife has a small jewllery ultra sonic cleaner, borrow it and put a table spoon of cascade powder dishwasher cleaner in it and dunk the connectors into it and run the machine through several cycles and the connectors will come out like new. Blow dry and spray on some contact cleaner and you'll be good to go. Rebuild your brakes throughout, these things are bullet fast but hard to stop. Good luck, post some pictures and welcome to the forum.

[EricHa]

Sounds like me! I picked up an SF as well here in IL last fall, only had 8200 miles but had been neglected for decades. Good luck bringing your beast back to life. This site is awesome, and the members are the best part!

[DGXSER]

Welcome aboard the Crazy Train!! Your in for the ride of a life time.

There are lots of fun things to be discovered in one that sat that long.

Also remember that it is more important to be able to stop once you get going than to get going in the first place, so make sure you got the WHOA before you try the go! Your bound to at least need to fully disassemble the nrake system and clean every component. It is surprising how many parts can be simply cleaned and reused.

I found one that sat for about three years and had been BADLY abused prior to sitting. There is a thread here of all the fun I had getting it back to a fully functional runner.

[SFerinTEXAS]

Welcome as well. Another must on these is the pick up coil wires. My SF had sat for over 12 yrs and had less than 14k. Those wires were an immediate problem as I suspect yours will be. Tips in the repairs section.

[kwats]

My SF sat for over 30 years with a tank of fuel and a trickle charger hooked up half the time according to the PO.....the bike was basically a litter box and chew toy for many generations of rodents, but had only 5600 miles on it. It took 3 months of hard work, some rebuildable carbs, and a complete rewiring of the bike, and now I have a very good running, dependable bike.

It can be done.....

[fintoleft1]

Thanks for all your tips. I'm sure I'm going to have a ton of questions. I spent the last hour trying to figure out how to post a picture and then I read the message in the corner that I'm not allowed to add an attachment. If there is another way to post, let me know. I have a few pics I would like to add.

[cywelchjr]

Due to storage and data transfer costs the owner of the board doesn't allow uploading of photos. So to include photos in posts what you need to do is get a free photo account with a site like photobucket or the like and upload your photos there. If you use photobucket, you can hover over the photo when looking at the thumbnails and a little menu will pop up with 4 choices in it with the bottom one being IMG code. Just click on that bottom choice and it will copy that into your clipboard and then come over here and paste contents of the clipboard into your post into your post where you want the photo, it's usually a good idea to leave a blank line above and below the photo and DON'T use the photo button at the top of the editor. Also, I use chrome but other browsers can do it too, but I open photobucket in another tab so I can put multiple photos in a single post.

Here is a link that shows how to put photos into a post in multiple different ways.