Why the Devotion to XJ's?

[Rickabie]

Here's a few things to ponder. I'm referring to the UK version which I bought in 1979.

1. For a time, it was the world's fastest production bike

2. First production bike with oblong headlamp, indicators, clocks

3. Rare in those days to see a black engine

4. Physically bigger than anything else

5. Immensely powerful for the time

6. Many refinements... self-cancelling indicators. Allen bolts everywhere and not Suzi/Kawa/Honda crosshead screws made of soft metal. Electronic rev counter

7. First bike of 1100cc

8. Shaft drive... not so common in those days

9. Reliable.... unlike every British bike produced at that time. As time has shown, it was 'over-engineered' in that they last for years.

10. No 'bare' empty bits round the engine...just solid engine filling the frame.

The XS1100 was a tremendous head turner. EVERYONE stopped to look at mine. It broke the mould on bike appearance and yet still looked like a proper bike, not a piece of plastic.

I was 19 years old. I fell in love with the XS11 and things like that are not easily forgotten. I still look at an XS1100 and feel a slight adrenalin rush. They are, IMO, the best bike in appearance ever made.

And I agree... I fell in love in 1978 with the first model and I was also 19...
I made two trips from Sept-Iles to Daytona ('79 & '80) a 5,000 miles round trip and hardly had to add oil. Best bike ever, final. I'm trying to find one in my area.

[James England]

At the time, and even more nowadays, they had this aura of 'class' about them. Again, I'm referring to the Euro version which was the only one released here for several years.

The XS1100 was different (mechanically, electrically and in appearance) yet it somehow looked like a classic bike...deep maroon (Macho Maroon) or silver paintwork with a nice, two-line pinstripe (different widths too) reminiscent of Bentleys, Rolls Royces etc. No badges, just tasteful under-lacquer decals. It looked approachable but inspired reverence and there was an undercurrent of a jocular "want to mess with me?" about the bike. Refined, yes... classic looking, yes.....but that was just the shark's fin above the water. Underneath lurked some big teeth.....acceleration and power that belied its 'tourer' label. It didn't look sporty but it would burn virtually anything off from the traffic lights. I remember car drivers trying to beat me away from lights and many raised eyebrows.

Plus, they were so reliable. In 1977, Triumph were making the Bonneville at the Meriden Works...a doomed attempt to keep the brand going. A female friend of mine bought one new and parked it next to my XS1100. There was no comparison. Already there were little drops of oil on the tarmac under the Triumph. The switchgear was mediaeval, the headlamp feeble, performance was vastly inferior and, as the months passed by, it began to break down because of simple, silly design faults which should never have been there in the first place but had been there for 20 years or more, unrectified.

The XS1100 dwarfed the Bonneville and looked more of a classic than the Triumph! The build quality was simply light-years ahead. It was fashionable at that time for British bikers to refer to Japanese bikes as "Jap crap". A mate with a Royal Enfield Bullet referred to my Suzuki GT125 in that way, even when he usually ended up pushing the bike back after a run and my Suzuki never, ever broke down.

So, there's a beautiful piece of "Jap crap" standing next to the presumably 'quality' Bonneville...where the pinstripe (hand painted no less) wore off in under a month near the rider's knees because it wasn't under the lacquer... because there wasn't any lacquer on the paintwork. A slight splash of gas on the tank resulted in the paint coming off, right down to bare metal. Drum brake at the back!

I went from a well-used old 650 Bonneville, the bane of my life, straight to a new XS1100. I rode it back home 175 miles. By the first 100 yards, I was stunned, amazed and in love.

Yep, there are faster, more refined, lighter, better-handling bikes these days (I have one) but first love at first sight is difficult to better and therefore there's always a special place in my heart for these bikes. I suppose that's devotion.

Or am I just being a sentimental old fool, everyone?

[jimbyjimb]

I have a fondness for classics and have ever since I was a little kid. By 4 years old I slept in a 'car bed' and my room was littered in hot wheels and pictures of cars, notably 20'-30's era Packards and Rolls as well as a Testarossa and 1959 Corvette.

My first car was a 1970 Malibu clunker that Dad and I built a 3/4 cam 350 for. I moved onto a 1964 Studebaker Daytona sedan and bought a 289 Stude to replace the 259 under the hood. I never did get the 289 in there. I then got two 1973 Honda CLK 350's. Sold those on eBay.

Moved on to a 1984 VF1000F, a real beauty. I was T-boned on that and it was totaled. A chopper builder told me to look into the XS650 as my next bike. I quickly discovered the XS1100S which looks quite similar to the 650S excepting the displacement chasm.

Muscle bikes and cafe's have a special place in my heart as the muscle-car era of motorcycles. I love my XS because it's a great bike in all respects. Reliable, comfortable, not slow, controllable, simple, good looking. It's near impossible to find a better bike in it's price range also.

I had at one point considered a Sportster 1200 but found that for a fraction of the price I could own a bike that was essentially superior in every regard. I love passing guys on their huge, shiny something-teen thousand dollar bikes that can't hold a candle to my 1700 dollar XS. It's great knowing I'm having every bit of fun on a street bike that I can and having a nice old classic that, 32 years later, will still run away from plenty of modern machines.

I'd say my love of the XS stems from those things. This community certainly helps a lot too. Great people here. I just bought a SOFA from TC, James got me a couple of bearings, BA80 kindly offered to send me a part I needed, help from the guys on tuning problems, etc... I wish that instead of a website this was a pub and we all had a huge table we sat around and BS'ed with each other about everything. It's a pretty cool old-world vibe sort of hanging out and debating about things, learning things, tweaking things.

The personality of the bike makes it so lovable and the addition of the personality of this community makes it better than that. As much as I love the XS I'm sure I'd have sold it for a big BMW (used) at this point if it weren't for this website. I think that would be a mistake and I'm really glad this place exists.

In the next few months, after the home-buying and marriage, I'll be opening up a small blacksmithery from my home garage. I want to come up with some hand-forged wares for the machine. When that time comes I'll have to get with the mods and see if I can come up with a re-producible project that members would like, whether it be emblems or some sort of grab-bar or hardware or something small and easy. I want to sell it on the site and donate all the profits to the site.

I still have to get a forge and an anvil and practice some before I can begin making a product of quality, but I think it's a real testament to the site that it inspires people to be creative and have fun so I'm hoping to give back to it whenever all of those things line up. So in a way maybe some of us don't like the bike so much as we like the people?

[sparks]

Howdy,
I have to agree.. There are a huge bunch of fellows on this site that are generous beyond belief with advice and "stuff".

One project comes to mind for your smitthy.. There seem to be far more fairings than mounts.. I'm not sure what the interchangability is. I was considering, once i get my fairing and mount, to take the mount to a fabricator here and have some made.. Just so I could return some of what I have recieved in the short time I have been visiting this site.

Lee

[James England]

Howdy,
I have to agree.. There are a huge bunch of fellows on this site that are generous beyond belief with advice and "stuff".

One project comes to mind for your smitthy.. There seem to be far more fairings than mounts.. I'm not sure what the interchangability is. I was considering, once i get my fairing and mount, to take the mount to a fabricator here and have some made.. Just so I could return some of what I have recieved in the short time I have been visiting this site.

Lee

I thought the same thing re fairing mounts. Also maybe pannier mounts. They could be powder-coated too and look very pro

[madmax-im]

Ben, just don't make a dirt bike out of it and ding it all up.

Why perish the thought ...a real dirt bike is going to appear soon..

[jimbyjimb]

Howdy,
I have to agree.. There are a huge bunch of fellows on this site that are generous beyond belief with advice and "stuff".

One project comes to mind for your smitthy.. There seem to be far more fairings than mounts.. I'm not sure what the interchangability is. I was considering, once i get my fairing and mount, to take the mount to a fabricator here and have some made.. Just so I could return some of what I have recieved in the short time I have been visiting this site.

Lee

While that's certainly doable here are some things to consider:

I will only be working with 4140 and 5160 steels to begin with, so they'll be heavy. It will also be a period of months before I have a shop to work in and perhaps weeks until I have practiced the craft enough to begin selling wares, so I'm thinking about a ways down the road.

In the next few months I'm buying my first home and getting married/honeymoon. I likely won't have tools and a shop until October or November. Then I have to practice enough to the point I feel confident in producing a solid product. Friends and family will be buried in hardware of various kinds until that point.

I have no experience smithing anything but steel. Any non-ferrous material is a whole different ball-game and it could be well over a year from now until I can work with that material well enough to create any product of quality. I have a keen interest in doing everything possible by hand, and sometimes hand-forgings in terms of cost and time are prohibitive vs another way of doing things. My shop will reflect an all-hands approach. Some day I may get a wire-feed welder, but to start I'll be doing 100% hand welds.

Anybody wanting light-weight parts of any kind is going to be severely let-down as any steel substantial enough to take the pounding will be relatively thick, therefore weighty. I'm only a beginner right now and get practice infrequently since renting shop space is very costly and I'm still slowly learning technique. If, by the time I get going on my own, there is interest in steel mounting brackets I can tell you 4140 sure ain't going to break. But it's going to be heavy.

I was going to do, at some point, a test of hand-forging both an 'XS' for one sidecover and a '1.1' for the other. I think a hand-forging would look super-cool on the sidecovers gloss-coated and I could make them fairly thin.

Whenever I get going I plan on opening a dialogue with TC and then with the community to see what sort of interests might be out there and what people might want. I'd like the chance to get in the work, create a useful desired product and see the website get some benefit from it.

God knows what else could happen between now and then though. The best laid plans of mice and men...

[jimbyjimb]

I have to say though, discouraging as my last message may have been, a lot of sparks are firing in my head of ways to make a unique and decorative mount. A mount not only functional but pretty. Would be pretty cool if the buyer didn't have an issue with the weight of a solid steel bracket. I haven't worked with and don't plan on working with tube steel at any immediate point.

Another thing to remember too is that no two handmade items will be perfectly identical, which I rather enjoy. It can be really tough to make something precise using the eye and rudimentary measurements and typically speaking the item which is to be fitted has to be present to insure a solid mounting.

So if I did do some kind of decorative bracket they wouldn't all match as if they were milled, jetted or plasma cut. Could present individual fitment issues. I suppose I could collaborate with someone. I could make a base forging and the fitment could be handled either individually or by another fabricator.

Cross that bridge in a few months if/when I come to it I suppose. In the mean time I plan on making a lot of hooks!

[James England]

I was going to do, at some point, a test of hand-forging both an 'XS' for one sidecover and a '1.1' for the other. I think a hand-forging would look super-cool on the sidecovers gloss-coated and I could make them fairly thin.

I think that aluminum casting would be better though?

[jimbyjimb]

Well I could tin-snip aluminum and give it a forged look in under an hour in my garage. If practicality is the goal these days any method other than a hand forge is probably more so. I do it for the art of it, the challenge of it and the feel of it.

Forge welding two bits of round bar-stock together and then flattening them on an anvil will create a look that cannot be duplicated accurately any other way. Machines try to 'forge' a forge but the difference in look is astounding when placed side by side with a legitimate piece.

In rare cases a hand forging could be considered more practical in that it isn't a removal process, but it is quite time-consuming and in today's market more of an art form. There is still tons of practical application, but if you have an engineer's mind strictly speaking the ways of the forge will most likely not appeal.

A practiced smith can do just about anything a machine can, it will just take a lot more time and effort. That being the case, if all you want is something to do a job without being seen or something to fill a space without much attention a hand-forging serves no real purpose since we all live near a Home Depot.

My wall hooks look astounding compared to that top-tier Pier-1 crap. My hooks will cost you between 25-45 dollars a piece! Some took one hour or more to make!

The smith I'm learning from actually does structural rivets on support I-beams in buildings. Engineers mocked him while forgetting about the riveted train-bridge still in use after 100 years down the street that has nary a weld. Paying him to do those rivets costs a lot more than a weld, but it was done so for the beautiful appearance of a rivet over a weld.

Apply the above scenario and that's what I'd like to come up with for the XS. A true hand-made piece that serves a purpose and looks wonderful. To make it affordable on a mass scale it would have to be small, like an emblem, bar, handle, hardware, foot peg, something small with a usable and/or display function. I'll experiment and bounce ideas when I'm set up. I'm sure there has to be something! And steel is cheap!

[James England]

the riveted train-bridge still in use after 100 years down the street that has nary a weld.

Like this one: The Forth Bridge, Edinburgh, By Brunel

[GLoweVA]

I didn't really fall in love with my XS until I really got involved in this site.
It was the helpfulness and generousity of the these here XSives that brought me around to really realizing what a wonderful machine I have.
Decades ago in high school, I had an early 80's 50cc yamma street bike. Had it for about 6 months before it got stolen. Hadn't had a bike since I got my G back in '04, some 20 years later.
In the past 2 to 3 years I've come to believe that this is the only bike I'll ever own. If it breaks, I'll fix it. If I can't, I'll get another one (already have a 'spare' ready for restoring).
To me it's a 50/50 mix of the bike and this community is why I love it so much.
I do like the look of the 750/850's but I prefer a little more gusto while I cruise.

[James England]

I do like the look of the 750/850's but I prefer a little more gusto while I cruise.

They're a bit underpowered, I reckon. The XS750 is a lot smaller than the 1100 and I seem to remember that they had a few issues with reliability. That said, they are nice looking machines,I agree, but they don't have the impact that the XS1100 has, do they?

[James England]

Would be pretty cool if the buyer didn't have an issue with the weight of a solid steel bracket.

I can't imagine that would be a problem for anyone with a bike which is the weight of the XS1100. A solid steel fairing bracket won't make any difference to performance at all and at least it'll be solid and safe. Any gains made by reducing the weight of this bike (heaven knows how though) would be lost by having a fairing anyway. You go ahead and keep thinking

[Cuda 69]

Very well said James.Not to change the subject,but,what do you think of the Triump T-100? I won't part with my SG,but was thinking of getting one.