I agree. Driveshaft and shifter shaft are easy to do afterwards, but decompression seal on the rocker box cover and the clutch actuator lever seals are a must-replace-before-engine installation item as far as I am concerned. All the seals at once! Save yourself the trouble!
hey all, joined Advrider beacuse im looking at a 83 xl600 soon that a friend of the family has and would like to get more into adv. riding. So how is the xl on long rides loaded up. What bags do you use hard or soft? any pics of your bikes loaded up? thanks
What is up! Really excited about this thread! I would of never guessed that there would be a thread for this awesome bike!! I do not own one, wish I did! I will post my bike soon (TW 200). My buddy has one that I am in love with! Here is the crazy story of last sunday's events!!! My buddy had his bike in front of his house in New Orleans for far too long (this is a really greasy city, not in a good way)! Someone drove a screw driver into the ignition trying to steal it. This gave my really busy friend even more delay for moving the bike (he just had a baby). It also gave the slime balls who attempted to steal it time to brain storm..... Last saturday night my friend and I were chatting on the phone. "We need to move the bike" he said. I agreed "ya man! I've been saying that ever since I got to town! lets do it tomorrow!" He agreed. 6 hours later, at 6 am, his neighbors wife came banging on the door... "someone is taking your bike!!" My bud totally Redlined................ Out the door in a flash in his boxers... In front of his house he saw a Uhaul truck with his XL 600 half way up the ramp dragged on its side. Handle bars locked, chain on the rear tire. Full speed my bud charged the truck with one thing on his mind..."gotta stop that trucK!!!!" as the truck floored it, my bud ran so fast that his legs came out from under him. As the truck sped away, he laid there in defeat, in his skippys, with road rash on his hand, knees and on the tops of his feet! bad rash, like chunks of skin missing, like he feel from a moving bike! (I think he blacked out and actually grabbed the truck and was dragged. Anyway, he lay there in defeat, and looked behind him. There in the middle of the road, his XL awaited him. He told his girl that he didn't want to tell me because he knew I would be pissed. I reacted totally the opposite! I knew that it was a win! That we still had the bike!! And immediately brought it to our shop and fixed it up. I told this story for one reason... to lead up to the missing part... the Seat! The F>>KER trying to steal the bike took the seat and whipped it into his Uhaul before he tried to load it! Is there anybody out there with a XL 600 Seat? They are extremely hard to find! His is an 85, so the blue one. I will post some pics tomorrow of the bike.. man I love that bike!
You can't have it is mine!! It is a genuine Honda tank fitted to the XL600LMF (PD04) and the seat is slightly different, it has a wider nose at a different angle of attack.
The sidecar was the easy bit.Made it all myself, cost about £40 in materials and I have a seat fitted in it for my kids to sit in (One at a time). The hardest part was sorting out the mountings.
I used to ride mine across the state (about 4 hours near wide open throttle) fully loaded. I didn't have saddlebags, so I strapped duffel bags to the rear rack. The rack isn't rated for that much weight, so I also ran straps from the rack to the frame under the seat to keep it from bending. To keep the duffel bags from sagging into the exhaust, I layed a piece of plywood along the inside bottom of the bag. Once stuffed full, they became pretty rigid. You can sdjust the preload for the added weight. At the time, I had a 44 tooth (or was it 45?) rear sprocket for a little better highway gearing. The bike seemed to like rpms about 80% of redine, but would sustain 90% OK. Top speed on mine was about 85-90 mph. In the heat of summer (115 F) the oil temperature would continue to climb, and I would pull off to let it cool after riding at 75 mph for 2 hours or so. It is ready to go after a pee break, so no big deal. XR's Only sells an oil temperature dipstick that lets you monitor that, and is worth every penny. In summary, the XL does just fine riding solo on long trips, but lacks the capacity to travel long distance with a passenger. As long as total load is less than the weight of the bike, you'll be fine.
Hey mental guru! You woul be savIng this bike! We will take it if it fits a xl 600!! How can we purchase it!!
Since you're a legitimate European I wonder if you could answer this question. Did all the XL600R PD03 (or the XL600RM I think) bikes come with the bigger 43mm forks? I ask this because I'm trying to buy a fork yolk set from one so I can run the 43mm XR600R forks and still have the headlight and ignition mounts. These are the pieces I'm reffering to http://www.ebay.com/itm/200716912968?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649 If you don't know that's cool, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.
FWIW, my 1987 XL600RMG PD04 has 41mm forks. This is an Australian model, so can't be sure it doesn't differ from US/Euro models, but I dont think so.
Hi The XL had 39 or 41 mm forks . No XL , R or RM , European or US had 43 mm forks . If you want to upgrade the Forks and keep the Ignition Lock you need the Fork yoke set from the new CRF250L and the USD Fork from the XR 400.
Hi all, Im well into the rebuild of my 1987 XL600RMG, and have a question. Bear in mind that this bike has the engine out of an XR600, not the XL600, despite the model name. The camshaft center bearing journal is stuffed. Both bearing surfaces in the head and valve cover are chewed out as well as damage to the camshaft bearing surface. Now, I've found a used head and valve cover with undamaged bearing surfaces but am having less luck finding an undamaged camshaft from this bike, or a 1985-87 XR600 cam will fit. Now my question??? I've read and been told by a couple of people that the center bearing on the camshaft isn't really necessary, and the camshaft will run just fine supported by the ball bearings at each end only. I was also told to grind a couple of mm of the damaged bearing surface away so the camshaft makes no contact with the center bearing surface and all will be fine. So, has anybody done this?? Did it work? Very interested to hear other XL/XR600 owners experiences or fixes for this problem. Thanks Homer
Thanks for dropping that knowledge. I'm not looking to go all out with USD fork swaps and the like, too much messing around with headlight mounting, etc. I'm no racer so I was just looking for a simple bolt in swap then I can use my stock wheel and the supermoto brake rotor kit I just got. I have a set of dampening rod 43mm XR600R forks with the XR650L yolks, but the 650L upper yolk do not have the little round mount holes off the front for the headlight assembly, I thought if another XL model ran those sized forks I could get the upper yolk of of one of those. I'll either have to weld those mounts to the XRL yolk or just get the euro 41mm yolks and update to a cartridge style XR250R fork.
Don't cry my friend. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Honda-XL600-83-87-XL600r-Rear-Rack-Utility-Luggage-XL-600-/261136977940?pt=Motorcycles_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3cccfa1014&vxp=mtr I think this is the same rack that came with my bike. Pretty decent piece and it's quite big. The powder coat job on it was nice but the mounting hardware is kinda bootleg. I'd sell you mine if I ever found an OEM rack for sale.
It's built like a brick shithouse man, certainly more beefcake then I'll ever need. I keep my cortech sport tail bag on it but the most I carry is a gallon or two of milk and some books. I'd trust the thing to go Thailand style and carry one of neighborhood kids around on it.
I posted on here a few days ago asking about whether the stator runs in oil. Thanks for the good responses, especially the explanation of the role of the stator. So... what started off as: "get this thing running so I can maybe sell it and try to purchase a KTM Adventure" has now turned into "turn this XL600R into an awesome adventure bike". Luckily I am an accomplished welder / fabricator / machinist. This is going to be a super-fun project. With the engine out, I decided to sandblast it and paint it. Of course I didn't think of taking a picture of the engine until the paint-job was already underway.... In the following picture you can see the frame, which has been partially sandblasted, and the engine fully painted, as well as piles of other parts. The engine will look better as soon as I pull the masking off the various covers, etc. And here you can see my replacement for the rear frame cross-brace / seat mount. The brace is not welded on in this picture yet, but it is actually welded on at this time. I will get a picture soon. I also reinforced the sub-frame, after reading a bit in this thread about how that can be important if you want to carry bags (which I do). I could not find pictures anywhere of other people's subframe reinforcing, so I made it up. I will get a picture of that soon, too. I also added mounts for passenger footpegs and pannier racks. I do not particularly like any of the pannier setups I have seen so far, so I am going to do my own. I will use Pelican cases, and have a quick-detach system using escutcheon pins (spring pins) which will attach/detach the cases from a stainless steel tubing rack system. I will make the rack a simple inverted "L" shape, much like BMW's pannier racks. I think that is much slicker looking than a big chunky rectangular rack. Next up I am going to look into welding on some pivot "ears" at the bottom of the frame which will allow me to fabricate and install a center stand at a later date. Now is the time to work on the frame, after all. Oh, and also a mount for an oil cooler. At some point I would like to do a dual headlight setup, like on the euro-XLs. I think that looks awesome. If anyone knows how to get ahold of the dual-headlight cowl / fairing (anyone got one for sale) that would be awesome. Otherwise I will end up fabricating one from aluminum sheet. Oh, also I am looking for a rear fender assembly, preferably in white... Christian
