1971 Yamaha XS2 650

1971 Yamaha XS1 650

The best things I can say for my XS2 are that, in 1991, I paid only $200 for it and it was still handsome. I don't know why nobody else bought this bike, since it had been advertised in a local paper for days. I just called on a lark to see if it had been sold, and when I heard it was still available, expected it to be a real rat bike. What I found was a beautiful machine that was almost completely stock. The odometer read less that 32,000 miles. I was never really hot for these bikes, but for that price, in that condition, I had to say yes. I did respect Yamaha's 650, or at least I did in the early days. I knew a guy named Moss who bought one of the first green ones back in 1970. He gave up his Harley XLH for it, and swore by the machine. On one Thanksgiving day in, I think, 1971 I encountered a guy who had one with a 750 kit. It just walked away from my Sportster. I remember the bike pulling an impressive wheelie. There were a few of these hot-rodded 650's around, given the popularity of dirt track racing back in the Midwest and Yamaha's fairly successful efforts in that arena. This was the Kenny Roberts era of American dirt track racing, and Yamaha 650s benefited from a well-funded racing program. The trickle-down of that technology to streetbikes meant that the meek looking Yamahas couldn't always be counted on not to burn a long, black strip on the tarmac and leave you wondering if maybe your clutch was slipping or one of your spark plug wires had come loose.

This XS2 immediately reminded me of my BSA, and of course the comparison was inevitable. The bore and stroke of the two motors are identical, and the Yamaha in fact made right the most glaring deficiencies of the BSA/Triumph pattern, save the notable area of vibration. I always assumed that the similarity between the BSA and Yamaha bore/stroke ratio indicated plagiarism, but according to an article in the May, 1997 Classic Bike magazine, the Yamaha actually inherited its engine dimensions along with many other features from the Toyota 2000 sports car, whose motor was designed by Yamaha. Unfortunately, automotive-like smoothness wasn't a byproduct of this adaptation. My bike shook in a manner that, although not as bad as the worst BSAs and Triumphs I had ridden, perhaps due to rubber-mounted handlebars, was still enough to take some of the fun out of a brisk ride. A broken rear fender mount was an apparent victim of the shaking. Later models of the Yamaha 650 were said to be smoother, but mine took me back to those memorable days of yesteryear, when powerful motorcycles and numbing vibration went together like hippie chicks and visits to the free clinic. I didn't particularly want to be reminded.

And it sure sounded like my BSA. That is to say, loud. The original mufflers had been replaced with tasteful, in appearance, at least, aftermarket units, but the noise was not to my liking. I could have been more understanding for a real performance bike, but coming from a machine of such relatively modest performance the uproar seemed more for effect than any legitimate byproduct of raging horsepower.

One particularly appreciated improvement over the BSA/Triumph 650's was the carburetion, which used dual constant-velocity units that provided smooth power, a reliable idle, and didn't leak. The horizontally split motor also did not leak like an English machine, and the presence of a main bearing between the two cylinders addressed the primary mechanical shortcoming of British parallel twins. Largely due to the vastly stronger lower end, modified Yamahas could displace over 900cc's, although such monster motors seem to have been more popular in Europe, particularly in sidecar racing applications.

This 1971 model was, I think, the first fitted with an electric starter and disk front brake. While I could definitely appreciate the disk, the electric foot was another matter. I regard myself as something of a traditionalist in that regard, preferring to use my leg rather than my thumb to bring life to my bikes. Even the esthetics of starting seem to favor tradition, since to my ears the sound of a motor being vigorously kicked through and responding with a healthy roar is by far superior to the soulless whine of a starter motor blending into the exhaust note. Implementation of this "improvement" was obviously something of an afterthought. Yamaha cut back on the size of the oil sump, reducing it's capacity by about half a quart, to make room for the electric foot on the underside of the engine. In the real world, with less than perfect batteries, relay contacts, et cetera, the performance of the starter was more typical of the '60s than the '70s, being capable of animating the machine only on rare occasions. Its task was supposedly eased by a weird compression release that was operated by a little lever that would simultaneously raise one exhaust valve and engage the starter motor. Maybe it worked better when it was new. But the XS2 was not hard to start with the kickstarter, usually firing up by the second kick.

The handling didn't seem up to BSA standards. Granted, any real comparison would be a little unfair considering this was the Gulf War period and the Yamaha rolled out of the factory on those very same suspension components back when the Vietnam war still had another half-decade to go. But then my BSA wasn't exactly factory fresh in 1969, either. The XS2 always felt a little skittish, and it was frustratingly easy to drag the centerstand in left handers. On the positive side, the first generation disk brake on the front of the XS2, though extremely primitive by today's standards, gave the kind of stopping power that in the '60s could only be approached with a giant all-out racing brake such as a Fontana. By the time I got my XS2, I was aware of the machine's poor reputation in the handling department. This shortcoming apparently didn't affect American sales much, since sporting riders rarely gave this bike a second look, anyway. But shipments to Europe were suspended in the mid-1970s until the machine was de-wobbled. Yamaha engaged the services of Triumph legend Percy Tait to assist in this effort.

One weird mechanical thing that happened with the Yamaha, perhaps contributing to the unsettling handling, was that the swingarm was practically immovable due to a rusty pivot. I spent a couple of weeks during the winter trying to figure out how to get the pivot out so that some lube could be added. I first tried to drive it through in the usual fashion, succeeding only in making a mess of one end of the shaft. I then drilled a hole in the mushroomed end and used a slide hammer to pull it out the other way.

I found no particular joy in riding this machine, so I traded it for a wrecked XZ550 Vision. The other party in this deal seemed confident that he had been the recipient of uncommon largesse, and perhaps he was.