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I had been looking for a SR500 project bike when I came across this '78 XS500. It is in pretty rough shape and will need about as much attention as the old XT did. I pretty much exchanged a ball of lint for it as the owner was not having much luck getting anyone to take it off his hands. Being a glutton for punishment I stepped to the front of the line and raised my hand. This bike had been stored outside under a tarp for a couple of years, so there is much oxidation. The good news is, about everything on this bike is interchangeable with the XS650 except the engine. Most of the running gear and some of the electronics can be swapped between these models, so finding parts will not be a problem. Plus ebay is loaded with parts for this bike at pretty reasonable prices. I like the look of this bike and they are pretty scarce around these parts. They came in 360, 400 and 500cc flavors, I did not see a single one at Vintage Motorcycle Days, I was hoping to pick up some parts there, but could not track down what I was looking for. I did find a great manufacturer of fiberglass replacement parts though, I'll go into that in a later post, I'll just say his parts are high quality at hard to believe prices.
I wanted to build a cafe' bike out of an SR, but this bike turned up first. This kinda led to the blogs name change as well. The WrenchMonkees built this hot version of the XS. I'm not heading down the same road they did, but they show what is possible using this bike as a canvas. Don't expect the same build quality as the monkees either, I am not nearly as skilled as those boys are. You can expect some turd polishing and quite a bit of procrastination as the tag line suggest.

Till Next Time..............