I’m a daily visitor of Curbside Classics and a photographer. Walking to work one day, I spotted this beautiful old Yamaha XS400. So I snapped a couple of quick photos with my phone, something I do frequently.
Looking at the photo a little closer, I realized that the owner had left their bike on the street with the keys still in the ignition. I was pretty sure the bike hadn’t been stolen, and thought the picture would be appreciated by CC fans. So maybe this would be a good post. I’ll do some research.
When I decided to look for a stock photo of the original bike, I was kind of shocked to see the exact same motorcycle show up right away in my Google search. This bike was already famous. I guess I know a nice bike when I see one, and you never know what you will find on the streets of Portland.
My guess is that just as a manual transmission shift lever is a theft deterrent to some car thieves, this bike (with its kick start system) has a built-in theft deterrent.
I bought my first motorcycle in 1982, a Yamaha Seca 650. In that year, Yamaha and other motorcycle manufacturers still sold bikes with kick starters, but were phasing them out.
My guess is, that unless the thief is a hard core dirt bike rider, he (or she?) won’t know how/won’t be able to start this bike. From my limited experience, kick starting a motorcycle is a real skill.
Of course it’s possible that the key can’t be removed any more.
…”From my limited experience, kick starting a motorcycle is a real skill.”..
By Gum, In myyyy day it was a skill that was required!??
Get off my lawn! ?
Your probably right on both “issues”!
In MY day, motorcycles had no starters at all! You reached in with your gnarled bare hands and started the pistons moving *yourself* while holding a lightning rod to the sky to get the spark! And don’t get me started on today’s “gas;” we hunted the dinosaurs and processed them into fuel *ourselves*! And we didn’t have lawns to order kids off, either; we had rocks! Lots and lots of rocks! Jagged, manly rocks!
One of the guys I used to ride with had his Triumph cafe wired permanently on (it had a capacitor and no battery, so nothing to run down. Kick for spark).
The funny bit was watching him shut it off by grabbing both plug wires, convulsing a few times, and them pulling them off of the plugs. He did it every time.
If he could have started the engine by moving the pistons by hand, he would have. As it was, he used his foot.
On a friend’s farm they had a tractor parked in a little shed on top of a hill, because the dead battery was there just to complete the circuit. To start it, you would take the lump of wood out from in front of the tyre, then run and climb into the driver’s seat (without slipping and getting run over).
Also there were some areas of very soft ground on their farm, where if they bogged a tractor in winter they would leave it until spring. Apparently otherwise you ended up with two bogged tractors!
The XS400 back then (mid-70’s, most likely) probably had an electric start – originally. The bike was Yamaha’s competition in the middleweight category (a big market at the time) against the Honda CB350 and CB360, Kawasaki KZ440, and I forget the Suzuki equivalent at the time. GT380 triple comes immediately to mind, but that was early 70’s and by ’75 Suzuki was well on its way to going all four-stroke.
What country was this picture taken? I seem to remember that American Yamaha’s were a bit rounder in the tank, with the major exception of the XS500 (the first four valve, DOHC twin sold in the US – and it could be blown away by any Triumph Daytona 500). Did some looking for a stock XS400 pics (I remember them as a burgundy red with gold pinstriping) but everything I was coming up with were obviously non-North American models.
As to kickstarting a bike: I used to get a giggle on Saturday at the shop, as the local squids would hang around at closing time to watch me go thru the starting sequence of my ’69 Triumph Bonneville: 1. 2-3 kicks to free up the clutch. 2. Push the priming button on the carburetors (aka, ‘tickle the carbs’). 3. One priming kick with ignition off. 4. Ignition on. 5. Nurse crank over to top dead center and DROP ON IT! 6. Starts in one kick, even with an audience watching.
Those kids were amazed, like I’d just done some sort of black magic or something.
Corresponding Suzuki would have been the GS 400/425/450/500 4-stroke vertical twins. Started out in 1976 as a 400, and then grew in size with each successive iteration. It even got a perimeter frame for the 1989 GS500E. Lasted all the way to the early 2000s in the US.
Syke;
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Please detail me about the Trumpet’s sticky clutch ~ a chap I know bought a 19?? T140E (Meriden Bonneville) and slowly rebuilt it looking bone stock but he used Barnett ‘racing clutches’ and often had to kick it ten or more times before starting it the first thing in the morning .
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I’m not a Brit Bike guy so I wasn’t aware this apparently was a regular Triumph thing ~ I certainly don’t recall it in the 1960’s .
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Please elucidate .
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TIA,
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-Nate
More photos, please, to find where the battery is hidden. That tank could be from a Kawasaki KZ. The gold paint is stunning!
Ugh, kickstart. I briefly has a Can-Am 250 dirt bike that would just about break your foot if you got it wrong. Hurts just thinking about it….
Nice bike though, good runabout for non-rainy days in Portland.
Yup… and those machines had the odd-ball left-foot kickstarter. Starting those machines is like trying to write with the wrong hand… it feels very strange.
Several lifetimes ago I had a Kawasaki 175 enduro bike that was fairly easy to kick start. At this point I don’t even remember if it had electric start, probably not as it was a pretty basic machine.
A guy I worked with when we were in high school sometimes rode his brother-in-law’s 441 BSA single. As you might guess it was a bear to kick start; if you happened to catch the cylinder at the wrong point in the compression cycle it could flip you several feet into the air. This kid was a total PITA and we figured that his BIL let him ride the BSA in the hopes that he would do himself in or at the very least break his leg.
They called them 441 Victims for a reason.
Sure I have done this before, parked a little Honda 150cc in downtown and left the key on. It was a 2010 bike and the key cylinder was integrated with the instruments cluster, any “bad hombre” could have seen the key a block away.
I had walked for 3 blocks before realizing the dumb mistake, I rushed back and thank God the bike and the key were still there.
Stock XS360/400s are pretty easy to kick start – though with no air box if the builder didn’t get the jetting right this one could be a bear. The battery is probably a flat LiPo tucked under the back of the tank – which does look like a standard model XS360/400 tank. Not very fond of the skimpy “Brat” style seat though at least this one looks good. Nice choice on the color – if it was good enough for King Kenny it’s good enough for me !
Talk about motor vehicle worlds colliding! I remember seeing the Bikeexif.com feature on this motorcycle several years ago, which stuck in my mind since (1) it was about a model that I strongly considered as my first bike many years ago, and have toyed with getting as a lightweight urban runabout since then, and (2) it was about a machine whose owner was the maker of many custom seats on bikes featured on that site.
In college I had a Honda 400 Four whose starter had long ceased to function, bought it for something like $65. It was cheaper to drive on nice days than my Corvair was (itself, no slouch at fuel economy). Rather than spend scarce funds on a starter, I would leave the bike in third or fourth gear and kill the engine. I lived at the top of a long hill and I’d just roll downhill then let in the clutch. Rarely needed to use the kick starter. Good thing, too, I only weighed 155 lb. at the time and was not the beefiest guy around. That little four could have been a lot worse, though!