The XS Project
Found her in a barn outside Estacada, buried under a tarp and thirty years of someone else's abandoned projects. A 1978 XS650, seized engine, mouse nest in the airbox, seat foam that crumbled when you looked at it wrong. The old guy wanted four hundred bucks and seemed surprised I said yes. His wife seemed relieved. I loaded it into my buddy's truck and started what would become a two-year conversation between me and a machine that did not want to cooperate.First year was just getting it to run. Rebuilt the top end on my apartment balcony in Southeast because I didn't have a garage yet - my neighbors loved that, obviously. Soaked the carbs in Pine-Sol for a week because the internet said it works and it actually does. Found an NOS wiring harness on eBay from a guy in Ohio who wrote me a h...