25th Aug 2020, 21:59
Brilliant! UK Memories of my friend's disaster Yamaha flooding back as I described the bike to my wife.
My mate's XS 500 was always in the shop from new. PH Allen who sold the bike in Cambridge could not work out why the XS had so many top end problems. I remember riding my Z650 B3 to a full-on machine shop, with smoke stained wooden walls when you walked in on an industrial estate in Coventry with my friend on the bike (+ his cylinder head) to get the head worked on as the cam-chain kept failing.
XS 500: Looked great, sounded great, functionally incapable of operating normally.
3rd Mar 2018, 02:33
Sounds like you had bought a lemon. Most XS500 Yamahas were pretty reliable and fun to ride.