So I guess it’s my turn for a build report (sorry the first post will be a bit wordy). I’m farther a head in the build so I will try to catch you guys up as soon as I can get this all typed up.

I have been looking for a DS bike for quiet a while now as my ’73 GT 380 handles like crap on anything but the tamest of gravel roads. All the paved roads around me are dead straight and I’m afraid that going with anything but a DS will just lead to hefty speeding tickets. Since my wallet it light and I don’t mind getting my hands dirty I started looking for a project bike.

One day shortly after I began my search I saw a vision in the yard behind my local Suzuki dealer. It had the distinct silhouette of an’80s big bore dirt bike. After convincing the young girl at the parts desk to let me into the yard, I made my way to the back corner where the beast sat. Quick inspection yielded that it was in fact a mid-eighties Yamaha 600cc single. Hmm…I will have to find out more about this one.

After returning to work I could not get it out of my head. What was it? Who owned it (the girl at the desk did not know)? Was it street legal? At internet search showed that it was ’84 TT 600 dirt bike (but I think I saw blinker wiring). Trip to the registries proved that it was in fact street legal (previously registered) with no leans…Sweet!

Back at the bike shop for a closer inspection, the bike looked a little sad: no seat, no tank, carbs & handle bars hanging on the ground, no chain and a sunken down rear end (due to a missing shock damper). Other than the above the parts that were there were in good condition, little rust, relatively clean (no bad dings in the case) – no show stoppers at least. Reached down to check the compression on the kicker - seized….Crap!

Well I wanted a project.

Inside the shop I finally found someone who knew about the bike. The owner had brought it in with some issues and did not like the proposed bill to fix it. He decided to leave it in the yard instead of taking it home. After some laughing at me for having interest in the bike I got the golden comment “I tell you what, you bring me a case of beer and it’s yours”. As my family has acquired many a motorcycle on this promise I knew that I had 20 mins before the shop closed to close the deal. Never give them a chance to think about going back on the case of beer offer! 17 mins later I had a signed bill-of-sale and was wheeling it across the road to lock up behind my work.



Next Post: Tear down & missing parts.

Keep us posted!! Great score!

sweet. good luck with the build. i love 80s yamahas

:applause::applause:

Nice! I'm in.

great story:thumbsup:my tt600 was given to me by a great gentleman (i took it home and i drank the beer) can't wait to hear the build.

Thanks for all the comments...I hope I can keep you guys interested!

After some muscle work with my father-in-law, the bike made its way home to my garage. No handle bar holder clamps + discharged rear suspension make it hard to wheel this thing into the back of the pick-up.

Time to tear into it! First up is to get a few picture of the thing so that I can keep track of what it looked like before I tear it all apart. I have the manual coming in the mail but it’s nice to have some images of it. (sorry some of the pictures are a bit fuzzy,most of the good ones got lost )







Start draining the fluids as I pull off all of the peripherals. Everything is looking good so far. Pop off the rocker box, parts look good but someone went to town with the orange silicon. The stuff is everywhere, including on the valve springs and the oiling holes for the cams journal bearings. Surprising enough the journals and the cam still look to be okay.



The exhaust is not in the best shape but I mean how can I complain for a case of beer . Dropping the header from the cylinder proves to be not so much fun. The nuts are conveniently located so that between the pipe, front down tube, cylinder head heat fins there is 0.003” free space for you fingers to rotate the tools. This is compounded by the nut being rusted solid to the stud. A little liquid wrench and a lot of time later and it breaks free.



Remove the side cases and again things are looking good. I found the source of the blinker wiring. PO had the XT stator/flywheel in the motor giving it the 12V supply (stock is 6V).

The clutch and all the gearing for the kicker & main drive gears all com off nicely. My buddy and I do battle of the breaker bars on either side of the crank to remove the nuts. The flywheel side breaks nicely and the fly wheel comes off with ease (thanks to the puller from work). The main drive gear nut is a little harder. I press against the seize (I know, I know) but it the nut breaks free first.



The electrical is a rats nest! I just remove all the clips & zip ties. I will deal with this later.




This post is getting long so I will split it here.

Next post: Tear down continued + missing parts.

Sweet another tt600 build!!!

I just finished mine not too long ago in a weekends worth of time, but I had everything to begin with. Just a little motivation
http://www.thumperta...ad.php?t=903294

Along with Bergman's tt600 which is just incredible...
http://www.thumperta...ad.php?t=893215

timbuckets---I have the parts that you don't have--seat with new red cover--shock and tank. if you can't find them local, you know were i am.

Thanks Guys....I should get Post #3 up some time tonight

Bergman - Thanks for the offer - I may take you up on the shock at a later time but for a slightly different project (you will find out in post #3). Thanks again for the info on the gaskets, got them on order last night.

1976tt500- Thanks, I have been lurking in the background watching your builds. Just had to finish up some house projects before the TT build could start. But we are good to go now!

Get the cylinder head off of the bike. Inside looks well used but nothing terrifying. The piston is defiantly stuck but the bore looks GOOD! Lets hope is a sitting seize and not a running seize! Insert ½ can of liquid wrench (to get a good pool covering the whole piston) and let it sit.



I can’t wait to tear down the rest so I remove the motor and get it on the bench. The rest of the stuff comes apart with ease. Besides some dirt and the missing damper, the front & rear suspension all look good. After a week of random oscillating of the crank (wrench on both sides, carefully rocking it back and forth) the piston starts to break free. By free I mean that the wrench motion has increased from 1 degree to 2 degrees of possible rotation. This does not sound like much but it means that there is movement beyond the initial bearing play.



I should note that I made another trip back to the dealer to see if I could find any of my missing parts. After a scavenger hunt through the yard I found my seat and side covers. No tank or suspension parts but hey something’s better than noting.

I’m starting to get impatient so I spend some time after work and machine-up a piece of scrap aluminum + a bolt to fit. This will be used to press the piston down from the top using a jig block fastened to the top of the cylinder. Since I’m a cheat bugger I start with a wood fixture (I find that wood usually works for me in these types of cases and is cheaper than buying metal for the job). Sorry that there are no pictures of this process, I seem to have lost some photos from a recent computer OS upgrade . 3 turns of the bolt and I can feel it break loose on me….All right!





This has got me pumped! I’m not usually a night owl but I was up till 1:30am tearing it the rest of the way apart. Oil pump is okay but not 100% and there are some weird grinding marks on the shift drum (this turns out to be normal?! weird)







Okay, now what. I have a torn down bike with no tank and a shock with a missing damper. The Clark tank for this bike runs at $200, original equipment is $300. I have never dealt with dampers before and as much as I would love to build my own, I’m not that confident (yet). I’m told these come up of flea bay from time-time but I can’t currently find any. New shocks are super $$$. Other parts on the bike are not 100% perfect- kick start lever is well loved (Haha - looks like it broke someone’s leg), electrical is not the prettiest…what to do what to do.

Buy another one of course!

Next Post: Bike # 2

woah bike number 2???

Looking at your sig, it's another '84 tt600? wow, i'm excited... the suspense...

Just guessin'...  Two cases of beer?

Man, I just finished my TT500 and this stuff keeps coming up.  

My buddy in Germany wants to build two matching Eddy Hau XT550's, TT600 builds are freaking everywhere.

Where will this stop??????

For sale: “1983 TT600…Running last season but currently partially disassembled…full bike plus a few parts…$600 obo.

Sweet, this is what I’m looking for, except the $600 & it being 350 km from me. After talking with the owner I find out that he has been running it for 4 years and it was starting to run a little hot (no over heating, just hot). He wanted to buy a cam for it & redo the top end. He attempted to take it apart but realized he had no idea what he was doing and stopped.



So I convince my father-in-law to take a trip with me up to see the bike. The bike is filthy and well used. I check out the bike as the PO gets the “few extra parts” out of the shed. The valve cover is off and the innards look good. The journal bearings are a little worn but nothing that can’t be fixed. Not sure why he wanted to scrap the cam? The bike has a newer disk break front end with Showa shocks (not sure if these are stock on the later model?). The rear suspension feels good. Piston is free, so I don’t have to go through that again.



There is a stellar amount of carnage on the right crank case cover. The PO had hit a rock in the bush, so he laid the bike over on the side and went to town with the JB weld, like a whole tube. He figured that it got him home so it should work forever. Anyways, I have another and maybe this can be fixed (can’t see under the goop). No Pic of this yet but I'll see if I can't get one.

As for the “few extra parts”:3/4 of a extra engine (2 case halves, left cover, top end, crank), seat, tank, swing-arm, some plastics + all the missing parts for the other bike – a nice collection for a FEW extra parts



We left with the bike in the back + 4 boxes of miscellaneous parts and a signed bill of sale for $460 (I tried to low ball him by ~20% and he said yes right away…damn I should have tried 30%).

So I now have 2.75 engines and the components to build 1.75 bikes. I think my goal is to build 1 bike off the bat, getting together a nice clean engine (new seals, C4 bearings) with disk break front end, 50/50 DS front tire and swappable rears (40/60 DS tire and something stickier). I would like to add an oil cooler in, not sure if that is sooner or later yet. Once the first beast is done then invest time in a high performance engine (high comp piston, porting, hot cam, C4 bearings, new seals, etc) with engine paint, exhaust work, the works.. Then I can do an engine swap and figure out where to go from there (second bike, top end rebuild of engine #1 with performance parts).









I have included pictures above of what unfolded during the night. It tried to tear it down as much as I could, until I got stuck but that’s for the next post (you are almost caught up)

sounds like you are having fun:banana: to some it looks like a big mess you are going to take to the dump.:lol: to others it looks like gold!:banana: got the parts you needed also for #1------

Reading this is giving me a LOT of inspiration. I just picked up an 85 TT600 from a guy on craigslist. He told me he did a 30 over bore so it now puts out 110 HP! Problem is, engine is seized from sitting (I hope) and I'm trying to track down the carbs.

But I'm starting to think that I need to do the same teardown with mine.

Edited by Thesykboy, 30 September 2010 - 12:36 PM.

What it needs is head work and carbs.One the hardest heads to get good air in.Mod the hell out of the stock carbs.

Thesykboy said:

Take that with a grain of salt, as I believe these came with 40ish stock.

110HP?
that would be one fast dirt bike