660 Skorpian, new to me

[toecutter418]

Well to be honest, it's my girlfriend's bike, I'm just the purchaser and mechanic! Anything specific to look out for or good things to mod? The bike is pretty solid although the last person in the carb managed to pinch the CV diaphragm, lose the diaphragm spring, pinch the vacuum hose clamp between the intake rubber and head. Also the fans were inoperative from the fuse holder falling apart/ melting on the header. The side stand was bent to all hell up at the pivot, so the bike would lean over at a scary angle whilst on the stand, working on fixing that. Always a fan of the big yamaha thumpers and also built a tigcraft race bike years ago, so seemed like a good fun bike to add to the collection.
Dean Middleton
Atlanta, GA.

[DAVID THOMPSON]

welcome
do remember to clean the filter behind the float needle in the carb

and be careful with the float pin people have broke the pin holding stem when removing the pin

last tank of gas before parking for winter use the no ethanol gas
so its not a fight to get started ..better yet if weather good tale it for a spin every week

[toecutter418]

David, thanks for the info. It gets a little nippy down here in the winter, but she's a hardy girl and ride's year round.

[edfmaniac]

Best easy mods in my opinion are getting the carbs working right and jetted right after removing the snorkle from the top of the airbox and replacing the stock air filter element with a high flow filter. Nothing is a direct fit but you can make one with the stock filter frame, some fuel friendly silicone and a cut up aftermarket Ninja 500 filter. If you want to do any performance related stuff other than that, pull the headers and grind the excess metal off of the fat welds. But hands down the best performance mod would be putting better wheels on the bike. It's not easy unless you are knowledgeable in the area, but you can lose something like 12 to 15 lbs of rotating mass with a wheel swap. That gives you better braking performance and better acceleration. A Brembo master cylinder is also a nice upgrade. They are so much more smooth than the stock unit.