XS650 Special project

The seat is a 1972 or 1973 Kawasaki G5 seat. For mock-up I'd located where the brackets needed to be, and drilled and tapped the pan to temporarily hold them in place, so now needed to weld nuts for them on the top of the pan, so the seat needed to come apart. I'll also be replacing the cover. It doesn't appear to have much of any wear, but is cracking from age.


Here is the pan part way through sand blasting after welding the nuts in place. I also just slightly bent out the stamped seat cover hooks, just enough to be able to slip the new cover in place. These can break off easily, so need a careful touch.


After blasting, I painted the pan top and bottom with gloss black Rust-Oleum. From the factory they were only painted on the bottom.


The new cover is from ebay seller Pit Replica in Thailand. It is an exact replica of the original, and very nicely made.


I placed the cover on the seat and let it sit in the sun to make it softer and easier to work with.


Getting ready to fit it to the pan. The blue masking tape is to hold the rubber edge protector in place so it doesn't move when fitting the cover. I started in the middle, doing one hook and then the matching hook on the other side. I stretch it in place, and poke a small hole, and then slip it on the hook. After fitting the cover I used a piece of wood dowel rod the press the hooks down.


It came out great, and the fit was perfect.


Here it is with the old cover, I can't say enough how happy I am with the Pit Replica replacement.


Now for the gas tank. The stock petcock location was directly above the cam cover, so I needed to weld in a bung toward the back off the tank. I went with 3/8" NPT so I can use an inexpensive Harley aftermarket petcock.


I first cut the opening.


The bung fits from the inside of the tank, test fitting it here before removing the paint around the area to be welded. All I have is a MIG welder, which isn't ideal for gas tanks. I figured the ledge inside the tank would allow me to use more heat without blowing holes in the tank.

Not the prettiest job, but it'll work.


For the original petcock location, I made a simple block-off plate, rather than welding it up. The block-off plate is similar to the adapter I made for the '75, and will just bolt in place with a gasket.