[ work ]
As with any bike things wear out and break (or are not maintained) so much of the work is to be expected with a ten year old bike - even with very low mileage. It would have been much easier to document the fixes and modifications as I found them, but this site is being set up 10 months after I brought the bike home - with most of the work already done.
My first move after getting the bike home was to give it a good cleaning as it had been sitting in a barn for about a year. The owner had been in a car accident and could not ride. After a good washing I began to find the chips, scratches, dings, leaks, etc. I didn't find any leaks but found more chips, surface rust, pitted spoked rims, etc.
All of my observations and work began without a shop manual so I was working on common sense and internet research - XL Forum was a great find. It was at this point that my eyes began to open seeing the "modifications" that had been made to the bike. Three very obvious changes were a hole drilled through the jiffy stand to allow a bolt to be used for easy foot access, homemade lowering blocks, and a 2004 riser/bar mount/tach that had been heightened further with an inch of washers and ground down for tank clearance. Nice.
I knew she wasn't a beauty queen when I bought her but when you start finding things like this you have to ask "why" and start wondering about safety. I immediately started making repairs, fixes and changes. I broke it down here in sections to avoid one mile long list.