Would you buy a Yamaha XS 1100LH Midnight Special

[hillsy]

It was to do with the cogs not fully engaging in 2nd gear

Of course it was - but that is the same for all the gears....except 2nd gear was more prone to damage.

Our guy in the shop who did all the die grinder work on the gears wasn't 100% certain on why but he summed it was due to having the longer throw with neutral in the middle - kinda gave the gears a "run up" to smashing the dogs.

He was a drag racer too, so I figured he knew what he was talking about.

[Bert Patterson]

Had a '79 XS750. Kept it for awhile after I had other bikes for a loaner, but I still managed to have 82,000 miles on it when I gave it to a friend who wanted any bikes. It was generally pretty solid, had great torque, and handled horribly - someone said it felt like the frame had a hinge in the middle and that sounded about right. Never a problem with 2nd gear, but only about four months after I gave it to Colin, it went out right as he was buying a bright yellow Monster. He gave it away to someone else who just rode it as is.

[rphillips]

"79" XS 750, weren't those the, kind of different, 3 cyl. 4 stroke engines ?

[Sandy]

Had a '79 XS750. Kept it for awhile after I had other bikes for a loaner, but I still managed to have 82,000 miles on it when I gave it to a friend who wanted any bikes. It was generally pretty solid, had great torque, and handled horribly - someone said it felt like the frame had a hinge in the middle and that sounded about right. Never a problem with 2nd gear, but only about four months after I gave it to Colin, it went out right as he was buying a bright yellow Monster. He gave it away to someone else who just rode it as is.

I bought a '77 standard model new in '78 and put about 80,000 very uninteresting kms on it. After changing to Supersport bars,fiddling with the fork spring rate, fork oil and upgrading the rear shocks to Koni's plus decent rubber it actually handled not to bad. It was totally reliable for that distance other than a few minor glitches (bent valves, my fault) but was a good, solid but boring motorcycle. Biggest trip was a trouble free across Canada trip in 1981. It was a 16,000km over 6 weeks trip with a buddy (point of this post) on a 1980? XS1100 Special equipped with Vetter fairing and full Samsonite luggage. Except for it's crappy gas mileage and small tank it was a pretty good bike and he put lots of trouble free miles on it. If it wasn't for the horsepower it would have been as equally boring as my 750 though. Most of these older UJM's had second gear problems but probably mostly due to getting beaten on. You could ride these bikes, let's say with great enthusiasm, and not have problems if just don't abuse them.