Its been almost two years in the making but the Yamaha XVS650ATR that has been sitting in the back of our garage has come alive! The main holdup was the engine. I got this bike with a blown engine from a guy who didn't want to pay the big repair bill. We saved up some money and had the time to finally find a good, used engine on eBay with only 10,000 miles. We did have Todd, at Yamaha Country go through the carburetors.
We came to find out that was the easy part! There were several long hours and late nights figuring out where all the parts went. We cleaned up the bike from the frame up. 
Then, the whole family got in on the project. Shoehorning the replacement engine into the frame was quite a challenge. We used a rope from the rafters of the garage as a hoist.
Denise, Paul and the sons all pried and slid and lifted and grunted and, after almost an hour we slid the engine onto the driveline and into the frame! 
We got all the wires and hoses and lines hooked up where we thought they should be. Then, to our neighbors chagrin, we wanted to try and fire it up at 10 p.m. without the exhaust just to see if it would run. Well, it fired up and we all said yippee! 
Then, we got the exhaust on the next day and did some finishing touches. We fired it up and took some rides around the neighborhood. Then, I took it into Todd to get some fine tuning. We had that done and now it runs like a top! It is a V-Star 650 Silverado and it came with the windshield, saddlebags, studded seats and bags and the backrest.
