The Back Story....

About five or six years ago I was living in an area of Buffalo that was highly populated by college students called the University Heights.  I met a "frat guy" through a friend who worked at a bar there.  He says he has an old Yamaha motorcycle that he had on the road the previous year.  My dad and I went to go take a look at it and it was in decent shape.  I picked it up for the equivalent of about $150.  We tuned the carbs and put it on the road.  My dad kept telling me that it would be great for a Street Tracker project because it had the dual disc front brakes and the aluminum wheels on it.  I didn't really know what a street tracker was and so I didn't really care.
One night I am riding home and it starts to run real funny.  I knew something was wrong.  It almost sounded like it was only running on one cylinder.  It was really late and I wasn't far from home so I just went for it.  About three miles from my house the thing just quit and backfired.  I called my friend to come pick me up and as I looked down I saw a little flame start under the airbox, behind the carbs.  I called 911 and flagged down a passerby who happened to have a fire extinguisher.  They must have sent have of the fire department out for this one.  They helped me load the bike (after they put out the fire) back into the truck and sent me on my way.  I unloaded it behind the barn and there it sat.
A year or two later my dad gave it to a friend who used to race flat track and wanted to build a street tracker.  His son races speedway bikes so it doesn't leave him a lot of time to wrench on things.
I moved back to the city and last summer I went to AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days at Mid-Ohio.  There I saw about a half a dozen street trackers that looked super cool.  Since everyone in my area was getting clubmans and rear sets put on just about everything they could just to call it a "cafe racer" I decided I wanted to be a little different and build a street tracker.  I started reading some forums on them and called my dad to talk to him about some XS 650's that I had seen on craigslist.  At which point he informed me that I had one and that he didn't think his friend had done anything with it at that point.  I called his friend up and two weeks later I picked it up.  It wasn't in terrible shape considering it had been in a fire.  I pulled the side covers off and started to strip her down.  Next I took of those awful chopper pipes and pulled all the wiring, which was completely destroyed in the fire.  All the while I have been reading forum after forum trying to figure out what I want to do with this thing.  I don't want to build a typical Omar's tracker.  I want this to be my own.  We shall see how it shapes up......