IT DID NOT TAKE MUCH TO BRING `UNICORN' TO LIFE
A love for motorcycles runs in the Rogalski family. Nick Rogalski ran a 1942 Harley-davidson 45, then a vintage Indian Chief. In the early 1980s, he bought his kids an old two-stroke 150cc Kawasaki to use on the family's Saskatchewan acreage.
Nick's enthusiasm for powered two-wheelers was passed to son Michael, who has continued to ride. While Michael Rogalski's first bike was small, he progressed to larger motorcycles as he gained confidence in his riding skills. Over the years, Rogalski has had a variety of street motorcycles, including a 1981 Honda CB900 Custom.
“A couple of years ago, I was looking for something that was pre-1987 so I could licence it from March to November, which is about the length of Saskatoon's riding season,” Rogalski says. “Vintage plates run less than $15 a month.”
For comparison, Rogalski owns a 2008 Suzuki Hayabusa that he says costs him $270 a month to plate. He did find a 1981 Honda CB900 Custom — just like the one he'd had when he was 24 — from a dealer in Moose Jaw, Sask., but it was “a bit more than I wanted to spend, and I was afraid the nostalgia was stronger than the reality of that bike, which was heavy.”
Late in 2019, he found a listing on Kijiji for a 1979 Yamaha
XS750 Special. It had been sitting unused for a few years but was relatively clean and had only 14,000 kilometres on the odometer. When he went to look at the Yamaha, he found the brakes were stuck, and the bike wouldn't roll. However, he was able to get the bike to fire up and run for a moment. Knowing it would take work to get the machine back on the road, Rogalski made an offer.
“I asked, `Would you take a dollar a cc?'” Rogalski says. “And the seller said, `Give me $800 and it's yours.'”
Rogalski got the bike home to his garage and started looking it over but didn't get very far into the resurrection process until late in 2020.
“There are several things about the XS750 that make it interesting to me, and actually make it a bit of a unicorn — in fact,
I've nicknamed it the Unicorn,” Rogalski says. “It's a three-cylinder, it has a kick-starter, it has shaft drive, and it has dual vacuum-operated petcocks.”
Those last items caused some grief. Over time, the seals in the gas petcocks wear out, and they only have three positions: prime, run or reserve. There is no positive off position, and in Rogalski's Yamaha, gas had seeped past the worn seals and filled the crankcase with a gasoline and oil mixture.
“I took seven and a half litres of gas and oil out of the cases,” he says.
He bought kits to repair the petcocks and went further into the fuel system, removing the carbs, completely dismantling them, cleaning them, and reassembling them. The seven-spoke mag wheels were renewed with fresh bearings, and he spent $305 on mounting and balancing new tires.
Brake calipers had to be freed up and the rotors and pads, both front and rear, scuffed up before being put back together. Fresh fluid was introduced into the brake master cylinders and bleeding them returned fully functioning brakes. The electrical system checked out fine, but all light bulbs were replaced.
In late March this year, after he put fresh oil in the crankcase, Rogalski had the Yamaha XS750 running again.
“I set off on a 35-kilometre journey when it was about 13 C and ended up riding it more than 400 kilometres that afternoon,” Rogalski says with a laugh.
The bike's three-cylinder engine has interesting aural characteristics.
“When the bike is idling, it doesn't sound that much different than any other Japanese multi-cylinder motorcycle, but when the revs climb to 4,000, it begins to sound like a race car,” he says.
“The Unicorn is living up to its name, as it's rare that a neglected bike takes so little work and money to turn into a daily rider.” Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada. Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or gregwilliams@shaw.ca.
Driving.ca