Opinions And Help On 1976 Yamaha DT400 Enduro

Hi Guys,

I just picked up a fairly nice '76 DT400 and was wanting some opinions
on reliability, maintenance items I should be aware of and a source
for parts (NOS and/or Repro). I also could use a Owners Manual, as
well as a Maintenance Manual.

Thanks so much Guys. I appreciate all of your time.

Sincerely,
Tim

 

Nice bikes, but ring/piston/bore wear is fairly rapid. And they drink
fuel like you wouldn't believe. Oh, and they vibrate a bit, too.

 

And the autolube doesn't always. And the brakes can
be truly scary.

 

That's worrying. What goes wrong?

Not as scary as on an XT500, which has (in)effectively the same brakes,
and even more power and weight.

 

What goes wrong is you run for a while at
highway speeds and then there's an awful
squawking noise as the sucker siezes up.

Could be something other than the autolube
but I was told that the oil mix bikes
didn't suffer this problem and the
autolube ones failed fairly commonly.
Not sure if it was a matter of adjustment
or pump problems or what.

This was the bike that made me swear
off two strokes.

Scary enough on the 400 thankew.

 

Sounds more like the aforementioned bore/piston problems, actually, but
nasty, even so.

A lot of fun to ride, though.