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Lost a side cover...

  • Thread starter Thread starter MikeJ
  • Start date Start date
M

MikeJ

Guest
Left side cover (over the battery) apparently flew off of my otherwise great-looking, well-preserved, recently-purchased 1978 GS550 yesterday, somewhere in the course of a 90-mile, round-trip ride, without my even noticing when it happened. No way I'm going to be able to go back and find it in one piece, if I could find it at all, so, bummer. :(

I'm here looking for

(a) whether any fellow GSers have a spare 1978 left side cover they want to give away or sell for a reasonable price, and

(b) advice on how to keep the darn things from flying off to oblivion in the middle of a vigorous ride. Thanks, buds.

Mike Jacobs
Columbia, MD
1985 Honda VF700S Sabre
1984 Moto Guzzi V65SP
1982 Yamaha XZ550 Vision
1978 Suzuki GS550 standard
1996 Kawasaki EX250 Ninja
 
I don't have any spare 550 parts, but I can tell you that the rubber bushings the covers snap into work a lot better when new. They're cheap too.
 
Here in Johannesburg, side covers where always being liberated from bikes, and it was always a great source of aggravation and annoyance as second hand ones cost a fortune, due to the demand and were getting harder to come by.
We landed up cutting the lower pin, that pushes into the rubber grommet off, drilling a hole and securing it with a bolt and nut through the hole and the rubber grommet mounting.
 
MikeJ said:
Left side cover (over the battery) apparently flew off of my otherwise great-looking, well-preserved, recently-purchased 1978 GS550 yesterday, somewhere in the course of a 90-mile, round-trip ride, without my even noticing when it happened. No way I'm going to be able to go back and find it in one piece, if I could find it at all, so, bummer. :(

I'm here looking for

(a) whether any fellow GSers have a spare 1978 left side cover they want to give away or sell for a reasonable price,
Click to expand...

Well, I don't have a spare, but when I bought my bike a few years back, it didn't have any side covers. I was able to buy them from Bike Bandit, though they were $75 each. Not cheap. I got one with one paycheck.. couple weeks later, I bought the second..
But if you do that, remember you'll need to also order the emblem for the side cover. That was another 10 or 12 bucks, if I remember right.
 
oldgsfan said:
Well, I don't have a spare, but when I bought my bike a few years back, it didn't have any side covers. I was able to buy them from Bike Bandit, though they were $75 each. Not cheap. I got one with one paycheck.. couple weeks later, I bought the second..
But if you do that, remember you'll need to also order the emblem for the side cover. That was another 10 or 12 bucks, if I remember right.
Click to expand...

Thank you sir. Miserly though I am, I gave in and bought a new OEM side cover from an Ebay volume seller for $55 with free shipping included. Cheapest emblems I found were $26 with shipping, though, so I will forego that appearance item. And I'm still going to have to figure out some good way to keep the new cover, and my original-equipment right-side cover, from flying off again.

I thought about the suggestion Flyboy made, to drill out the mouting pin at the bottom and replace it with a through-bolt and nut, which would definitely be secure, but would also mean defacing my brand new part, and I can't bring myself to do that.

I realize now (thanks to another forum member's comment) that the rubber grommets those pegs push into get shrunken and hard with age, as mine now are, but the cheapest replacement set I found from Ebay would also be 20 bucks. So, I'm thinking of just coating the old grommets with a thick layer of clear (or black) silicone gel which, when hardened, will both make the hole the peg pushes into a little smaller, and will also give it some springy elasticity that the old grommet had lost. I'm also thinking of drilling small holes in the top, horizontal part of the side covers (where it's covered up by the seat, and can't be seen) and running zip-ties through those holes and around the top frame rail under the seat. Some of the guys over on the Honda V-4 Sabre/Magna forum have done that with success.

Here's a pic of the now-deceased left side cover before it departed - :(

moz-screenshot.jpg
Suzuki7.jpg
 
Sorry I came in late to this man I have both side covers WITH emblems that I would've given to you for 25 bucks. My frame has been cut up and hardtailed and I have absolutely NO use for them at all yet I refuse to pay Ebay to let me sell my stuff on there.

Anyways glad you were able to locate some!
 
VinciMMA said:
Sorry I came in late to this man I have both side covers WITH emblems that I would've given to you for 25 bucks. My frame has been cut up and hardtailed and I have absolutely NO use for them at all yet I refuse to pay Ebay to let me sell my stuff on there.

Anyways glad you were able to locate some!
Click to expand...

Hold onto 'em for the next guy, Vince. Thanks for the offer but I don't want to hog all the goodies now that I've been taken care of. It's only money, right? Don't we have a forum here on TGSR of stuff for sale?

Good on ya to come to the aid of a fellow GSer.

MikeJ
 
I have a 1980 GS550E and at one point my right side cover decided it didn't want to be one with the bike anymore.... are they still available Vinci?
 
Hey man, at the moment they are still available but I'm waiting for a reply from another user that shot me a PM about them before you posted.

If he decides that he doesn't want them then you're more than welcome to have em!
 
VinciMMA said:
Hey man, at the moment they are still available but I'm waiting for a reply from another user that shot me a PM about them before you posted.

If he decides that he doesn't want them then you're more than welcome to have em!
Click to expand...

Okay, great, if the other guy doesn't want 'em. I could always just use the emblems off of em and keep the covers for spares in case this happens again, or to hand off to the next GSer in line who needs one

Just let me know, OK, and I can send you my mail info

MikeJ
 
the rubber bushings are supposed to hold the cover on the bolt..I put an oversized washer on mine that extends over the plastic just a bit to keep them from coming off the bushings..can paint the washer whatever colr to blend in with the covers.
 
Anyone know if the 550E side covers will fit on the 550L?

Disregard, should do research before asking question. Microfiche show different Sku numbers for the side covers...boo hoo...on the bright side they are only $46 dollars at Cyclepartsnation.
 
Last edited:
chuck hahn said:
the rubber bushings are supposed to hold the cover on the bolt..I put an oversized washer on mine that extends over the plastic just a bit to keep them from coming off the bushings..can paint the washer whatever colr to blend in with the covers.
Click to expand...

I'm the OP on this thread... Okay, so I got my NOS replacement right side cover from Ebay, and cogitated for a few days to come up with a simple system to tie them on and prevent another one from flying off at speed. I did 2 things:

(a) coated the rubber grommet that the bottom plastic pegs fit into, with a couple of layers of silicone caulk, to build up the holes to be a smaller/tighter fit on the pegs - that helps, but I figured it wasn't enough to ensure against a flyoff. So I also

(b) got some wire twist ties (the grocery-store, vegetable-bag type) and used them to tie the top 2 slots on each side cover (where it fits over the bracket sticking out from the upper frame tube) onto the upper frame tube. It took 2 ties for each slot, spliced together by twisting onto each other at each end. to fit all the way around the frame tube. Took me all of about 4 minutes, in the grocery store parking lot, to do all 4 slots, and did not require any drilling or cutting or other modification at all of the side covers themselves and its completely invisible when the seat is down.

I figure they will rust out eventually (it's just plain steel wire) but they are easy to check for security every time I open the seat. If one of them rusts out and falls off, the other one will still hold the sidecover onto the bike until I can cobble up another wire tie at the grocery store.
 
I lost my right side cover during a 50-75km ride a week or so after I had put them on. I retraced the entire ride and found it lying on the side of the highway, no damage at all. I now zip tie my right side cover on. The left one has never come off in the three or so years I have had the bike.
 
gearhead13 said:
I lost my right side cover during a 50-75km ride a week or so after I had put them on. I retraced the entire ride and found it lying on the side of the highway, no damage at all.
Click to expand...

I was seriously tempted to do that too, but mine fell off somewhere during a 100-mile, round-robin ride (not retracing the same path on the return) that was partly on remote 2-lane twisties, but a large hunk of which was on a busy, multiple-lane freeway. If it fell off there, it would have been smashed to pieces moments after it fell off. Plus, I didn't have time to do the whole route again right away, and if I waited til the next day, the chances of a successful recovery would have gone down just that much more. So, the time involved, and the low chance of finding the undamaged sidecover anywhere on that route, made me reluctantly decide not to bother.

I _did_ track down and find the sidecover that fell off of my 1985 Honda VF700S (similar problem - old, stiff rubber grommets had lost their grip on the plastic pegs of the sidecover) as that one fell off during a short local ride - but that too was partly on a freeway - I had just taken her out for a shakedown cruise after changing a tire - and it was already smashed beyond recognition. All I could recover was the emblem. I couldn't find a replacement for that at any reasonable price, so I wound up making my own out of sheet aluminum that looked pretty good.

I now zip tie my right side cover on. The left one has never come off in the three or so years I have had the bike.
Click to expand...
Hey, don't say that, now you've jinxed your left side cover....

You better tie that one on too, just to be safe....
 
MikeJ said:
Hey, don't say that, now you've jinxed your left side cover....

You better tie that one on too, just to be safe....
Click to expand...
I seriously thought of zip tying that one, but it has to come off everytime I pull my carbs. IF it does I still have the original side cover to replace it:cool:
 
Mine never seemed loose or prone to flying off <knock on wood> but who knows... I just painted them up all shiny like so might see what I got for extra security options when I toss em back on.

100_5309.jpg
 
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