what did you wrench on today??

[bluesmoke]

cleaning up and inspecting barn find

cleaning up and inspecting barn find

Spent most of the day going throught the GS450 I picked up on Saturday. It's cleaning up well.

 

[MAJikMARCer]

No actual wrenching but a lot of clean up. I did the wood dowel in the drill trick that someone mentioned in here for getting to those hard to reach places. I also discovered that parts of my rear end were actually silver not flat black. That was a lot of grime! Unfortunately what I thought was just some weird red grease that the PO used on the chain was actually regular grease that had turned red from rust. Guess a new chain and sprockets is in my purchase future now too. The rear sprocket is pretty worn so I'm going to assume that the rusty chain isn't worth trying to salvage at this point.

 

[Killer2600]

It wasn't a bike or a suzuki but it is powered by honda and painted blue (suzuki default bike color) and entirely Japanese made.

After my most recent power outage stint that last 4 full days and a few hours, I decide to pull this out of the shed and see if she was good for anything. Aside from dry reminents/dust/rust in the tank and sticky choke and throttle butterflies looks like she was properly winterized/stored. After cleaning out the tank, spraying down the carb butterflies, and repairing a broken throttle return spring she roared to life like she last ran just yesterday.

Don't know why a previous owner would abuse and discard her, she works great as a generator. The only bad is automatic idle down doesn't work and the frame and stuff is all bent up, looks like someone dropped her pretty good, but like typical japanese steel there's no stopping it.

 

[Toasty]

I need to clean my carbs and replace all the boots (or the carb ones at least) with new ones. I've been getting a flat spot around 7,000rpm when on the freeway (adding the choke doesn't help though). I wish Z1 sold the boots because they're so much faster then Boulevard Suzuki... I already have the o-ring kit so I just need the boots float gaskets and some 97.5 mains.

 

[7981GS]

I just need the boots, float gaskets and some 97.5 mains.

You can get all of those from Z1.
Call them.

Eric

 

[Toasty]

They sell the boots? I've scoured their site and haven't found them.

edit: Nvm they're called carb holders apparently.

 

[7981GS]

call them.

 

[Tim Tom]

A funny thing happens when you ride a GS a lot. It gets dirty. I don't mean just a bit of dust from sitting too long. I don't mean a few bugs on the headlights. I'm talking 'bout DIRT. And lots of it. See for yourself...

A nice overview of what I mean. Notice the sludge on the license plate.Wheels that look to be the same color brown. The dirt covered rear cowling.

Lets look a bit closer shall we?

Yep that is caked on road goo. Even the shocks are covered in ca ca...


Other side is just as ugly...

The front is just as bad. Notice the road spray on the front of the tank. Grime covered front wheel. Engine dull and caked in goo. And lord knows how many bug guts have been splattered by the fairing.

To Be Continued shortly... Too many pics..

 

[Tim Tom]

Welp time to get cracking on that mess. Might as well start with the front...

Whoa, my wheels have silver edges? I had forgotten about that


It is starting to look like a motorcycle again instead of a KLR :-\\\

Ahh now that is better. Classic good looking GS.

Yeah, shiny. You can see yourself in those pipes for sure. And the back wheel is also two tone?! Sweet!

A clean motor! No more grime!

Hello Gorgeous!

And that is what I wrenched on today. Took my GS from a dirty adventure bike, back to the classic good looking street machine she is!

Now it's time to go ride some more I think

 

[Dave8338]

(last night) I spent a little time on my 8'x8' elevator in the garage.
Cut the tracks for the vertical lift, removed some existing cinder blocks that were about to fall out anyway, and prepped the area for additional construction.

 

[Tim Tom]

Now I remember why I only wash my bike once a year... Spent all afternoon cleaning and making everything shiny. Take it out for a ride, and out of nowhere it starts raining. Still sunny, just now it's sunny and wet. It only rained for a mile or so, but hard enough to make my pipes all spotty again

Ohh well. Clean motorcycles are for people who don't ride enough anyway

 

[marvinsc]

Now I remember why I only wash my bike once a year... Spent all afternoon cleaning and making everything shiny. Take it out for a ride, and out of nowhere it starts raining. Still sunny, just now it's sunny and wet. It only rained for a mile or so, but hard enough to make my pipes all spotty again

Ohh well. Clean motorcycles are for people who don't ride enough anyway

Quote of the day!

 

[Toasty]

Today is just not my day :| . This morning I adjusted my mirror on the freeway and it got a little loose then a few minutes later swung down. No biggie, it's happened before and I just adjust tighten it up when I get to my destination. A minute later I feel a thump on my knee and my friggin mirror is gone .

I swapped the right side mirror to the other side at work, and then also took off the inline fuel filter. I suspected it was causing my 7K really bad flat spot (on the freeway) that it developed the other day. Everything was good on the way home, not much traffic and the flat spot was much improved (I still need to up the mains though). At least until I was about 15 miles out at and go to downshift and my dash lights go out. No dash lights, signal lights or tail light . I use hand signals and thankfully don't have to do any emergency stops and I get to the offramp a few miles away from home. I hopped off the bike and checked the headlight, and then tapped the brake to see if it was working and the bike died.

I got it back after swapping out the blown main fuse and 10A signal fuse. The battery has plenty of juice but still no signals, dash or tail light. I also may have tapped the kill switch with my gloved hand when I tested the brake, I dunno. The weird thing is that a few blocks away from home all the lights came back and then immediately went out. It came back a few blocks later and stayed on and everything worked until I was braking and did a downshift and it went out again.

I dunno what the deal is but I'm have a loose connection or pinched wire somewhere. Thankfully the fuse box has extra fuses.

 

[cowboyup3371]

Toasty, check your headlight bucket for any bare wires that shouldn't be there. I made that mistake a while back and didn't realize why until I started tearing things down to look again. I found my new brake wires were hitting the headlight while riding down the road.

 

[Guest]

Now I remember why I only wash my bike once a year... Spent all afternoon cleaning and making everything shiny. Take it out for a ride, and out of nowhere it starts raining. Still sunny, just now it's sunny and wet. It only rained for a mile or so, but hard enough to make my pipes all spotty again

Ohh well. Clean motorcycles are for people who don't ride enough anyway

I hear ya Tim! Every time I get my 450 all clean and shiny rain seemingly comes out of nowhere despite all weather predictions to the contrary... this week has all been perfectly sunny until the last two days just as I'm nearly home, a sun shower has come out of nowhere... so far not enough to grime her all up again but annoying none the less...

 

[ptexotik]

Cleaned & oiled two sets of K&N filters ... switched Fox Gas shocks from ES to Katana (Katana Fox Factory shox shot! needing rebuild) and with hose clamp & 2" PVC cap, made a crank blowby filter reciprocal ...

 

[Dave8338]

More work on the elevator lift in the garage.

Three of four support columns and tracks are in place and I'm hoping to finish the fourth tonight after work. Then a couple of pulleys, cables, and the chain hoist, and I'll be able to stack they toys to make room..........for more !

 

[loud et]

I am sittin here flipping a coin to see which of the 4 wheels I will take off my p.o.s. car first. All 4 wheels need some sort of ball joint/tie rod/strut attention.
Or I might just drive up to the gas station to get a coca cola, and whichever wheel falls off first will be the one I start fixing......yeah, its that bad! Stupid pos.

 

[MisterCinders]

Went to riide last night and got only a click. Charged battery for a bit but no change. When I tried to jump the solenoid nothing. Turned out my connection between the battery and solenoid was toast. Of course this emerged right after all the shops closed. So this morning, I popped over to o'reillys for wires and connectors and sorted it. Definitely need to overhaul the harness.

Riding today and my speedo takes a dump. Needle just dangles, but the odometer still works. So it's internal. Damn guage has only 2000 miles on it. Guess I'll have to order a new one.

 

[Toasty]

So I found the main reason for my air leak today..

I took off the carbs and stripped them, put the parts into individual baggies and started the dip process on carb #1. They all looked surprisingly clean internally although they could still use a good cleaning. The airbox boots are good and soft still. I go to remove the carb boots from the head and it's a pretty tight fit with the impact driver. They also look nearly brand new I get the boot off carb #1 it took a good tap to loosen and it's off. Carb #2 is the same. I switch sides and start on #4, the first screw is nice and tight the second is BARELY more then hand tight (I twisted by hand first). I try carb #3 and both screws are not even hand tight, I could basically unscrew them with my fingers.

The orings are still good (Im still replacing all those anyway) but now I know why carb 3&4 were always running lean (#3 more so then the rest). I'm not sure if I want to return my new boots, or keep them and sell the old ones (in nearly new shape) at a good price on here.

On a side note, I may have gone too big on my mains. I currently have 92.5's and the new ones are 97.5's, if I find it running rich at WOT I'm gonna test out removing the airbox lid and shimming the needles. IIRC that's pretty much the setup dynojet recommends.


edit: I looked through all my connections to find by my fuse blew, they all looked good but I replaced a questionable one anyway. I still wasn't getting power though, and the fuse looked good. I replaced it with a new one and all the lights fired up, the stock spare fuse was no good and went out without frying completely.