Are GS1100E bikes more common than GS1100G bikes?

[wymple]

I don't know about everywhere, but I ride my 850 shafty a lot, and I see just as many or more shafties than chain drives. But I generally stay within 400 miles of home in SE Iowa. Maybe riding styles leave the shafties with more survivors?

[bobgroger]

Regardless of production numbers, the 1100E was and remained popular with drag racers to this day. So 1100E parts have always had a lot more value. There's always been a ready market even for non-running or crashed parts bikes, and there are tons more aftermarket goodies available. More 1100Es got crashed, of course, but I suspect a far smaller portion than the Gs got pushed behind barns to simply rot.


There was also a widespread and mistaken notion that the shim valves in the 8V engines required expensive, mysterious, deep magick wizardry to adjust, so lots and lots of them were simply ignored as they slowly got harder and harder to start. One day, with anywhere from 12,000 - 24,000 miles on the clock, the clearances had narrowed to the point the engine wouldn't start before the battery died, and the bike was pushed into the barn (if it was lucky) or worse, behind the barn.

Decades later... "ran when parked" was the story, and/or "no time to ride". "Easy fix", "just needs carbs cleaned", "no title", etc.

Even in the early years of this very forum, too many were utterly terrified of opening the valve cover and mucking with shims. It used to be common at GS rallies for several riders to head out to the parking lot about 15 minutes early, spend five minutes wearing out the starter and then ten minutes warming up and filling the air with smog just to get their bikes to run that morning.

Lots of people just figured "old bikes" were expected to be hard to start and supposed to be unreliable.

It took a while to get the word out that a GS, any GS, should start with a quick stern glance at the starter button, and that shim valve adjustments can be accomplished by mortals. And are mandatory...

I am contemplating doing a valve adjustment on my C14. It makes the 8V GS look trivial. After you take off all the fairings, you remove the valve cover and check clearances. Then you remove both cams and the lifter buckets to get to the shims. Replace shims as needed and reassemble. Book time is 8 hours but it takes most people an entire weekend.

[gs11ezrydr]

Back through 1980-1983 at the dealership in Chicago. I would un-crate and assemble and service as many as 6 a day of the GS1100E and some ES models and we could not keep them in stock.Maybe just a fad in that area?? Where in our area in Chicago the G models collected dust unless someone was looking for a reliable touring bike.To this day I think the 850 G models were the work horses of there time..