I'm Mike from Utah, USA. I'm new to GS bikes, but not motorcycles in general, been riding for almost 20 years and enjoy working on bikes almost as much as riding them. As crazy as it might seem to some, when I was 10 my father was killed on his motorcycle, broadsided by a DHL Air Freight truck driver, but I still love to ride. I'm not overly superstitious, but I am Mike Jr...So I ride hyper-aware and as defensively as possible.
I've owned several bikes over the over the years, an 84 Honda Nighthawk 700, an 82 Yamaha Virago 750, an 03 Suzuki Marauder 800 and currently own a couple of other bikes, 2) little 1980 80cc Yamaha trail/street bikes and another 83 - a Honda V45 750 Magna, but it's in pieces. I'm in the process of putting a new/used motor in it.
A friend of mine recently decided to get rid of his 1983 GS750ES that has only ~5000 miles on it and so I snatched it up!
Other than the blinkers and Kerker 4-1 header/pipe and consequent center stand removal, she's stock and quite clean. Must've sat somewhere for years. When I took the wheels in a couple of weeks ago to get my new tires put on it, they told me it looked like it was the original front tire! The tread was fine, but it had cracks and dry rot all throughout it.
I've been putting quite a bit of time and money into it - new Pirelli Sport Demons, new Compu-Fire R&R, I adjusted the valves, cleaned and bench synced the carbs, replaced the leaking petcock seals and vacuum hoses, drained and refilled the engine and fork oil, did the coil relay mod last night, put in a new battery and wired in a tender and 12V accessory socket, upgraded nearly all lighting to LED's including a custom fabbed quad 15W MR16 light bar up front and have been spending lots of time checking torque settings and cleaning/testing electrical connections as well as polishing and cleaning her up!
I've downloaded and printed out the manual and also put it on my iPad (inside the awesome LifeProof Nuud case) and used multiple PDFs from BassCliff's site and will be posting about the work I've been doing to it and questions involved as well but wanted to say hello and thanks for having such a knowledgable and helpful forum!
Enough typing, here's some pictures. The night I brought her home:
In the parking garage at work:
With the Great Salt Lake in the background:
Blurry shot of the odometer/cluster:
Mostly naked with a mess of tools and junk around it the day after I brought it home:
I've still got a few things I need work on - the biggest one being the tach. It's got the dreaded electronic tach on it with that IC that is no longer made, so I'm going to try replacing the capacitors hoping they're just dried out and gone bad, so I'll be posting about that once I do a little more searching and attempt to repair it. Otherwise I may get another separate tach gauge and mount it somewhere, there just not much room up by the bars with the fairing and windshield on it...
Anyway, that's all folks! I'll be "seeing" you around The GSR.
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