My father's coworker was getting ready to junk a bike he hadn't ridden in over 10 years... his '82 GS850. Since I've already got a 2012 Daytona 675R, he asked me if he should bring it home for me before this guy tosses it to the curb.
...obviously I wasn't going to say no to a FREE BIKE!
So with at least some of my garage space free'd up, I finally brought the bike in last night to get a feel for where she's at and see if she's even worth the trouble.
You can almost sense the jealousy that my car is feeling right now, knowing that something else has got my attention!
Initial impressions were that the battery was toast. Turning the key onto pos. 2 wouldn't light anything up, so I set it aside to charge. In the meantime, I wheeled over a spare care battery I had and hooked it up. I saw lights up on the dash, so that was a good start!
Did a quick function check and the horn came to life after a few attempts, the headlight(s) work, brake lights work, and left turn signal works.
Right signal is out.
So far so good. There was some semblance of oil in the crank, so...let's see if she cranks!
The tank was empty, but a peek inside with a flashlight and a borescope didn't show any signs of rust or debris! I disconnected the fuel line down to the carbs and rerouted it into an empty water bottle, and noticed the petcock was stuck shut. After some penetrating spray was added and left to work it's magic for a few minutes, it wriggled it's way fee. Then I poured some gasoline through it to make sure no contaminants were flowing out of it.
Hooked the fuel line back down into the carbs, added a little choke, and then...
"crank, crank, crank"
"crank, crank, crank, sputter"
"crank, crank, sputter, sputter"
"crank, vroooooooom"
Here's what she sounded like!
She runs! And holds a decent idle! I'm not sure what caused the abrubt shutdown. I'm not sure if the choke was open or not.... Although a puddle of fuel developed on the floor and it looks like there's a leak out of the "boot" on cyl. #2 because fuel was dribbling out.
The brakes are seized to the rotors. Or, rather, the pistons in the calipers won't retract all the way, so it took 2 people just to "roll" this bike 30 yards. 30 yards took about half an hour. I'll have to unstick those and see what needs to be done
My agenda so far:
1. Rebuilding the carbs.
2. Valve adjustment.
3. Syncing the carbs.
4. Brakes (when she's ready to become road worthy). I pulled the calipers off for now to let me roll it around the garage for the time being.
5. New tires (when she's ready to become road worthy)
This is my first carb'd ANYTHING, so I'm going to be doing a lot of this for the first time!
Looking forward to recommendations, and I'll spend plenty of time reading here! Maybe I can do a day or two of riding before it starts snowing here in New England!
Cheers!
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