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I don't think I have done one of these, so I'm doing a belated one.
First me:
My name is Jonathan, and this is not my first GS. My first motorcycle was a 1983 Nighthawk 650. Then I bought a 1978 GS750. Then came three scooters--a 1984 Honda Aero 125 (NH125,) then a Honda Elite 80, and a Yamaha Riva 125. After the Riva was stolen off the street in front of my house, I bought the current 1100GL.
I am a welder-fabricator by trade and an English teacher by training, which is to say that I am a welder-fabricator. I tend to make everything into a project, but this Suzuki saw me coming and leapt straightaway into being a project.
The Bike:
I bought the 1100GL, admittedly from a flipper, in November. He had done a few maintenance items, and the bike seemed ready to go for the spring. He had admonished me that he suspected it would need a valve stem seal on one of the two left hand cylinders because it would emit a puff of oil on start-up. A puff quickly became a continuous stream, so the head was going to need to come off. Because I don't like having stuff torn apart and languishing (I will tell you now to look for the irony in this remark as you read,) I decided to buy a spare head on eBay and have it serviced then install it.
In the meantime, a small leak developed at the right rear corner of the cylinder block between the block and the crankcase. A small leak rapidly progressed into a stream that made the bike unrideable. Steve contacted me because we aren't very far apart and offered guidance. (I think he regrets this, but he is too kind to say so.) Steve provided a list of PNs for gaskets, which I ordered and installed. When I was going to rotate the piston rings ahead of shimmying the cylinders onto the pistons, I found a chunk missing from the #1 compression ring, meaning that somebody had once been in there and decided to chuck the broken-off portion of the ring and send it. So, I ordered rings and waited.
In the meantime, I decided that I didn't want to reassemble the bike with the ratty looking exhaust, so I decided to build a new stainless steel 4-1 system.
I got the bike back together and rode out to Steve's for a carb tuning/tutorial. More trouble ensued, so the job took an extra day. But it was done. A week later, I took a ride and found that the clutch was slipping. Whatever power was gained through the exhaust, pod filters, and tuning had nothing to do with it; it slipped at half throttle. Also, the clutch would grab a little while I had the clutch depressed. So a clutch job it was... If not for the grabbing, I would have replaced only springs, but I suspected that the grabbing was caused by distortion in the plates. So I did all that.
Now I have a running and (for the time) reliable GS1100GL.
It's nice to meet you.
First me:
My name is Jonathan, and this is not my first GS. My first motorcycle was a 1983 Nighthawk 650. Then I bought a 1978 GS750. Then came three scooters--a 1984 Honda Aero 125 (NH125,) then a Honda Elite 80, and a Yamaha Riva 125. After the Riva was stolen off the street in front of my house, I bought the current 1100GL.
I am a welder-fabricator by trade and an English teacher by training, which is to say that I am a welder-fabricator. I tend to make everything into a project, but this Suzuki saw me coming and leapt straightaway into being a project.
The Bike:
I bought the 1100GL, admittedly from a flipper, in November. He had done a few maintenance items, and the bike seemed ready to go for the spring. He had admonished me that he suspected it would need a valve stem seal on one of the two left hand cylinders because it would emit a puff of oil on start-up. A puff quickly became a continuous stream, so the head was going to need to come off. Because I don't like having stuff torn apart and languishing (I will tell you now to look for the irony in this remark as you read,) I decided to buy a spare head on eBay and have it serviced then install it.
In the meantime, a small leak developed at the right rear corner of the cylinder block between the block and the crankcase. A small leak rapidly progressed into a stream that made the bike unrideable. Steve contacted me because we aren't very far apart and offered guidance. (I think he regrets this, but he is too kind to say so.) Steve provided a list of PNs for gaskets, which I ordered and installed. When I was going to rotate the piston rings ahead of shimmying the cylinders onto the pistons, I found a chunk missing from the #1 compression ring, meaning that somebody had once been in there and decided to chuck the broken-off portion of the ring and send it. So, I ordered rings and waited.
In the meantime, I decided that I didn't want to reassemble the bike with the ratty looking exhaust, so I decided to build a new stainless steel 4-1 system.
I got the bike back together and rode out to Steve's for a carb tuning/tutorial. More trouble ensued, so the job took an extra day. But it was done. A week later, I took a ride and found that the clutch was slipping. Whatever power was gained through the exhaust, pod filters, and tuning had nothing to do with it; it slipped at half throttle. Also, the clutch would grab a little while I had the clutch depressed. So a clutch job it was... If not for the grabbing, I would have replaced only springs, but I suspected that the grabbing was caused by distortion in the plates. So I did all that.
Now I have a running and (for the time) reliable GS1100GL.
It's nice to meet you.
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