New owner of the old man’s 1981 GS850 GL

[Wendell]

My father passed down his 1981 GS850 GL after having it sit in the garage for 15 years. Recently he came out to visit and we cleaned the carbs, rebuilt the brakes, air filter, etc. A lot was done with the info provided on this site and BikeCliff’s site.
Spent the past two weeks putting about 40+ hours in with the old man getting her road ready again. He took the first ride and said it made him feel 30 again. Seems to be running great, joined the site to continue learning more about these bikes and getting ideas for small mod improvements. Grateful to have found a site with so much info and members willing to help.

[Brendan W]

Hi Wendell and Welcome
I second your comments.
A lot of experienced heads have put a lot of time into documenting their experiences.
Top site.

[Phred]

Congratulations Wendell. Welcome to the site. One of the first mods that i would highly recommend is to swap out the shunt regulator for the SH775 series regulator. Your electrics will be much happier for it. There is a lot of info on this site on these and a lot of bogus SH775s out there. Bought mine from Ricks, complete with instructions, easy to install.

[rphillips]

Welcome Wendell, Sounds like ya'll did great. Glad to hear the old GS is still providing smiles. Good luck to you, dad, & the old GS.... Oh yeah, some folks around here may not believe you have a GS unless they see pictures...

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Yep, pics or it didn’t happen

[Redman]

Welcome to the site Wendell.
Good story about your dad's bike and you guys working on it together.

Now we need to see some pictures.

[salty_monk]

Welcome to the nuthouse...

[argonsagas]

My father passed down his 1981 GS850 GL after having it sit in the garage for 15 years. Recently he came out to visit and we cleaned the carbs, rebuilt the brakes, air filter, etc. A lot was done with the info provided on this site and BikeCliff’s site.
Spent the past two weeks putting about 40+ hours in with the old man getting her road ready again. He took the first ride and said it made him feel 30 again. Seems to be running great, joined the site to continue learning more about these bikes and getting ideas for small mod improvements. Grateful to have found a site with so much info and members willing to help.

Welcome, Wendell.

I did not see tires mentioned in your list.

If not done already, please get new tires installed. It is critically important.

They may have been on the bike even longer than 15 years so while they might still look good the rubber will have aged / hardened to the point that they will not be able to provide necessary traction.