GS1000L Heavy Smoke... Rebuild Questions

[Thirdgen60]

Hi, my name is Tyler and I am new here. Most of my mechanical experience is with cars ( worked as a mechanic for 4 years and have an 86 camaro with a turbo LS motor) but do have some experience with bikes and small engines.

After completing my camaro project i decided to start a bike project so I picked up a gs1000L on friday for a cafe/bobber build. The bike hadn't been run since 2010 and the guy said he quit riding it because of an oil leak on the right side. So i got it home did all the usual things to get a bike running after sitting: flushed tank, disassembled/freed up the petcock, checked plugs, etc

So after a little cranking, it fired up and ran but was smoking quite heavily out the tail pipe once it was warmed up. I shut it off, let it sit a while and fired it back up. There was very little smoke at that point but began to smoke heavily again after running a minute or so. So at that point i decided it would need some work.

Fast forward one day.... I now have the bike completely torn apart for the frame work and the engine and trans up on the workbench with the head and cylinders off. The center cylinder from the right side of the bike (i think #3 but not sure on the numbering scheme) is the one that was leaking oil around the exhaust flange. I expected to see a scored cylinder wall or something obvious wrong with it, but everything actually looks pretty decent.

Ill post up some pics this week but as of right now (for lack of a better answer) im wondering if the issue might just be valve seals???

So what i am thinking is that i get get a top end gasket kit, valve seals and a set of ring, hone the cylinders, throw it back together, and hope for the best. Any other opinions on the problem or advice? Also i was wondering if anyone know what the procedure is for timing one of these?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[platinum2]

get a manual, for best results my friend, i believe it is like other stock electric pickup gs's, no mess just 1 way to assemble it no adjusting, only thing adjustable is timing chain ,because of the spring loaded tensioner ,and you want it to be nice and firm
are you going to degree in the cams? ,stock gears are not adjustable but you can get adjustable gears for it
you can look at microfiche for most assembly stuff, but some things are wrong on some bikes,thats why i suggest to get a good manual
oh what year is it??

[GregT]

First get a manual....and that's what everyone will tell you...and they're right.
the cam timing marks are simple and it's easy to do ...with a manual.

Your heavy smoke could well be valve stem seals - but could also be rings which have lost tension. I see you're talking replacing rings - good but check the side clearance in the grooves as they do wear in this area.

Carry on....

[hjfisk]

How many miles on the bike? You may well have jumped the gun taring it down. If the bike sat a nd the fuel petcock needed freeing up you might of had a crankcase full of gas which will raise the oil level to the bottoms of the pistons causeing it to smoke. How much oil did you drain out of it? I've seen bikes with so much gas inthe motor it got into the exhaust and would smoke for a long time
till it cleared out. What compression readings did you have? Oh ya and get a manually.

[Nessism]

Tons of good info, including a free Suzuki factory service manual download for free here...http://members.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/

Good luck and welcome.

[Thirdgen60]

Thanks for the link to the manual and saving me $30 bucks .

The bike has 30,000 on it. And as for the amount of oil drained, it was about 3.5qts that came out. It did have a bit of a gas smell to it. I did check the petcock when i had it out to clean and all was well there. Either way its torn apart now and should be as good as new when done.