750 cafe project

[beergood]

Got a lot more done today.

The bike is more complete than it has been in months.

Does anyone hate wiring harnesses? 'Cause I do. I give it 1 in 4 that I got it back together correctly. We'll find out when I try to start it (hopefully over the weekend). I did buy some wire shielding that I think works a little better than just the multiple crusty electrical tape loops, not that those loops aren't still inside there.


The long awaited reunion of my carbs and engine. I was going to do a complete stripdown of the carbs, but upon closer inspection it looks like the last owner cleaned them pretty well, fairly recently. When I opened up the number one carb it was almost spotless inside. So I decided that I would just give them a good surface clean instead of monkeying with them. If they run rough then I will address it later.


More assembly:


I've been thinking about applying some rubber feet to the bottom of the seat assembly, kinda like the stock seat. I want to try and dampen road vibration, I can tell that with it just sitting on the hinges and lock it was kind of stiff. Only thing is, I hadn't figured out what to do cheaply and easily. Then I noticed these door stops at Lowes. There you go. They work great, and cost 75 cents each. Gonna get 2 more to round it out.

[beergood]

Some distance glamour shots






Added a stripe to the side panels, although I got a little orange peel thing happening on the top of the right one. I've sanded, primed and cleaned the hell out of it and still got wrinkles. Back to the drawing board.

4-1 tomorrow!

[Commodus]

I really enjoyed this thread, thanks very much for all the pictures and documenting.

[80GS1000]

= $$$$$.

Stunning work.

[pete]

That is awesome!

If I can get my 450 Cafe project to look even half as good I'll be stoked.

Good effort!

[Bopi]

outstanding..... but...........

while the pipe plugs are a little unconventional, I'm just going to forget about the door wedges.

its kinda like knowing your grandma has a tatoo

great pics.

[beergood]

outstanding..... but...........

while the pipe plugs are a little unconventional, I'm just going to forget about the door wedges.

its kinda like knowing your grandma has a tatoo

great pics.

Hah! I love it!

I have a couple of friends that are competitive sailors, and I remember my first few times below on some of those yachts. These are million dollar boats that when seen from outside are absolute eye candy. A Kevlar sail alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars. In the cabin you will see things held together with shoestrings and prayers. As with every form of racing, whatever will do the job in a hurry, without compromising safety and performance is almost always the solution that is used.

Although, I will admit it is kind of tacky. I do intend to clean up the bottom of the seat (mostly painting it black), but it isn't really a priority until I get the rest of it finished. I think that will go a long way.

And I think the square pipe caps are kinda cool.

I would also like to thank everyone for the encouragement and compliments. If I were alone on an island I would still be enjoying this project, but it is really nice to know that there are people out there that are interested. I must be honest and admit that the pictures are obviously the most flattering ones that I have. Up close, there are definite flaws, but I am really critical of my work. I would consider this a 7/10 on my own scale.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but it was less than a year ago that I bought my first bike. I've always liked motorcycles (my uncles had them when I was growing up), and I always intended to get one, but I never got around to it. In retrospect, when I think about the jackass I was when I was young (not at all like the mellower jackass that I am know) it was probably for the best.

Anyway, last year I was at the Secretary of State, getting my tags. It was about 4 o'clock on a Wednesday, and there was a huge line. I was perusing the motorcycle owners guide, and a woman behind the counter anounced that it was last call for tests. I asked what she meant, and she said that if you were there to take a test, you had to take it now. I said I was here to take a test and get my tags, could I do them both at once> She said yes. I was about 20 people down in line, and because I said I was there to take the bike test, I was moved to the front.

The test took about 5 minutes, I passed it easily (it was mostly common sense questions) and I got my permit and my tags about 5 minutes later. The guy that was in line in front of me was still about a half hour back. Bummer for him.

I have a lot of buddies that are bike guys, and I told them my story, and said since I already had the permit maybe it was time to by a bike. Everyone was really helpful with picking out a good first bike. There was no judgmental you need this type of bike crap, just a lot of good advice.

I settled on a Craig's List 1992 GS500. I immediately fell in love with it. It was small, fast and a ton of fun. I put 3000 miles on it last summer, and didn't drive my truck for two straight months.

Now, I have always been a project type person. And I have always loved the look of cafe bikes, so I resolved to by a classic and work on it over the winter. My 500 was such a good bike to work on, and a real quality ride, that I was already a Suzuki fan. I also have a couple friends that have various GSes. One of them had a friend that had a 750 in good mechanical condition that he wanted to part with. This was through a trusted channel, so I bought it.

The same guy turned me onto this forum, which has been a lot of help with parts and tech issues.

Anyway, that is the long winded story behind this build. This build is also more a proof of concept than a finished job. I wanted to see what my vision would look like. I of course wanted it to look as good as possible, but it was also done on the cheap. I paid $600 for the bike, and so far am a little over $100 in parts (labor is another story, realistically over a hundred hours). It is my hope that next winter, now that I know I can get the results that I want, I will either redo this bike or do a new one top notch from start to finish. No rattle cans, no cheap sanding. I mean welding, and powder coating, and metal fabricating, and sandblasting. The whole nine yards.

This bike will probably never be finished, because I am sure there are always going to be things that I will want to do to (suspension, wheels, motor, etc.)

Wow, I just got home from the bar, and I must confess that I had a few beers. If anyone read all that, you most likely need a hobby.

Thanks again.

[Mike_H]

hehehe. I read it all, but I'm slacking off at work today 'cuz its friday, and I aint got Sh_t to do! Seriously man. You have done a really nice job on your bike, especially for it being your first one. You've made me feel pretty lazy buy comparison. I look at your progress, in the same amount of time, and wow, am I behind. All I can say, it that you must not be married! I don't even have a roller yet. Good job!

[Billyboy]

hehehe. I read it all, but I'm slacking off at work today 'cuz its friday, and I aint got Sh_t to do! Seriously man. You have done a really nice job on your bike, especially for it being your first one. You've made me feel pretty lazy buy comparison. I look at your progress, in the same amount of time, and wow, am I behind. All I can say, it that you must not be married! I don't even have a roller yet. Good job!

Me too! All that.

[byrdman76]

BG, Good luck on firing that thing up this weekend! I know your excited. Now I gotta go out and get some fork gators.

I read in an earlier post that you were going to go with some LEDS to replace the idiot lights. FYI I picked up a few from radio shack and their pretty much a direct replacement (no resistors) - I got most of my electricals done last night and the entire neighborhood heard me when I flipped the switch and the red and green LED'S lit up.

Ton-up son!

[salty_monk]

Bike looks great... I want one!

Personally I'd lose the fork gaitors though.

[Cassius086]

DUDE!! Those door stops rule!! :-D Improvise Adapt Overcome :-D

[beergood]

Got my 4-1 Kerker from tkent02 on Friday. Looks better than it did in the pictures.



I started to put it on and fit it. As with every exhaust I have ever worked on, I would say that it is more of an art than a science, but I am confident that it will work out fine.

I started to re-assemble the bike, and I got a sinking feeling about the wiring harness. It looks like some previous owner did a little bit of modding to it, for whatever reasons.

I had been storing my battery on a shelf in the basement. I intended to buy a battery tender, but I didn't (I regret that now).

I put it in the bike, and all the lights power up, and everything looks good, but the starter won't turn over. I charged the battery and still no love. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I should also hear the starter relay click, even if the starter doesn't do anything. I have a couple notions as to what the problem may be. While trying to check out the situation, my multimeter decided to get cheeky and not work. Well, to paraphrase my father, you wanna act broken, I'll give you a reason to be broken, so I threw it on the driveway and shattered it.



I hooked the bike up to a car battery to see if that would take care of the problem, but still nadda. So I started having a look at the wiring. This whole setup is looking really jankey. The heat shrink is cracked every few inches. I can see some crappy spliced jobs, one wire nut, and stuff that just ain't up to my standards.

So I started to attempt to make some sense of it all.

Well, like most projects, I completely took leave of my senses, and got to this stage before I had any idea what I was doing.



Crap.

[beergood]

Here is where member ptm is a super duper hero. I did a search, and found that he had scanned copies of the wiring schematic for a 750. One private message (which he responded to amazingly quickly) later and he emailed me both a bw and color version.

Thanks again ptm, you are another reason why this forum is awesome.

I was able to make sense of the spaghetti, and I rebuilt a couple of the more critical (at least in my opinion) splices. Here is my improvised soldering station (I couldn't find my good butane iron, so this is a Radio Shack cheepie):



After a couple hours I was able to flense some of the stuff the PO added to it, put it in a new housing and ended up with this:



I threaded it through the frame, and I would say that t even fits in better than it did before, and zipped it down.

It was 10:30 when I finished, and me and the old lady went out for some drinks.

Cut to Sunday afternoon. Decided to give it a try. Still no starter, so I gave the kicker a try. It fired for a second (maybe two or three rotations), really roughly, and that was about it. Tried kicking it a few more times, and when I hit my shin on the muffler I decided to try a different approach.

I hooked it up to the car battery again, and directly bumped the starter. It turned over, so at least I know the starter is good. I gave it a lot of reps, and still no fire. I removed the number one plug, and noticed that I ain't getting spark. So it's an ignition problem of some sort. It was getting dark, and Michigan is in the middle of an ice storm, so back it went into the garage till I have time to finish diagnosing the problem. I don't think this should be too hard, since I am now intimately familiar with every inch of my wiring, which is why I did it in the first place.

So I am guessing I have an ignition problem of some sort and most likely also should replace the battery.

I know this might seem like a bummer, but honestly I anticipated starting problems, and am not even remotely discouraged. Just another step in a process.

Here are some pics of the bike with the exhaust on (exhaust is only lightly fitted and not in final position):




Thanks again to tkent02 and ptm.

[Bopi]

In a situation like that, I would go get a drink as well.

Usually I just take a test light and follow the wires (both sides of the harnasses) till one comes up empty.

I had disconnected some of my harnesses to get some work done and when I reconnected them-nada. Turn signals were out as well as the horn. Turns out when one of the harnesses was reconnected, two out of about twelve of the wires didn't make proper contact. A little wiggle and they were as good as before. I may get some lithium grease or some other contact promoter/anti-corrode stuff so it doesn't become a recurring problem.

FYI spaghetti westerns were filmed in Italy ( hence the name) as to save on production costs
but you knew that right.

Chow.