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First off let me say THANK YOU! Everyone on this forum has had a hand in building this bike, every time I got stuck, every time needed help, you guys were there. I didn't even have to ask any questions since they were all answered in previous threads. I feel like I know some of you guys personally as many times as I have read some of your posts.
So now to the meat and potato's.
I bought this non runnning 78 GS1000 as a winter project and boy has it turned out to be just that, A PROJECT! You can see what I started with below, not much to look at. Here is a list of everything that was done.
Major Cleaning
Carbs rebuilt & Synched, new boots and O rings.
New Points & Condensors
Fresh oil, oil filter, air filter.
Valves adjusted
New Battery & Battery Tender Installed
New Plugs
SS Brake lines
Rebuilt Front and Rear Master Cylinders
Rebuilt Front and Rear Calipers
New Avon Roadriders
New Fork seals and oil
New Sprockets and Chain
Tank de-rusted and sealed with POR-15
All the aluminum hand sanded, and polished
New Paint (pro job)
Pin Striping (did myself, still wating for the white to come in the mail)
Spent months tracking down little bitsy odds and ends to keep the beast as original as possible
Side cover emblems, should be in today.
Needs final polishing.
I think thats the majority of it. I did all that pushed the starter button and low and behold this beautiful machine roared to life, after setting the idle she ran like a charm. She would idle and take blips of the throttle like she just rolled of the showroom floor.
Now keep in mind, every time I would start it i would only let it run for 5 minutes at the most sometimes 10 when fine tuning the carbys. So Wed, night I finally got her all together, together enough to were she was road worthy, it was about 10:00pm lightly sleeting a brisk 37 degrees (gotta love MI weather) but I couldnt resist. I tapped the starter button sat and listened to her purr for a minute, dropped it in first and steathily (no plates, or insurance yet) creeped out into the neighborhood, I was literally shaking with excitement. Everything worked perfectly, the clutch, the trans, she was smooth and powerful. I couldnt beleive it, I had done it! So I get around my sub about 1 mile and just as I am pulling into the drive I notice the lights dimming and she was starting to miss, I got in the garage and kerplunk, she died. I plugged in the battery tender and she fired right back up, unplugged the tender, let her idle for a few and same thing, lights would dim, start to miss and die.
Beleive it or not I was not dishartned at this point. I knew I still needed to go in and replace all the connectors and check all the wires and GROUNDS< I figured it was just a bad connection or ground somewhere. So yesterday I had about an hour in between my two jobs, so I ran home, pulled the airbox, and began checking my grounds, the ground from the R/R to the battery box, was loose at best, I can't imagine it was grounded at all. I moved the R/R ground up to the negative post of the battery, cleaned(no time to replace at the moment) all the connections, lubed the contacts with some dialectric, buttoned it all back up, hit the starter button and...........Nothing
. She would just crank and crank but not catch. Every once in while she would attempt to catch, but only on the first few cranks after letting her sit for a minute, but not near enough to start her up.
So guess what, now I'm disheartend. Electrical is my only downfallwhen it comes to motorcycles. You might as well be speaking another language when it comes to this stuff. So tomorrow I am going to go in and replace all the connections I can find, hoping this will solve my problem. I have a sneaky fealing in the back of my mind that it will not though. This is the reason for this post, I am just forwarning you guys that I am finally going to need your tutolage, hopefully personalized specifically to me and my major lack of elctrical knowledge.
So I will let you know how things go tomorrow with all the connections, I am going to pick up voltmeter as well, even though I don't have the slightest idea how to use it. Its finally warm enough to ride, and I can't! I need to get this sorted quickly, so if anyone has some ideas for the time being please let me know.
Thanks again, you guys built a great looking bike, now we just need to finish her off.
So now to the meat and potato's.
I bought this non runnning 78 GS1000 as a winter project and boy has it turned out to be just that, A PROJECT! You can see what I started with below, not much to look at. Here is a list of everything that was done.
Major Cleaning
Carbs rebuilt & Synched, new boots and O rings.
New Points & Condensors
Fresh oil, oil filter, air filter.
Valves adjusted
New Battery & Battery Tender Installed
New Plugs
SS Brake lines
Rebuilt Front and Rear Master Cylinders
Rebuilt Front and Rear Calipers
New Avon Roadriders
New Fork seals and oil
New Sprockets and Chain
Tank de-rusted and sealed with POR-15
All the aluminum hand sanded, and polished
New Paint (pro job)
Pin Striping (did myself, still wating for the white to come in the mail)
Spent months tracking down little bitsy odds and ends to keep the beast as original as possible
Side cover emblems, should be in today.
Needs final polishing.
I think thats the majority of it. I did all that pushed the starter button and low and behold this beautiful machine roared to life, after setting the idle she ran like a charm. She would idle and take blips of the throttle like she just rolled of the showroom floor.
Now keep in mind, every time I would start it i would only let it run for 5 minutes at the most sometimes 10 when fine tuning the carbys. So Wed, night I finally got her all together, together enough to were she was road worthy, it was about 10:00pm lightly sleeting a brisk 37 degrees (gotta love MI weather) but I couldnt resist. I tapped the starter button sat and listened to her purr for a minute, dropped it in first and steathily (no plates, or insurance yet) creeped out into the neighborhood, I was literally shaking with excitement. Everything worked perfectly, the clutch, the trans, she was smooth and powerful. I couldnt beleive it, I had done it! So I get around my sub about 1 mile and just as I am pulling into the drive I notice the lights dimming and she was starting to miss, I got in the garage and kerplunk, she died. I plugged in the battery tender and she fired right back up, unplugged the tender, let her idle for a few and same thing, lights would dim, start to miss and die.
Beleive it or not I was not dishartned at this point. I knew I still needed to go in and replace all the connectors and check all the wires and GROUNDS< I figured it was just a bad connection or ground somewhere. So yesterday I had about an hour in between my two jobs, so I ran home, pulled the airbox, and began checking my grounds, the ground from the R/R to the battery box, was loose at best, I can't imagine it was grounded at all. I moved the R/R ground up to the negative post of the battery, cleaned(no time to replace at the moment) all the connections, lubed the contacts with some dialectric, buttoned it all back up, hit the starter button and...........Nothing
. She would just crank and crank but not catch. Every once in while she would attempt to catch, but only on the first few cranks after letting her sit for a minute, but not near enough to start her up. So guess what, now I'm disheartend. Electrical is my only downfallwhen it comes to motorcycles. You might as well be speaking another language when it comes to this stuff. So tomorrow I am going to go in and replace all the connections I can find, hoping this will solve my problem. I have a sneaky fealing in the back of my mind that it will not though. This is the reason for this post, I am just forwarning you guys that I am finally going to need your tutolage, hopefully personalized specifically to me and my major lack of elctrical knowledge.
So I will let you know how things go tomorrow with all the connections, I am going to pick up voltmeter as well, even though I don't have the slightest idea how to use it. Its finally warm enough to ride, and I can't! I need to get this sorted quickly, so if anyone has some ideas for the time being please let me know.
Thanks again, you guys built a great looking bike, now we just need to finish her off.
). Check fuel level (is tank full or almost empty?).
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