Parts compatability between gs550's

[waterman]

You are bringing back painful memories of broken bolts and frozen engines. My current ride was similar to your with cam cover bolts snapping left and right. Do yourself a favor and replace all bolts with stainless cap screws.

As for turning motor over, remove the points cover on the right side of motor and put a wrench on the bigger nut and turn clockwise. This is the right side of the crankshaft. Good luck with it.

[neeko]

Just got back from engine wrestling. Ended up with 3 broken bolts all on the inside where the bolts connect with the head.

After screaming obscenities and alerting the whole neighborhood I proceeded to blast the last few bolts with the torch and they came out wonderfully (Wonder why I didn't do that to begin with?!)

I turned the engine over on the other side waterman .
I did it through the alternator/starter side and in the process of yanking the cover a spacer fell out and now I don't know where it goes except that theres another spacer set up for the starter gear. So I'm guessing it goes with the starter gear as well at this point.

Now this is what I don't get. The motor turns freely but everytime I turn it I would hear random clinking noise coming from the intake side ports. And if I crank it hard, Air comes out from the intake side. (Now I do not have any prior experience with these kinds of motors. But in a modern car motor this would = bent valves.)

I secured the compression tester tool onto the sparkplug 4 and went a cranking. Gauge read maybe 10 or so psi and then my heart sank. I called my brother up and he said that since this is a carb motor, I might need to do the test with the carbs on. Cause when I put my hand over the intake port and covered it while cranking, the vacuum increased and brought the reading to 30psi which is still incredibly low.

I haven't toyed with motorbikes in my short years but I'm completely stomped at this point. I made a video but I'm not sure if the camera caught the sounds the engine was making. I'll do a upload tonight and will see.

As for the broken bolts on the cam cover. I'm hoping I can remove the cover now since it looks like the threads are theaded into the head whereas the cam cover is just slid on so I could just vise grip those suckers and twist and pull.

Overall it was an awesome day today aside for the fact that ORANGE means it will burn through your pants.

[Suzuki_Don]

You cannot hand crank the engine of the bike fast enough to get a good compression reading. The normal way to do a compression test on a carburetted bike motor is to take all the spark plugs out, hold the throttle full open, and crank with the starter (about 10 secs.) until the compression gauge reads its highest reading.

[Suzuki_Don]

[QUOTE=neeko;1120643]
As for the broken bolts on the cam cover. I'm hoping I can remove the cover now since it looks like the threads are theaded into the head whereas the cam cover is just slid on so I could just vise grip those suckers and twist and pull.
[QUOTE]

BIG TIP: Seeing as you have the motor out of the frame. Remove all the cam cover bolts by one means or another. Replace all the 6mm theaded holes in the head with stainless steel Re-Coils (heli-coils). Then when using the 6mm stainless steel cap bolts to hold the cam cover on you will have no further problems with bolts snapping or threads stripping out.

Have just completed this on mine, but was a bit easier with the head off the motor and using a pedestal drill to correctly drill out the threads and do the tapping of the new threads. Used the pedestal drill to do the tapping as well to get everything at 90 degrees and vertical. Machinists will know what I mean.

[neeko]

Suzuki Don,

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

You Sir, just saved me a good amount of anguish and sadness. I felt really weird seeing how all of the "how to compression test motorcycles" involved doing the test while the motor was still in the bike and now I understand

I am definately replacing the bolts. But since I have no precision machinery to do the necessary tapping I'm going to play it safe and order new bolts of the same cut and thread.

I've still yet to clean the carbs seeing how I'm not brave enough to mess with tiny pieces of parts yet. But the whole damn thing moves aside for the fact that the springs are covered in rust and looking real ugly the carbs look pretty good. There is some corrosion and bubbly on carb #2's butterfly though. Should I be concerned? and does that warrant a replacement?

I have stumbled upon a part that I can't seem to find a use for. It situates itself behind the starter cover and directly under the cam chain tensioner. It consists of a sensor like appendage with a plastic cap (which vaporized itself after some light poking) with a sleeved wire running back to the harness. I'm guessing its a oil pressure sensor, but the one pictured has no wire running out of it.

Any clues?

Thanks guys!

[Einstein]

Yep, that's the oil pressure switch..

John

[Suzuki_Don]

Suzuki Don,


I am definately replacing the bolts. But since I have no precision machinery to do the necessary tapping I'm going to play it safe and order new bolts of the same cut and thread.


Thanks guys!

You don't necessarily need precision equipment for this task as the drill bit will centre itself in the hole as it cuts away the old aluminium threads. You just need to hold the hand held drill at 90 degrees to the head and the drilling will come to a halt when you hit the bottom of the hole. Use 6mm X 1mm pitch RECOIL inserts which are the same as the original threads. The appropriate drill size is stamped on the RECOIL packet/box and is usually an odd size, so make sure you get the correct one. Close enough here is NOT good enough.

I have just completed doing the exhaust threads on my head as well. These were 8mm X 1.25mm pitch. These I had to do with the hand held drill as these threaded holes are not square to the head. In fact they are all at different angles. These threads are notorious for stripping and snapping bolts as well.