1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Flyboy]

Just tell the dish washer to stop her dramas and just get on with it and wash the dishes properly like she used to.

[Leigh]

No water in the dishwasher?
Dry cleaining your dishes. Very good.
You're an ideas man, Pete.

[Redneck]

Do you plan on putting a black seat back on the bike or are you going with the red one? Personally I would say black I did not like the way that seat clashed with your tank. Just a question and opinion not an insult.
Respectfully,
Paul

[pete]

Hahaha you're a bunch of funny buggers

I'm just trying to conserve water ok?

I need to pull the thing out... found a place on line that lists parts for it so I might be ok, we'll see...

Did your old one have a tab that fit into the bars and this one maybe doesn't? I found that with mine.

Nah, nothing that simple I'm afraid. I've got different 'bars to stock too, but the old ones definitely don't have any tabs like that.

Do you plan on putting a black seat back on the bike or are you going with the red one? Personally I would say black I did not like the way that seat clashed with your tank. Just a question and opinion not an insult.
Respectfully,
Paul

Definitely getting it recovered in black Paul!

The tank will be getting some paint too, and probably the front and rear mudguards also.

And don't worry, I don't insult easily... usually... well sometimes anyway

[pete]

Well... first of all I missed this thread's birthday by four days... belated happy birthday thread!

Anyway, I had a successful yet disappointing day today.

Successful, in that the spark issue is sorted enough to at least get the bike fired up and I think the timing is ok or close to it, but not 100% sure yet. That's where the disappointment comes in...

For the details of what went on, I started this thread:

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=173881

In a nutshell, it runs ridiculously rich and won't go above a stumbling idle and just the load of the timing light is enough to make it stall.

So... for solidarity's sake, I'll run through what I did...

Got the R/R mounted so I could test the stator and R/R, but never got that far unfortunately:



Lined up the tools:



Multimeter, John's scope, and the timing light (note my ultra safe work boots).

Rag clamped to the carb intakes to do some filtering and somewhat restrict the intake:



Temporary fuel tank hooked up:



Made sure this was standing by:



Fan at the ready as advised by RapidRay:



Very knackered OEM exhausts:

[pete]

Exhausts mounted:



There is no muffler on the left exhaust, it rusted and fell off years ago, and I don't think there's much in the way of guts left in the right muffler either.

Possibly the dodgiest battery connection I've used:



My only jumper leads are missing the insulation on the handles of the red lead, and while sitting still without the motor running I can easily keep it isolated from the frame, but I figure with it running, it might vibrate and touch the frame and short out, so I extended the battery lead. Amazingly enough there is no voltage drop with this connection.

Car battery ready to roll:



At this point, I did some cranking with the spark plugs out to get the oil circulating.

I also managed to prove the oil was circulating through the head:



Bugger! Got oil over my shiny wet blasted cylinders... oh well, had to happen some time.

Bolt in on both sides, no idea how I managed to miss putting those in:



So, cranked some more and the oil light was well and truly out and I could see there was definitely oil moving around in there by the above.

So, starting time:



Apologies for the crap videos, but my camera has an auto stop timer that you can either set to 2 seconds or 10 seconds, you can't turn it off. Very annoying.

While it sounds sort of like I remember in the second video there, it's definitely not right. It ended up backfiring through the carbs a bit and wouldn't rev and if I pressed the button on the timing light it would stall after a second or two.

Longest I had it running was probably a couple of minutes at the most.

I thought I wasn't getting enough restriction from the rag, so I ended up folding one over in four and adding some duct tape to really restrict it:



If anything it ran worse with that, and then I pulled the plugs and noticed how black they were.

Left plug:

[pete]

Right plug:



They are showing it's running far too rich. If anything I expected lean due to the lack of mufflers and using the rag for the intake instead of the airbox, but that's not what I got at all.

So now it's a matter of hoping someone can point me in the right direction because I'm out of my depth now unfortunately.

I also have no idea when i'm going to be able to try kicking it over again, the way things have been this year I'm lucky to get one Saturday a month on it. Might have to take a day or two off work soon so I can get this sorted, I'm so damn close!

[pete]

Just stumbled across this link in another thread and it's awesome, I need to read it some more:

http://www.iwt.com.au/mikunicarb.htm

[SVSooke]

Buck up man.You have at least 1/2 the battle won.It runs after 9 years.Sounds pretty good to.The rest is just getting bugs out.

[pete]

Buck up man.You have at least 1/2 the battle won.It runs after 9 years.Sounds pretty good to.The rest is just getting bugs out.

Yup indeed! Definitely not complaining about the fact that it runs... coz that's just plain awesome

Now to find the time to try again...

[scottychop]

Congrats Pete!!

[Leigh]

IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!

[Nessism]

Pete,

Those rags over the carb mouth are causing the richness since not enough air is getting though. If you have the stock airbox you might want it install it and try again.

[Flyboy]

Congrats mate, good on ya, on the home stretch now.

[cowboyup3371]

Congratulations Pete and keep at it...you'll have it purring like a kitten in no time.