1981 GS450E Rebuild

[john82q]

some gasket materials are desigined to soak up some oil and swell, and may seep untill you have a good run. (and then retorque) others are more impervious, it just depends what they are and where you got them..

If you cant stop it leaking go the permatex , or "Aviation" if you will,
beauty is it never really hardens, so it moves into the gaps with the heat cycle, and allows disassembly. also it dosnt form oil line clogging lumps or break away bits like silastic.

clean it off surfaces with petrol on a rag...

The Distinctive odour takes me back, rightly or wrongly my dad used it to fix just about every thing on the farm...

cheers John

[pete]

The other thing is to flat edge the head and the cover. Make sure they aren't warped.

Put the gasket goo on one side of the gasket if you need to.
But scraping goo off each time you need to lift the cover is a small price to pay.

I did a flatness check a while back while it was all apart and it looked good to me, but I won't promise it's 100% right as I'm still learning all this stuff.

Definitely worth another check when I pull it off to do the valves after the first run though.

some gasket materials are desigined to soak up some oil and swell, and may seep untill you have a good run. (and then retorque) others are more impervious, it just depends what they are and where you got them..

If you cant stop it leaking go the permatex , or "Aviation" if you will,
beauty is it never really hardens, so it moves into the gaps with the heat cycle, and allows disassembly. also it dosnt form oil line clogging lumps or break away bits like silastic.

clean it off surfaces with petrol on a rag...

The Distinctive odour takes me back, rightly or wrongly my dad used it to fix just about every thing on the farm...

cheers John

That does make some sense. They're definitely not a rubber like gasket, very much paper or fibre type material.

These are Athena after market gaskets as the OEM's would've made it completely unaffordable to rebuild the engine due to no kits being availabel for twins any more. I did use OEM base stuff though.

At this stage I'm just hoping it's the valve cover gasket soaking it up which will help it seal well, as there doesn't appear to be any runs or anything from there, just dampness which is not spreading so far.

[pete]

So on to my frustrating day...

Day off to do the dentist thing today (fun fun fun), so figured I'd get some time to wheel the bike out into the sun to check the source of the oil and give it a bit of a bath to clean it all up.

No such luck though, so not sure when I'll get to do that, but hopefully soon!

Second bit of frustration tonight when I thought I had my 'bar mounted choke sorted, but discovered after a couple of hours slaving away that'd I'd missed one crucial measurement and made the adaptor for the choke actuator too big so there is no clearance for the actuator to be lifted. Bugger.

I'll pop up pic's of what I did though as the principal should be good, it was just the execution that was flawed... guess my ambition outweighed my talent hey?

So, I have no idea what this is, but I found two or three lying around and figured it'd be great for what I was thinking. This is where it started to go wrong, in that the diameter of this plastic thing is too large. I need to lose about 4 or 5mm diameter to get the clearance I need.



Cut the end off so it's just a little wider than the width of the cable:



Drilled some holes in the plate that will go behind the actuator, and used a file to elongate the hold in the plastic bit to suit the two holes in the backing plate:



Cut out a couple of side plates that will go either side of the plastic bit to form the channel the cable will run in and notched one side so it's easy to get the cable in and out to replace it if need be:



They should stack like this, except I need to make them rounder:



And I then did actually make them a lot rounder to suit:



It was at this point where I attempted a test fit and found that the height of the adaptor is too big, so that trying to mount it to the actuator results in the top of the adaptor butting up against the top of the carb body, so no way is that gonna work.

Next time, I need to chop some of the top of the plastic bit off which will allow the top of the adaptor to be lowered and get some of that necessary clearance back.

I realise a lot of what I've typed here won't make a lot of sense until you've actually seen what I'm trying to achieve...

I'm currently not sure at the moment when I can spend some $$$ to get some more stuff happening, so I'm just in sort of a holding pattern doing little odds and ends that don't cost anything for the moment.

[Leigh]

some gasket materials are desigined to soak up some oil and swell, and may seep untill you have a good run. (and then retorque) others are more impervious, it just depends what they are and where you got them..

If you cant stop it leaking go the permatex , or "Aviation" if you will,
beauty is it never really hardens, so it moves into the gaps with the heat cycle, and allows disassembly. also it dosnt form oil line clogging lumps or break away bits like silastic.

clean it off surfaces with petrol on a rag...

The Distinctive odour takes me back, rightly or wrongly my dad used it to fix just about every thing on the farm...

cheers John

Oh yeah, that hideous twang up the nose when you open the bottle.

John's right, Pete. It's good stuff.
I must have 30 plus bottles around the place. Every time I rebuilt an engine, I'd have to buy a new bottle because I could never find where I left the old one.
Don't ask me about thread tape....

[pete]

Maybe I should just buy a bottle so I can fit in with the natives around here?

[pete]

Ok, so after my hideously politically incorrect previous post, time for a bit more tonight.

As John82q very kindly offered to do up a replacement round bit for my choke cable adaptor, I skipped doing anything with that tonight and moved on to the front brake instead.

So, this is what I'm dealing with:



I decided to start on the caliper and caliper bracket as the piston looked rather corroded and stuck in there and the caliper axles didn't look the best either.

So, caliper axles first:



The top caliper axle boot stayed with the caliper axle whereas the bottom one stayed on the mounting bracket where it belongs. There's a ridge there for the boot to pop over and do its job of keeping crap out.

However, as it turns out I've just encountered my first real "PO issue". The bottom caliper boot is actually on the wrong way around so it wasn't sealing much out at all...



Inside the axle runners on the bracket are a bit grungy:



Sorry for the bluriness, hard to get good ones like that.

Got the axles and bolts and the pad guide all cleaned up and I'll hang onto the old axle boots just long enough to make sure the replacement ones are right:



I'll have to give the top caliper bolt a very gentle rub with some 1200 or so sand paper as it's about 99% smooth, but some of the wear has left a couple of minor ridges that will be easy fixed. The lack of sealing from the axle boot very obviously left it with pretty much no grease in there, whereas the bottom axle was still very well greased up:

[pete]

The bracket itself cleaned up reasonably ok, but I still need to get some more grunge out of the axle holes, especially the top one. I'll have to get some compressed air in there I think:



And onto the caliper itself, which is looking quite ugly:



I can definitely see a new piston and seals in this caliper's future!

Got the pad spring, cover, and bleeder valve out ready for cleaning:



The bleeder needed a little WD but it was pretty easy which I was quite surprised at.

I squirted a liberal amount of WD down the bleeder hole and brake hose hole, ripped the perished seal off, then got a pipe wrench onto the piston:



I was able to twist it out like that and it's quite ugly:

[pete]

Amazingly it all cleaned up well, and I just need a new piston and seals and the axles boots:



It'll all need more of a clean and some caliper paint, but it's definitely still serviceable.

Next time will be the master cylinder and/or the choke cable again...

[pete]

Went down to visit John today and return his scope and pick up the round thing.

As it turned out, he'd actually done up two round things, one pre-drilled and one ready for drilling. He also tossed in a couple of small bolts. Thanks again John!



So first up tonight I poured some kero in with the front brake master cylinder and lever to let it start soaking:



Next time I'm working on the brakes that should help I hope.

Anyways, back to the choke cable adaptor tonight seeing as I have a shiny new brass round thing ready to go.

I had to redo the side bits from scratch as the holes I drilled on the first pair are no good when I reduce the size of them.

I also figured out I need a spacer as even with the reduced height, it was going to hit the allen bolt and it will also result in the cable being on a weird angle.

This means I'll have to go back to my original screws too as the bolts I got from John today ended up being about 2mm short, but I'm pretty sure the ones I had already will be long enough. I think when I'm making it look better I might try to track down some stainless allen heads to match up with the rest of the carbs, but that's not important right now.

So, an hour or so with the tin snips, hacksaw, and hand drill saw me end up with this little pile of goodies:



A blurry side view to show how it will look stacked up with the spacer:



I reached the end of my patience with the hand tools tonight after catching the tip of my right ring finger in the hand drill gears. Not exactly painful, but the bandaid on it is making it awkward to type.

So I didn't end up cutting the shape out of the side plates, but I did mark the shape out ready to cut next time:



So, once I've cut the side plates to suit, I should be able to get it mounted up for a test run. I may still have to pull the carbs off to do it as there's no clearance around there to put a spanner on the nut at the rear.

[pete]

Well, I must say I'm feeling quite proud of myself tonight. I've successfully completed the prototype of my 'bar mounted choke setup, and it works exactly as it should

It definitely needs some cleaning up and possibly some minor adjustments, but functionally it's all good.

Cut out the side plates:



Ended up with the choke shaft on the bench as I did end up having to take the carbs off:



I was able to use John's bolts after all that, but I had to leave the washers off for the moment, and I bolted it onto the choke shaft:



Choke shaft back on the carbs:



And in this crap little video you can see there's clearance for it now:



Carbs back on:



And cable hooked up:

[pete]

Now, my apologies but there was pretty much no light on the left side of the bike so these two videos are way too dark, but you can sort of make out that the cable is actually moving the choke shaft as it should:



So, one thing I know for sure is that I'll be best off if I weld the nuts to the backing plate as that should mean I'll be able to take the assembly off without having to take the carbs off.

Also, you might have noticed that the cable is still on a bit of an angle in towards the carb body, so I will either need a larger spacer and longer bolts, or I might be able to get away with just trimming the outside side plate down a bit so the cable doesn't rub on it.

Either way, I'm really happy with that and, as a bonus, the friction of the choke lever on the 'bar is enough to overcome the spring in the choke assemblies on the carbs, yet the springs are strong enough to let the choke close when the lever is closed, which is just awesome.

I believe I would call that success

[pete]

So, back to the ugly mess of the master cylinder and brake lever again.

I guess I managed to make quite a mess of two of the reservoir screw heads:



Drilled them off:



The diaphragm appears to be toast, but the cover itself seems to be fine:





Inside the reservoir is a different story:



The brake lever appears to be an after market one and is ok:



Reservoir is to be determined, but there's definitely still lots of cleanup to do before making that decision:



That's where I stop tonight... lots more to go yet!

[john82q]

Hey Pete,
Glad yer choke worked out looks neat. its great when ideas come to fruition isnt it?

welding the nuts might be ambitious, soft solder would hold them...

john

[Adler]

Are you sure that diaphragm is toast? they often look like that, you can usually just push it into itself and it looks normal again.

[pete]

Hey Pete,
Glad yer choke worked out looks neat. its great when ideas come to fruition isnt it?

welding the nuts might be ambitious, soft solder would hold them...

john

Cheers John, and yep, happy as Larry is I

This'll be my first time "fabricating" something like this, so very glad it worked out.

You got me on the soft shoulder though, can you enlighten me?

Are you sure that diaphragm is toast? they often look like that, you can usually just push it into itself and it looks normal again.

Yup, tried to push it back in like it should be, but one side is definitely misshapen and I can't get it all into itself like you normally can.

It's still very rubbery and flexible, but it's like it's swollen or something and definitely just isn't quite right. One side is definitely worse than the other.