1981 GS450E Rebuild

[pete]

I must say I like coming home to this...



Looked a little pummelled, but fortunately Boulevard Suzuki pack it well enough with these little air bubble type packs:



Which nicely protects these gloriously OEM parts inside



I believe the Saturday after next will be my opportunity to get stuck into painting the front caliper and all my carb parts etc., and now I have my caliper rebuilt bits waiting for me.

Still struggling to find a tail light at the moment too, and I want to find one locally so I can get the mounting sorted soon. If all goes to plan I can paint the tank and guards while the bike's off at Tranzac getting the exhaust made, and I'll need to figure tail light mounting before painting.

[pete]

Out of curiousity, I just visited www.denniskirk.com and for $484.95, I can get a pair of Progressive fork springs, a pair of Progressive 12 series 13" shocks with black springs, and front and rear Bridgestone BT45 tyres (90/90-18 and 110/90-18). If shipping were to come in at no more than $150, I'd essentially get a free set of tyres compared to the Ikon suspension...

Back to tail light hunting...

[pete]

So, finished up the circuit board for my voltage monitor tonight, but still need to work out mounting and get the LED's hooked up etc.



I also managed to score a tail light off eBay today that should work out well... fingers crossed anyway:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250827448541&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_697wt_905

It's from a Honda CB360, and going by the measurements the seller got for me it should mount up well, although I may need to work out some sort of metal reinforcing under the plastic mudguard once I mount the tail light and indicators to it.

Now for the really good stuff...

The bike is booked in for a trip to Tranzac on 24th June which is only 3 1/2 weeks away

I've got the tow sorted out as well.

And the best bit with the exhaust is that getting it exactly how I want it shouldn't end up with astronomical costs.

A decent free flowing muffler won't add a huge amount and ceramic coating will only bump the price up about $80 over chrome.

His initial idea of pricing was somewhere around $495, so I expect with a good free flowing muffler and ceramic coated should see it around the $650 - $700 mark which is awesome. Fingers crossed that's how it really will end up...

He was also able to give me some guidelines on jetting too with the pods and the pipe, and he reckons only 2 sizes up on the mains and 1 clip on the needle should probably be ok, and the pilot should be fine as is.

Interestingly enough, he said if anything I may need to go down one size on the pilot as he finds sometimes with pods that the extra flow makes the idle more rich and then it leans out once you start opening the throttle.

Anyways... I'm a little happy with how today panned out

[Charlie G]

Good news on sorting out the transport to Tranzac. Love getting those little packages of parts.. Sounds like your making steady progress. Cheers.

Charlie G

[pete]

Cheers Charlie, and yeah progress is shuffling along.

If I can knock off the mounting for the rear guard and tail light before I send it off to Tranzac, I should be able to get the tank and mudguard paint done that week too, which will take care of two big ticket items.

It'll be another week or two before the exhaust comes back from being ceramic coated, but then I can resume testing my ignition as well, so hopefully mid-July I should be back on that again.

[landshark]

Pete,
I cant remember where my springs came from, i did a search but the name didnt come up anywhere.
If i can remember i will let you know.

[pete]

Cool, I just had a quick look for curiousity's sake at the moment and came up with Dennis Kirk, I'm sure there are plenty of others...

[pete]

Some real progress at last!

Received the CB360 tail light today, wow that was fast delivery! Only got posted yesterday so Australia Post must be having an "on" day today...



As you can see it's far from perfect, but I'll just give it a coat of paint along with the guards and tank and it should be fine.

A couple of minor chips in the lens etc. but no big deal there. Came with the tail light not working but the bulbs from my 450 tail light fit in, so brake and tail light work like a charm now and are nice and bright. Contemplating a plug-in LED replacement bulb but no rush on that.

So, on to getting the rear guard mounted up:



If you compare that to how I had it out in the sun mocked up last week, you'll see I've moved it backward and up a bit.

It needed to tilt up at the back to allow the CB360 tail light bracket to sit right, and it then needed to go back a bit to meet Dept of Transport requirements. The rear mudgaurd must extend back so that if you imagine a 45 degree angled line from the rear wheel axle projected upwards and rear wards, it intersects with the mudguard. Sounds confusing, but that's what they require.... not hard to make that work.

I definitely need to slim the guard out and the front will need to be shortened where it will need to meet the inner guard as well.

Next up, I got the tail light mounted:



Pretty happy with that for sure.

And got the indicators mounted up and I no longer need to relocate them either:



Definitely need to clean that wiring up too!

[pete]

Slotted the inner guard in to measure up where I'll need to trim the front of the guard:



And marked it out ready to cut:



Didn't quite get to the cutting part tonight, but that should be quick and easy.

The difficult bit will be slimming it down while keeping a nice suitable curve to it, but hopefully I can use the inner guard for a template so it should hopefully match up well.

[cowboyup3371]

You make it sound like Australian Post is dang slow most times...kinda like the British Post when I was living there.

Course, there are times I think the USPS has all of them beat on their slowness especially for those of us who live in the sticks.

[mlc216]

Pete, I finally heard back from the HEI guru and he has a very interesting even more simple theory that I will be testing shortly. It could possibly change the ignitor situation for every GS450 owner forever. That is all I will say for now...

[pete]

You make it sound like Australian Post is dang slow most times...kinda like the British Post when I was living there.

Course, there are times I think the USPS has all of them beat on their slowness especially for those of us who live in the sticks.

Well, let's just say small parcel post had my GM style HEI modules had them in transit from Sydney to me for 2 weeks... but they can manage to overnight most normal mail...

Pete, I finally heard back from the HEI guru and he has a very interesting even more simple theory that I will be testing shortly. It could possibly change the ignitor situation for every GS450 owner forever. That is all I will say for now...

Hmmmm I'll be waiting for that information! When you say HEI guru, do you mean your XS guy or Lou who has done the KZ stuff?

[mlc216]

The XS guy. If it works like we think, there will be no need to invert the signal...

[pete]

Hmmm.... come on I'm waiting already

[pete]

Got a little bit of "noisy" time in the garage this avo which allowed me to trim the front of the rear mudguard and smooth all the sharp corners on the electrics tray ready to mount it up.

Mudguard now matches up with the inner guard a lot better and I can start working out how to slim it down a little:



Electrics tray in, but the hose clamps I got were too big, and I found a couple of other mismatched ones in the garage:



I need to rethink that... maybe some of those P clamps FC got a hold of, otherwise some slimmer hose clamps might do the trick.

Tried to hook the tail light up tonight by reusing the OEM connector of the old tail light, but it's seriously perished so I need to find an alternative there too:



I've got just over two weeks to tidy up the wiring and make sure all the axles and triple clamp bolts etc. are torqued up ready for transport to Tranzac.

That means sorting things like the electrics tray properly... gonna be pushing it I think as I can't see me getting much more daylight/shop open time than next Saturday...