1981 GS450E Rebuild

[pete]

Pete,

Your emblem pic gives another heat sheild Idea, build it up out of rod
and flat welded together. chromed of course..

John

Hmmmm... I never even noticed that! Very interesting idea...

I might even be able to reuse one of the tank badges with that idea too...

[pete]

Here's two currently listed on eBay... it's possible I may even be able to make one like this myself... if I get lots more welding practise



The scripted Suzuki logo attached to my earlier post would look good attached to the second one above too I would think...

[Flyboy]

Pete, now you are cooking with gas, damn, get the bike back, get the bike back, this is ridiculous, I am so anxious to see this come together, you would would swear it was my project.
I am lecturing today, but hoping to spend the better part of tomorrow at the anual 1000 bike show, will keep my eyes peeled for ideas there.
We had over 1200 bikes there last year.

[pete]

Pete, now you are cooking with gas, damn, get the bike back, get the bike back, this is ridiculous, I am so anxious to see this come together, you would would swear it was my project.
I am lecturing today, but hoping to spend the better part of tomorrow at the anual 1000 bike show, will keep my eyes peeled for ideas there.
We had over 1200 bikes there last year.

Hahaha don't worry, I feel the same... I wanna get it back so I can see it! I must be patient though... even if I got the bike back on Monday, it will be another week or so to wait for the exhaust to get ceramic coated

Sounds like a good show, are you allowed to take photos at all or do you just have to admire them all?

On a separate note, I noticed this morning that the way I hung the carb parts and caliper meant I missed a couple of small areas, but fortunately the can says I can recoat within 24 hours without sanding, so I re-hung them and put a couple of extra coats on, so hopefully that should be good and done now.

[pete]

Did some fiddling while waiting for MotoGP qualifying to start...

[pete]

Took the painted parts down tonight, looks like I got pretty good coverage.



I must say I really like the satin finish too, just what I was looking for!

Only catch now is waiting to get time to BBQ them all over 200 degrees celcius so I can put the carbs and caliper back together. I have a feeling the bike will be back but I won't be able to start it because the carbs will still be waiting for the paint curing...

Anyway, marked out the next lot of trimming I need to do to the duck tail to get it more into shape:



No idea when I'll get time to get stuck into that yet either. Need to use the dremel with a cut off wheel as everything else is far too painfully slow. I really wanted to get most of that shaping done before I ran out of holidays, oh well, them's the breaks...

Next up, the tank liner should be cured by now, so decided to pull the duct tape off the filler hole and check it out.

First off, this is the tub of excess which still hasn't quite cured all the way through yet, but this layer on top shows how it should seal inside the tank:



Then, duct tape off, and you can see where some has cured around where the duct tape covered the filler hole, and you can see the wire there I used to keep the vent hole open too:

[pete]

In this first pic, you can see that the wire I used to keep the vent hole open was a little small as you can barely see the hole:



Poked a bigger bit of wire through which cleared that up nicely:



And some random shots inside the filler hole to see the liner:



Gonna be quite some time before fuel needs to go in there, so plenty of extra curing time, not to mention I need to replace the fuel tap yet...

So now I find myself at a very frustrating brick wall... can't put the carbs or caliper together until the paint's cured, can't trim the duck tail due to noise at night, and the bike's not back so I can't sit there staring at the exhaust and working out what I need to do with the front mudguard.

Need to paint the tail light bracket, but pointless starting prep for that yet as I don't know when I'll get to paint it just yet.

I also can't look at things like measuring up for a bash plate due to no bike... man that's frustrating, so many things I need to do and I can't do any of them!

I could do some more with the voltage monitor, except I need to measure the gauge shell to see how long the straight bit in the centre is but... no bike...

Oh well, I will have to just live vicariously through everyone else's progress for a bit...

[Woodsy]

Those parts look good!

[pete]

Cheers Josh, but they'll look even better when attached to a certain 450...

[davidduarte]

tank looks great! You'll be so glad you coated it. No more worries about rust clogging up your carbs.

[pete]

Cheers David, and yep you're right, happy about it already after seeing those rust flakes being siphoned out...

[pete]

I think I found my hand guards last night too.

https://www.slipstreamperformance.com.au/store/product_info.php?cPath=520&products_id=11399

I'm trying to find ones that have a downward bend off the end of the 'bar as they're reportedly better for lever clearance on road bikes.

I couldn't find a better picture of them except maybe this one on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Venom-Reinforced-Hand-Guards-Motocross-Black-13mm-17mm-/330572388403?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item4cf7a65833

[Woodsy]

I believe Happy Birthday is in Order?.... Unless i'm a week late... so HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETE!!!

[pete]

I believe Happy Birthday is in Order?.... Unless i'm a week late... so HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETE!!!

Hahahahaha cheers Woodsy, but yeah you're a week late exactly

[mike-s]

Hand guards, nice, might look into getting some at a later date, in the meantime, bookmarked