1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Tim Tom]

The twin stripes would look good I think. The accent on the side is kind of odd.

Down the center though... very nice.

[pete]

Yeah I'll find where I did the twin stripe stuff and chuck it on a different angled pic... in the meantime here's one from Hoosier Daddy, bit of a Starsky and Hutch theme...

[landshark]

I suggest painting the whole bike in 1 solid colour and then you can do what ever you like with pin striping or vinyl.
Heaps of options and it will be easy to play around with.
Just an idea?

[s0nia]

Have you got an original brochure pic of your bike that you could post?

[pete]

I suggest painting the whole bike in 1 solid colour and then you can do what ever you like with pin striping or vinyl.
Heaps of options and it will be easy to play around with.
Just an idea?

Not a bad idea at all! Definitely worth considering...

Have you got an original brochure pic of your bike that you could post?

Hmmm well way back in post #1 I have how it used to look which was standard except for the dodgy PO paint job:





I suspect this is how mine was out of the factory:

[Woodsy]

Original looks nice i'd go with that!

[pete]

Original looks nice i'd go with that!

Hahahhahahaha man you crack me up!

[Woodsy]

You've seen my bike factory colours, yours would be heaps easier to replicate than mine.

http://static2.justauto.com.au/just_images/096518bb-8867-480d-8a3d-a1568bb3d885/096518bb-8867-480d-8a3d-a1568bb3d885-lg.jpg

[pete]

Oh you're serious! Hahah ooops... thought you were sh*& stirring...

Must say I'm not a fan of those pin stripes... too 80's... I'd much prefer 60/70's...

Definitely thinking those two stripes down the centre, but I abused my wrist something fierce today so I'm not up to any GIMP business at the moment.

[Woodsy]

Hahahahaha you abused your wrist hahahaha we dont wanna know your ' habits'

[pete]

Well, startup was another balls up today, ran sort of but not brilliantly... just posted an update in the ignitor thread.

I do have a large video that gives an idea of how the pipe will sound once it's running well, I need to learn how to shrink these and edit my ugly mug out:



I also unintentionally took a pretty high res photo of the pipe which is pretty cool:



Ignition circuit ended up here by the end of the morning, but contrary to how it looks I didn't actually throw it there even though I was sorely tempted...



I was on the lookout for some OEM style plugs for the coils so I could try some other alternatives etc. but I can't find them anywhere and unfortunately Z1 didn't reply to my query either so I picked these up today:



I'll just replace the existing connectors and be done with it.

Anyway, rather than letting the day be a complete waste I moved on and finished trimming up the tail piece. Not perfect, and on the right side you can see a bit of the framework protruding on the bottom, but I can work with that. Still get a little bit of impact on the tail light bracket, but I need to do some minor adjustments to the mounting of the bracket anyway so that should get fixed as well.

[pete]

And then this is where I really gave my wrist a bashing today which is why I won't be doing any GIMP work tonight.

Cut the fork brace out of the sheet of aluminium and you can see the tool I used and why it killed my wrist:



I realise that those of you with metal work experience and tools that my method for cutting the holes out is probably quite lame, but it did work. And yes John, I did actually manage to find a sharp drill bit



Then i straightened the edges with a file and i've left the corners filled in at the moment so I can use a round file as I want to try to leave nicely rounded corners:



By that stage my wrist was screaming at me and I was pretty much out of time, so had to leave it there.

Almost forgot to add I dropped by Bunnings on my way through there this morning and picked up this:



I couldn't find anything around the house to use to bend the brace, so I'll use that. It's 25.4mm diameter instead of 20mm, but that's easy enough to compensate for. To bend it, I should be able to clamp the pipe on the work bench with the brace sandwiched between, or at least I think that will work. Only one way to find out...

I did intend to get back in there tonight and keep going on the brace, but work calls (literally) and I'm sitting here waiting for data to restore for a customer... such fun stuff this on call business!

[pete]

Hahahahaha you abused your wrist hahahaha we dont wanna know your ' habits'

Hahahahahaha oh geez trust you

[Flaming Chainsaws]

I like how the exhaust sounds.

But what's wrong with the bike again? Can you rev it up?

[pete]

Remember the ignitor FC? And the HEI module solution? Have a look in the ignitor thread in my sig. and you'll find out...