1981 GS450E Rebuild

[ndaugbjerg]

Pete,
From a guy who installed his front fender backwards, this makes perfect sense. Barb always says that what rattles around in my head is mostly minutiae; Which sounds a lot like manure. When I first joined the forum, I entertained foolish thoughts of going toe to toe with you but I'm going to concede here and now. As difficult as it is to admit, I can never be more than your court jester. You are the rightful heir to the throne and I dub thee, "King of BS" and pledge my loyalty and support.
Niels

[pete]

Pete,
From a guy who installed his front fender backwards, this makes perfect sense. Barb always says that what rattles around in my head is mostly minutiae; Which sounds a lot like manure. When I first joined the forum, I entertained foolish thoughts of going toe to toe with you but I'm going to concede here and now. As difficult as it is to admit, I can never be more than your court jester. You are the rightful heir to the throne and I dub thee, "King of BS" and pledge my loyalty and support.
Niels

Hahahahaha thanks Niels... I think

[pete]

The Acewell and battery box cover are on! At last...

First, back track to Friday night and I got the rubber glued onto the speed sensor bracket and battery box cover:



Left them clamped there overnight so the glue had a chance to set properly and really hang onto the rubber. Not too concerned about the speed sensor bracket but I really want the rubber in the battery box cover to stay there over the + battery terminal.

Battery installation tested ok:



Bit hard to see but I ended up moving the terminals back to the front mounting points and bent the connectors 90 degrees so I could route the wiring properly, and I removed the pigtail for the trickle charger as it was making it far too difficult:



And it does help the battery blend in better, turned out better than I expected:



And onto the Acewell install which is what I know some of you are waiting for

[pete]

Rightio... the Acewell install was an adventure. I ran out of time to finish it all on Saturday due to starting late and having to vote, but I got it finished up and a quick test ride in today and I'm happy to report it's awesome

I have it calibrated ok, reads a couple of km's faster than I'm doing going by the GPS speed which is fine by me and the tacho seems to read accurately which seems to be a difficult thing with these for a lot of people.

Anyway...

Magnetic bolt on and speed sensor semi-mounted for testing:



I cable tied the Acewell to the footpeg temporarily to make sure everything worked ok:



And I found out why my tacho wasn't working... it seems the crimping of the cylinder head end of the brand new cable wasn't done real well and when I pulled the cable out the end stayed seated on the tacho drive, so obviously the drive was spinning the end but the end wasn't spinning the cable:



So once everything tested ok I mounted the Acewell up where it will go for the time being:



The harness for it reaches just under the front of where the tank sits so I needed to make a short harness to reach from there to where the main harness connectors are:



The old gauges and cables set aside, and I removed the plug from the gauge side to make the short harness I need:

[pete]

So I referred to the wiring diagrams I printed and labelled last week and got most of the harness done:



And I remembered I got a mini blade fuse holder with some 5 amp fuses a while back in preparation for the voltage monitor that I never ended up using:



I made a lead to run from the battery to the short harness for the clock power as it needs to be permanently on to keep the time, and note I changed this later so the bullet connector is a female. I didn't think it through properly the first time and that would have ended up with a live bullet connector floating around near the frame... never a good thing!



Part of my testing included holding the tacho wire against the negative side of the Dynatek coil to make sure it would signal it correctly which it did, so I made up the lead for that and the 1M resistor they provide is under the yellow heatshrink there:



You can just make it out screwed under the Dynatek terminal of the left coil:



I finalised the speed sensor mounting and cable tied the wire up the brake cable. It's not the neatest install in the world but it's neat enough for me, although if I'm really keen I might make another bracket later and move it under the brake caliper. Hillsy showed me an install like that over on DTT and it's real neat. I didn't think I'd have room but once the speedo cable is gone there should be room now...



Finished up the short harness:



And got it connected up and all the wiring cable tied down securely and out of the way:

[pete]

And there she is...



And a dodgy little video of it in action:



I took her out for a short test run this avo with the iPhone as a GPS speedo and it worked real well. I ended up setting the circumference to 1980mm to give me some leeway and I'm something like 2 or 3 km's slow at 60kph so I'm happy with that.

I definitely need to make a proper bracket though as it's a little annoying having it on one side but the main thing is now I get to look straight down at the dent I had to put in the headlight bucket to clear the ignition switch... and I also want my gear position indicator back and probably a voltage monitor of some sort as well.

I had to duck into the supermarket for a minute and when I went to leave there was a white van crawling past the bike with a guy and woman taking a good long look at the bike... I think they were trying to work out what it was... sorta made me feel a bit proud, but then I ended up in front of them and thought they were following me! False alarm though as they turned off... haha

All in all a successful day... but I also do need to do the tacho drive block off yet. I attempted that today and I discovered I manage to round the head of the bolt when I installed the tacho drive during the rebuild Will figure that out another time.

Oh, and I had an interesting situation on Friday where by the time I got to work I almost couldn't get her into 1st. Turns out the nut on the front heim joint of the gear shift linkage was loose to the point where I was shocked it was still on there, so I got to use my toolkit for the first time and tighten that up. Today I took it off again and put some blue locktite on it...

[deven5498]

Very nice!!! Can tell you have some time into that. Good catch on the male bullet hot lead. I have done that before.

[Englishman]

Nice work there Pete. From the pics I can't see where you installed the spedo magnet ?

Mark

[Big Rich]

Good work Pete. Glad to see you have it wired up and running properly. I've been thinking about a voltmeter for mine as well.........so hurry up so I can steal your idea!

[pete]

Very nice!!! Can tell you have some time into that. Good catch on the male bullet hot lead. I have done that before.

Thanks mate! Yeah plenty of time in it... probably too much again but at least it works

And yes, was very glad I hadn't put the fuse in the holder when I let it go and heard the tink of the bullet hitting metal...

Nice work there Pete. From the pics I can't see where you installed the spedo magnet ?

Mark

Cheers Mark, it's a magnetic bolt replacing one of the front disc bolts, first pic in post #2194, here:



You can just make it out as a slightly different looking bolt in front of the fork leg there. Sorry but the bike is filthy and that caliper paint is shocking... can't believe how bad that turned out!

The best measurement I can get is it runs about 5mm from the sensor which is probably close to ideal.

Good work Pete. Glad to see you have it wired up and running properly. I've been thinking about a voltmeter for mine as well.........so hurry up so I can steal your idea!

Cheers Rich! Yeah very happy with how she runs, I was expecting tacho dramas like a lot of others have but I think by just putting the resistor in straight away helped that.

As for the voltage monitor, I was going to build a 3 LED one as I have a lot of the components already, but it's going to get bulky again, so now I'm thinking one of these two:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/6v-12v-24v-LED-Battery-level-voltage-monitor-meter-J-/200627678428?pt=UK_Gadgets&hash=item2eb6576cdc#shId

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1-8S-Digital-Voltage-monitor-Receiver-3-7V-30V-/230632001039?pt=AU_Toys_Hobbies_Radio_Controlled_Vehicles&hash=item35b2bd0e0f#ht_500wt_1202

The first one's the simplest, but will take forever from the UK to get here.

The second one won't be a difficult install at all and I'm thinking I can figure out how to hook up the unused warning light on the Acewell to turn on if the voltage ever goes over 15v as well.

I'm struggling with the layout of the bracket for the Acewell and the rest but I can't really finalise it until I work out what I'm doing for a voltage monitor...

And feel free to steal the idea too

[pete]

I just bought this on eBay tonight:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-MOTORCYCLE-BIKE-Battery-level-and-Charge-monitor-/200609174686?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item2eb53d149e#ht_3605wt_952

Be here in a couple of weeks I guess, which should give me time to get the bracket organised.

I've got the basic layout on the whiteboard, just need to translate that into aluminium and I think I'll spray it with the satin black like I did the battery box too.

[Matchless]

I just bought this on eBay tonight:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-MOTORCYCLE-BIKE-Battery-level-and-Charge-monitor-/200609174686?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item2eb53d149e#ht_3605wt_952

Be here in a couple of weeks I guess, which should give me time to get the bracket organised.

I've got the basic layout on the whiteboard, just need to translate that into aluminium and I think I'll spray it with the satin black like I did the battery box too.

Pete, that looks quite nice! You could even wire the link to a hidden miniature push-button switch to check the battery voltage when she is not running!
I have bought a blue digital voltmeter, but it was too big, then a red digital one which is smaller, but is hard to read in the light, so my trusty old car analogue meter will stay!

You are really doing fantastic work on your bike!

[Englishman]

I just bought this on eBay tonight:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-MOTORCYCLE-BIKE-Battery-level-and-Charge-monitor-/200609174686?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item2eb53d149e#ht_3605wt_952

Be here in a couple of weeks I guess, which should give me time to get the bracket organised.

I've got the basic layout on the whiteboard, just need to translate that into aluminium and I think I'll spray it with the satin black like I did the battery box too.

Are you going to incorporate the digital gear position LED Pete ?

[pete]

Pete, that looks quite nice! You could even wire the link to a hidden miniature push-button switch to check the battery voltage when she is not running!
I have bought a blue digital voltmeter, but it was too big, then a red digital one which is smaller, but is hard to read in the light, so my trusty old car analogue meter will stay!

You are really doing fantastic work on your bike!

Now that's a damn fine idea Andre! Didn't even think of that! I reckon you're onto something there... might have to give that a go... just a momentary switch I can hold while I flick the ignition on should do it I think, then it can go back to a voltage monitor...

And thanks, I'm lovin' working on it and I finally feel like it's almost what I'd consider complete

If I can get this bracket done, sort the jetting out, and get a rear carry rack made up to replicate the genuine sports one, then she'll be "done"... finally!

Are you going to incorporate the digital gear position LED Pete ?

Yup that's the plan Mark, got the sum total of two photos uploading now so will update shortly with the diagrams and what the plan is...

[pete]

Ok, so here's the plan on the whiteboard:



The bottom drawing there is based on the existing bracket for the original gauges and will be made out of the 2.5mm alu.

You can see where the Acewell will mount on the right, the rectangular cutout at the bottom is for the gear position indicator, and the round hole is where I expect I'll need to put the voltage monitor and the two wires will need to exit there.

The top drawing will form a box that will butt up against the side of the Acewell and you can see the cutout for the gear position indicator and the hole for the voltage monitor.

I still have plenty of the perspex here from the fly screen so I'm thinking it would look good if I laid a sheet of perspex over the entire boxed area there.

I'll have to see how things pan out.

Here's the bottom bracket drawn out on the 2.5mm alu. ready to cut out:



I ordered a bunch of stainless steel nuts and bolts today as well as some alu. tubing. The plan is to make standoffs with the tubing to support the box and gear position indicator and the bolts will go through the tubing to bolt it to the bottom bracket. I hope that makes some sense...

If I do Andre's idea of a switch, that also leaves plenty of room for it.