Another Aussie GS rebuild - GS1100G

[jwhelan65]

Great work so far can't wait to see it completed.

[JimmyR]

Not much work done today or tomorrow because of work. And on Thurs I go away on vacation for 3 weeks, returning just before new year. I am really looking forward to my holiday but I'm also really into working on the bike right now! Oh well... January is usually really quiet for me workwise so with any luck I will get loads done then. And more of my parts should have arrived by then.

[JimmyR]

Ok so it's January now! I've been spending quite some time on this bike but don't have a lot to show for it yet and I get so antsy waiting for stuff to either arrive or get back from powder coating. The front calipers are back from powder:

before:
after:

And the front wheel has gone from this:
to this:

The wheel took ages - the rime wasn't bad but the "spokes" were covered in crap. So I wire wheeled the exposed aluminium and then masked it all off and resprayed the satin black. Very happy with how it came out. I did the discs too. It now has a slightly fatter tyre too.

I am hoping that the triple trees will be back from powder coating very soon so I can rebuild the entire front end.

[john82q]

I dont see the pictures

are you working on it?

http://members.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/images/how_to_post_pictures.pdf

now i do, looks good

[pete]

Nice work! They look sweet

John, I can see them ok...

[JimmyR]

Sorry - had a few issues posting the pics but seems ok now. I am still scraping crud off the engine and boy does it take ages! I wish I could just get the entire thing bead blasted but I really don't want to pull the engine apart. Actually I had planned to completely dismantle it but the local bike guy who is helping with engine stuff advised against it as he says it would cost a lot to do. He reckons that if the engine runs ok don't pull it to bits!

So I have pulled the carbies apart and had them ultrasonically cleaned and blasted and have bought new boots to attach them to the engine. I've also been cleaning up the airbox. I have pulled off the chrome panels and am getting the black side panels powder coated in texture black to match what the frame will be. It's what I used on the brake calipers.

I've also taken the paint off the brake and clutch levers and polished them up in raw aluminium. They have a brushed finish now - I really must take a pic because I love how they look and feel now.

I can't wait to get the front end back on the bike. I am so happy with how the front wheel turned out and am really looking forward to seeing how the fatter front tyre looks on the bike.

[HIGHSIDE]

Another Aussie joins in.

Hi all,
I brought a 1982 GS1100G about 4 weeks ago and have recently stumbled across this site. I am supprised how many Aussie are posting into the forum.
I recently done up a Honda CB900 and I cleaned and repainted the motor without dismantelling it. What I done was to;
1. seal up all the holes with tape, rubber bungs, plastic as best you can.
2, Brush on paint stripper to remove all the old paint and get back to a nice clean surface, use really small soft wire brush from the cheap shop to help remove paint and clean alloy. (work in small area's at a time).
3. Then hose off using garden hose and jet setting on nozzle.
4 . When finished with paint stripper wash motor down with soapy water and rinse really well to remove all paint stripper residue.
5. Then blow dry with air compressor.
The final result is a really nice clean bare alloy motor, that when resprayed with heat proof paint looks like new.

After Painting


Back in the Bike

[JimmyR]

Today I got out my angle grinder and made a bracket for the speedo and tacho out of zincalum sheet. I just picked up a cheap offcut from my friendly steel merchants... It's tricky to bend without the right tools but I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. It will be powder coated texture black like a lot of the rest of the bike.





And yes, there does seem to be a large number of us Aussies here...

[JimmyR]

And here is the clutch lever. The brake lever matches this. It's just the stock lever stripped of paint and sanded a bit. It feels great.

[downsy]

Nice one , looking forward to seeing how it comes up
So far it looks great !

[pete]

Highside: Welcome along! Yeah a bunch of us around the shop here and a few down your way too. Leigh's down south of Melbourne and Oohsam is around somewhere but not sure where and I'm sure there's a few more I can't think of right now.

If you're going to the Island Classic on Australia Day, you should try to hook up with Leigh and say g'day, although I think he'll be Yammie bound as his GS is laid up for a cafe conversion... and Simon Kuether will be down from North Qld at the Island as well on his 1000.

Jimmy: Love the work on the gauges, that bracket should work well, and I like the lever! I was tempted to do that to mine but then ended up buying a brand new M/C so I left them alone...

[JimmyR]

Cleaning cleaning cleaning... Still waiting for a load of stuff to return from the powdercoaters so looking for things to do. So today I mounted the new Dyna coils:



I'm putting the engine back together and the cylinder head cover is back on. It's better than it was as it was dark brown before! But I'm still not 100% happy with how it looks.



I am hoping that next week I will get all my stuff back from powder and also my newly fabbed battery box from the aluminum guy. Then I can rewire everything and really get going.

[JimmyR]

Well I've made some (little) progress. I've been waiting for parts, waiting for powder coaters, it all gets very frustrating waiting for things all the time. I finally have the front end back on. I had the triple trees powder coated and they look great. So I installed the new bars, grips and controls, and wired the controls through the bars and down through the triple trees so that no wiring is visible about the top tree. A bit of a bugger to do but I love the clean look!

[pete]

Ok, that's is too cool for school... very neat! Did you have to drill holes to run the wiring or were they pre-drilled?

[JimmyR]

Thanks mate! No I did all the drilling. I was stoked when I found I could drill through the triple trees and run the wiring through there. I also kinda angled the holes to help the wires run through. I really don't like seeing wiring! Because the bars are aluminium the walls are quite thick so the hole down the tubes is not so big.

It's kinda not difficult and kinda is! The easy part is drilling, marking out where holes have to be etc. The hardest part is convincing a whole bunch of wire that it wants to go down that hole. I used some thin steel single strand wire to pull the signal wires through but it still took some persuasion.