My 1980 Suzuki GS1000G

[azr]

Yup, good advice. That's the plan, hone the cylinders, clean up the valves and seats, new valve seals, ect...all the stuff I did 7000KMs ago . The only thing I'm wondering about is it I should replace the stud bolts. I wasn't having any issues with torquing the head bolts before but with having so many of the cam cover bolts breaking I'm worried this engine has a lot more miles in it that I though.

[SVSooke]

Flyboy posted up a set of Hastings rings he bought for his 1000G,might want to ask him for the PN.Got to be less than OEM.

[azr]

Well I've gotten a bit more done to the ol' girl. It kind of erks me that I'm having to do all this over again, but alas...



I REALLY got ripped when it came to 'must haves' when we bought this house, that's for sure. So I sat and stared at the motor that's in the bike and the spare I have. I measured 'properly' this time the spares pistons/rings/sleeves and they have virtually no wear on them. I contemplated it for a few days and have decided to use the spare engine rather than the original one that was in the bike. Too many bolts have snapped off in the aluminum with this one and I truly believe it's because it has very high mileage, but who knows, anyways I'm going with the new motor. It doesn't look like much right now but she'll be all shinny when it's done.



The head of course has 3 broken valve cover bolts in it. I was actually relieved though, it could be worse, it could be exhaust bolts or even worse..cam cover bolts Anyways since they were 'just' valve cover bolts I thought I could deal with the situation myself....



WRONG!!! snapped the tip off one of the extractors in the bolt and the one bolts I thought was actually coming out it had only snapped in half, so there's still half the bolt stuck down in the head So...the head is at my local machine shop where they shook there head in disgrace but I'm sure they're happy for the bussiness. I did manage to paint the base though. VHT caliper aluminum paint. Washer her up in my new parts washer. I used Simply green, about 3:1, and warm/hot. Cleaned up real nice, man I should have bought a parts washer A LONG time ago. Hit it with the soda plaster to rough it up and sprayed away. Put it in the BBQ for an hour at 200 and she looks fantastic. Hopefully it holds up well.



As always the problem will be how to cure the engine. I'm thinking I may just paint the base and head and paint the engine on the bike and I can run the bike to cure the paint. There's just no way for me to cure the paint without splitting the cases and I'm not doing that. One thing I did in the last couple of days is replace the Secondary gears. The spare engine didn't have them in so I swapped out the ones from the original engine. Took me forever to do the lash as I didn't have marking chalk. I used everything I could think of with no success, paint, grease, thick oil..then I cursed to the heavens above that I wished I had marking chalk and that's when I remembered I did have chalk line chalk. Finished it up in 10 mins, lol. I've ordered a new bolt and o-rings so I'll check things again when those come in.

[Charlie G]

.Stop breaking those bolts!

[eddie21]

The new 'spare' engine looks great Rob. Loved the bbq picture. You even had the head on tinfoil! Did you have any fried onions with it?

[azr]

The new 'spare' engine looks great Rob. Loved the bbq picture. You even had the head on tinfoil! Did you have any fried onions with it?

ha,ha,ha...didn't think of that, will do for next time though

[azr]

Sorry Glenn, no picture of the top end with hot dogs. Next time. All painted up and valves put back in. Did the usual lapping and new seals.



should be able to drop the engine back in the frame this week, although it's mighty cold out there for us Westcoasters, -1 with a wind chill. Used VHT caliper paint this time and I'm pretty happy with it. The colours nice and it took less time to cure in the barby. Not sure how it'll hold up to gas but it 'seems' just fine with oil and thats mostly the only thing getting on the top end. I'm going to paint the bottom end once it's in the bike so I can run the bike it to cure the paint. Getting there.

[salty_monk]

For a note Charlie, today was the first time I hit a corner fast with those front forks/spring mod......FAIL. A nasty wobble when you don't want one. I'm going to increase the length of the PVC pipe 'just to see what happens', so I can sleep at night knowing I did everything I could do but I'm thinking a new set of Progressive springs is coming soon but I'll post again once I've increased the preload.

Sorry about the engine woes. On the fork springs - I've done a lot of work on this in the past.
Adding extra PVC/preload won't help. All you will do is alter the "start point". That's to say the springs won't compress as easily to start with but once they start moving the spring rate is the same as before.

You basically have 2 options.

1. Cut more spring off. You can cut either the close wound ones off (which affects mostly preload) or preferably the other ones which affect the terminal spring rate.

(note: the way a progressive spring works is that the close wound coils move first, when they bind they effectively become a solid metal spacer & take a number of coils out of the springs length thus increasing the spring rate - so if you cut the close wound springs out the ultimate spring rate stays the same as if you hadn't cut it but the initial spring rate will be harder - Progressive brand are about 30lb/50lb rates from memory).

2. Replace the springs with something heavier - Progressive or Sonic.

On my Skunk I have GS1100E (83) Forks. I had to cut the stock springs down to about 14" length (cutting off about 8 inches or something) to get to a 43/44lb spring rate. Still softer than progressives Ultimate or the recommended Sonic for my setup. I suspect you haven't cut off enough.
What I'm finding now is that with such a low number of coils in the spring they have fatigued quite quickly so I am going to replace them.

For people with smaller bikes, if the fork is the same diameter you could start with the spring of a bigger bike as a base point & cut it to suit. For example 650g or 550E owners would do well to start with a 750E spring (all 35mm forks) as I suspect they are stiffer as stock (750 weighs a lot more).

Hope that helps.

[azr]

Good info, appreciated. I'm a bit slow when it comes to how fork springs work your write up cleared that all up, thanks. I stopped playing around with them finally and have a set of progressives that is waiting to go in.

[salty_monk]

Last night I pull my data on it... I have 26 coils in a 260mm length spring which gives me 43.32lb/in straight rate.

gives you an idea of how much you have to cut off to get anywhere near the terminal (50lb/in) strength of a progressive.

[GabrielGoes]

No that wouldn't be sacrilegious at all...was exactly what I was thinking as well. I did start to accumulate a set of round chrome but once I put them up to the bike I realized the black square ones looked far better. This picture was one of the ones I put in to register for collector plates, since then (today in fact) I've put on the new stainless brake line. Look great, the rear anyways. The front's a bit better but it looks like I'm going to need a new front reservoir as the one that's there has a tiny leak. Also today I fixed the poor install job of the cam chain tensioner I did and syched the carbs again and tuned the mixture screws. The bikes running fantastically!! Even the clutch seems to be working far better, which is really strange. Big smiles so from here it's just 'ride the dang thing'.

NICEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THIS TOTALLY MOTIVATES ME FOR MY PROJECT or does it discourage me? dang man you did such a nice job

[azr]

Well I'm finally getting around to reassembling things.





Took a couple of try's to get the cam timing sorted out but everything seems bang on. Sure like the colour of the VHT caliper aluminum paint.

[azr]

Getting a bit more done. Had a gasket problem but Z1 sorted it all out, not sure what the smaller clutch gasket fits, 750 maybe? older 1000?



Put some more time in last night and the tops all buttoned up, carb and airbox on, and hopefully this morning the exhaust will go on.

[gmansyz]

Put some 41mm GK fork and I have some Progressive GSXR fork springs for it.
G

[azr]

it's aliiive...it's aliiiiive..

Threw the exhaust on, hit prime for a few secs and....nothing. Did that for awhile and then realized I hadn't installed the vacuum screws She flashed right up! Haven't even synched the carbs yets but she's idling and throttling near perfect, lol. I love this bike.



I think since it's already March and edging towards temps in the teens I'm not going to put the Vetter back on, although I'm a bit bummed I didn't get to make much use out of it this year, but there's always next year. I've got another Shoei FM2 to put so that'll be the next bit of work along with new Progressive front springs. Also I've got a spring compressor tool on order so I can finally get rid of those Harley chrome spring covers.