My 1980 Suzuki GS1000G

[trevor]

I stopped around Rob's house today and had a look in person and it's a beautiful bike! A another nice rebuild for you Rob! I look forward to taking it out for a spin, never have rode a shaft drive.

[eddie21]

I'll say that the shed is getting full! Welcome to the "gee, I wonder which bike I'll ride today" club. The G looks awesome and I have to agree that shafties have a charm all their own! Good job Rob, look forward to seeing the new bike in action!

[azr]

Well this should take care of the spongy brake problem just fine. $104 delivered and showed up at the door 4 days later!

[rustybronco]

Well now, I think you just may have come up with the solution to my using 'good' original brake lines on the skunk.

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d44/rustybronco/IMG_2534.jpg

[azr]

That's sure is a sweet pile of parts there Dale. I've always thought that if I wanted to do a 'true' stock bike I would buy new rubber lines (or what ever it is the OEM lines are made out of) as the stainless steel ones are a fair bit thinner than the OEM lines but the difference in stopping power has always out weighed the image thing. So what do you think of the seat bar on the 1000G?

[Bowler]

Nice build!

[rustybronco]

Rob, I think it's one of many things necessary that turn an average restoration into a great one. Although I do have to admit, it looks better now than it did sitting in a box.


Would it be sacrilege to suggest black 1981 'G' turn signals instead of the chrome ones it originally came from the factory with?

[azr]

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'.

[Charlie G]

Looks great Rob. Ride the heck out of it and get some bug splatter on it. It's too shiney. Hook up the speedo first.

cg

[azr]

Took apart the cam chain tensioner for the umpteenth time and finally it seems I got things right. Took her out for a 30KM run and everything is working great. Idles nicely and pulls hard. Haven't had a chance to red line it yet but she's doing fine up to 7000. I'm not even sure I need to do the progressive springs up front, that little mod of cutting the spring and putting in PVC seems to have worked out nicely but I'll have to hit some corner hard to really test it out. As soon as the rain stops I'll post up the latest picture with the Samsonite rack on and the speedo cable installed I can't sure tell you though it's nice to have it complete. Now onto the 78 1000 transformation!

[Charlie G]

I would be interested to hear the fork mod works in the twisties. I have all the parts to do my forks with emulators and stock springs. Salty Monk has me talked into doing something simular. Well, Salty and my cheap heart that is.

cg

[Wallowgreen]

Great work Rob!

[azr]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Here's a nice photo from today's ride with Trevor and Sean.



I've put on about 150KMs so far and she's running pretty darn good at this point. I can still hear a bit of a rattle when it starts up cold though, I know it's from the cam chain but once it's warmed up it goes away until I start her up again after sitting for some time, nothing horrible sounding but annoying enough so I'll have to fix that, once someone tells me what's causing it 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. And I'm probably going to get another set of springs on the rear Progressive 412's, they are 90/130 right now and I 'think' it feels a bit too soft, I'll see. The pipes I picked up from "slowridevw" are working great and really fit so much better than the 79 1000 pipes I 'made fit', and their baffles are all intact to boot. The brakes are a bit spongy, even with the S/S lines so I'll be working on that and I'm thinking I'm going to take the chrome caps off the rear shocks, I think it looks to 'Harley' with them. But the Samsonite rack looks great on there, I just have to throw a bag on the rack to get the rear signals correctly placed.

[Charlie G]

I agree with on the rear shocks having a bit of HD look.

[azr]

Well winter is here so I thought I would try out a Vetter





It sure does it's job no doubt about that. A couple of problems though, the headlight will not point high enough and the top of the shield seems to be right at my level of view.