81 GS550T Full Rebuild...In Ohio

[tkent02]

You think it's as bright as a regular 1157? I have heard they were not.

[cowboyup3371]

Not as bright maybe from our testing but it's not too bad. I'll have the wife tell me for sure though once things are up and running.

[Steve]

You think it's as bright as a regular 1157? I have heard they were not.

There are several different bulbs available with slightly different configurations. The ones that he got were not bad. Would probably have to use a light meter to get an accurate measure of the difference, but it would not be much.

Where the LEDs make a difference is in the amount of time it takes to ramp up to full brightness. An incandescent bulb glows brighter and brighter, until it reaches its maximum, then gets dimmer and dimmer, until it's fully off. The LED simply snaps ON and OFF.

The light about which I was most concerned was the tail/brake light. The one he chose has several red elements facing rearward, toward the lens, and also has a few white elements arranged to shine outward, perpendicular to the base. Those are intended to illuminate the license plate with the proper, legal, white light. They also happen to shine a bit into the reflector to fill out lens. As I suspected, though, the red lights facing the lens did not fill the lens area as much as hoped, leaving a bright spot in the center, with a darker area around it. Turning on the brake light increased the intensity of the bright spot, but, since the surrounding area was only illuminated by the single-intensity license plate illuminators, all you get is that brighter spot. I have a different light in my wife's bike (same basic housing as Scott's) that uses bunches of red LEDs shining around the sides. Better fill-in for the reflector, but shines red on the license.

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[cowboyup3371]

Let's see...tires were mounted and half-balanced last night. When I say half balanced, I mean they were balanced but the weights would not stick to the wheel so I'll have to wash off any soap residue from the mounting. I'd planned on doing that today as I took leave for today and Monday but didn't get that far.

I did manage to work on the electrical stuff today. The ignitor is mounted back in its spot at the bottom of the air box, fuse block, relay, and starter solenoid are back in place. I placed new bullet connectors on the wiring for the headlight and then tried to figure out what went where with the new headlight connector I received from George last year. I like the new connector but the wire color is still confusing for me (red, green, and black). I assume the black is the ground wire but am not sure what's low beam and what's high. Can anyone help?

The eldest also helped out today by installing the brake light to the rear fender after polishing it up. She did a pretty good job considering I didn't help her at all except to hold the wrench after she had problems doing it on her own.

All in all, I'm one step closer to starting her up. I'm hoping I'll have everything in place, especially the oil, and ready to fire it up on Monday. I'm starting to get nervous as I'm just not confident I reconnected everything properly. I know I did the best I could but am hoping I didn't overlook something critical.


Oh, almost forgot; we might have another bike coming into the stable shortly - same engine size but an L model for the eldest. I'll know more in the next few weeks and will let her sign in and tell you all about it. Suffice it to say her eyes lit up yesterday when she saw it and the people who were there as it was a total surprise. I just need to come up with the money before the end of October and then she needs to get her grades up so she can get her permit and start the MSF and drivers education courses.

[cowboyup3371]

I'm a little bit closer to finishing and yet still a long ways to go. After cleaning up some of my work area, I installed new cushions for the speedometer/tachometer and connected the fuse block wiring to my relay after printing off my guide. Then, it was time to work on updating the rear master cylinder. Come to find out, the boot that covers the bottom of the MC had a rip inside one of the folds:



It helped cause the inside rod and circlip to rust:



I brushed off the circlip but decided to replace the rod, internals, and boot to give me a fully functional MC again. It's mounted on the bike with the rear brake cable attached but without the caliper yet:



I say the rear caliper isn't on yet as after mounting the tire onto the wheel the other day, we found some chipped paint along a couple edges so I also taped off the tire and we will repaint the wheel.

Other bits today including repainting the ignition switch, placing a label from Frank Z onto its plastic cover, and then mounting it. I also removed the old decals from the left handle switch but the ones from Frank won't fit my style so I'm going to look into how I can fix that up later.

Finally, I tried to replace the starter button bits after I realized I misplaced it earlier this year when we moved from the old house. So I ordered the button, spring, and top hat contact from Boulevard and received what I thought was everything on Friday. However, once I went through the parts today, I realized the contact was not in the box. As I'm already so close to finishing, I'm not going to worry about that small piece and decided to go find a suitable replacement at Ace. Well, I think someone wanted to make it harder on me and I think I must have laid the spring down on the counter at Ace as I couldn't find it when I returned home.

Fortunately, I received a right handle switch last year for a 82 or 83 550 when I was sent a replacement starter by another forum member. After looking it over, I decided I can still use it on my bike after making a small adjustment to the connector. I just need to find some new nail polish to clean up the button and then repaint the housing.

I'm hoping I can at least fire the engine tomorrow but if not at least I'm a lot closer than I was.

[cowboyup3371]

Repainted the brake rotors and right handle switch; but when I went to put the tach cable on, I found out it seems there's no threads left on the tach drive for some reason even though I know it was good when I received it from Tom. Sadly, I threw away the old one I had because I thought the new one would be good.

Fortunately, Alpha Sports says my tach drive was used on all of the 550s up to 1982. So I found one with a cable from a 1979 550 on Ebay that will be here Wednesday. Hopefully I won't have to go looking for a different setup for the speedometer/tachometer.

[Dogma]

No threads? How? Was the plastic bushing that carries the output shaft backed out?

[Steve]

I placed new bullet connectors on the wiring for the headlight and then tried to figure out what went where with the new headlight connector I received from George last year. I like the new connector but the wire color is still confusing for me (red, green, and black). I assume the black is the ground wire but am not sure what's low beam and what's high. Can anyone help?

Can't help you with what color is what on that light/connector, but I can tell you what position does what.

Looking at the back of the headlight (as if you were riding the bike), the left terminal is the ground, the top terminal is low beam, the right terminal is high beam.

In the stock wiring on the bike, black/white is ground, white is low beam, yellow is high beam.

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[cowboyup3371]

No threads? How? Was the plastic bushing that carries the output shaft backed out?

There's no plastic bushing on the outside threads the cable plugs into. And it looks like only the first two threads are there so the cable won't even get started enough to do anything.

[cowboyup3371]

Can't help you with what color is what on that light/connector, but I can tell you what position does what.

Looking at the back of the headlight (as if you were riding the bike), the left terminal is the ground, the top terminal is low beam, the right terminal is high beam.

In the stock wiring on the bike, black/white is ground, white is low beam, yellow is high beam.

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Thank you Steve. I know you'd told me this before but I couldn't find the notes or a thread where you would have said it.

[Dogma]

There's no plastic bushing on the outside threads the cable plugs into. And it looks like only the first two threads are there so the cable won't even get started enough to do anything.

I need a facepalm smiley. I was thinking about a speedo drive.

[Steve]

I need a facepalm smiley.

You prefer this one.

this one

or this one?

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[cowboyup3371]

You guys are a riot, ever think about taking it on the road?

To add, here's a picture looking at the tach drive. As you can see, it's not sitting in there with enough clearance to slide by the frame. However, the engine sits perfectly fine with all mounting holes lining up properly. This is something I've dealt with every time I removed the tach cable to pull the valve cover off. The motion pro cables would sit in easier than the stock and allow me to bend them...sure wish I hadn't trashed the old tach drive now. I should have just dealt with the tightness of the nut when I would screw in the cable.



So after some time sulking at not having it ready to start today, I went back over to install the clocks and handlebar. I decided I need different screws for the right handle switch and wished I'd taken them with me earlier this afternoon when I went down to get new nuts and washers for my exhaust hangers.

But here's where I'm at so far:



I also started wet sanding the tank using 2000 grit but I'm told I still have a long way to go before I'm ready to buff:



It was suggested I could drop to 1000 grit or even 600 but I'm scared I'll go too far. Heck, seeing the white milky layers after the little bit I did made me feel like I was messing the paint up. But I'm told I need to get it completely smooth. Does anyone else have any advice for me?

[Steve]

You guys are a riot, ever think about taking it on the road?

I did.

I'm back.


Deal with it.

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[tkent02]

It was suggested I could drop to 1000 grit or even 600 but I'm scared I'll go too far. Heck, seeing the white milky layers after the little bit I did made me feel like I was messing the paint up. But I'm told I need to get it completely smooth. Does anyone else have any advice for me?

The milky layer is a good thing, that's what you need for the shine to come later with the polish. When it all looks that way it's ready to polish.
You need to get most of the way through that thick orangepeel or it will never shine up to a real gloss no matter how long you polish it... Just don't go all the way through the clear. You can use the orange peel as a guide so you don't go through the clearcoat. What I'm getting at is sand until you can just barely see the old orangepeeled surface, then polish. Get the whole tank uniformly that way. If you sand through the clear anywhere, you will have to respray it and sand again to get a good result.

Also listen for a whistle from the sandpaper, that is a small rock rolling around under the paper, it will scratch it the paint up. If you get the whistle, rinse the paper off and use more water.

I wouldn't go to 600, maybe 1000. It won't take that long with the 1000. But I'm not the expert around here.

It can look spectacular.