1980 GS550L rebuild

[terrylee]

Looks fantastic! Nothing to wrong with L. terrylee

[eil]

Terrific job, looks like a brand-new bike!

[Good Times]

Great work on getting her lookin' good! I know you are proud of the finished product. Now go get that oil pan dirty!

[crippens]

That looks great! where did you go for chrome and powder coat.

[glenwill]

That looks great! where did you go for chrome and powder coat.

I didn't get any chrome done. The parts that are original chrome I cleaned up with #0000 steel wool and Mother's aluminum polish. That did a great job removing rust and restoring the shine. If you get close to it, you can still see micro dots of rust, but the overall effect is still very nice. I am amazed at how good it came up. Parts that had heavy rust all over the chrome ended up looking shiny.

Here's my headlight bracket before polish:


And after polish:


The aluminum parts I stripped off the clear coat and polished with a bench grinder, polishing wheels and polish. They came out decent. I know I could have gotten them more chrome-like with a lot more time polishing, but I wanted to get done in time for riding season.

I got the powder coat done at ZRZ Power Coating in Quakertown, PA. In an earlier post I showed everything I got done by them. I thought $275 was pretty good for both sand blasting and power coating all of that.

Glen

[glenwill]

I'm working on some final adjustments. One is the fork pre-load, having replaced the fork springs.

BassCliff's site has a document on fork spring replacement, and it says to set pre-load to about 1/3 of the total fork travel. How do I find out the fork travel? It doesn't seem to be in the factory manual I downloaded.

Also, If my pre-load fork travel is too little, does every inch I remove from the space result in an inch of increase in pre-load?

Glen

[eil]

How do I find out the fork travel?

I think this would work: With the front wheel removed, take out one of the springs and push the lower tube all the way up. Mark where it stops. (I guess a zip tie would work for this, as in the preload test.) Now bring it back down to fully extended and measure the difference.

Keenly awaiting the advice of someone more experienced for the answer to the other question.

[glenwill]

I think this would work: With the front wheel removed, take out one of the springs and push the lower tube all the way up. Mark where it stops. (I guess a zip tie would work for this, as in the preload test.) Now bring it back down to fully extended and measure the difference.

Keenly awaiting the advice of someone more experienced for the answer to the other question.

Thanks, eil! Yes, that would probably work. I would have to take the fender off too, or push both tubes up. I was hoping there was a reference somewhere that would tell me what the fork travel is, so I don't have to remove it unnecessarily.