Sleipnir - 1987 GS450L rebuild

[Guest]

Hey everyone, this is my first bike which I bought locally on Craigslist back in January for $500 with 22,000 miles on the clock. She had a bad case of previous owner, so I've spent a lot of time searching on these forums and in the manuals fixing issues as I come across them. My goal is just to get her looking respectable and running reliably, with a few custom touches along the way as my budget allows. I've had several project cars but the bike scene is new to me, so excuse any silly questions in advance.

The day the seller dropped her off at my house (all images are thumbnails, click for full size):



She started and ran okay, but really needed some attention. Obvious issues were that she had been dropped on the left side, was missing the side covers, and the airbox had been removed and replaced with pods covered with several socks each.



I bought a helmet, jacket, gloves, and boots, and cautiously learned to ride on her like this for a few days before getting my hands dirty. First ride discoveries off the top of my head included the throttle revving to 4k when turning right, noisy brakes, front left turn signal intermittent, noisy chain, uneven clutch feel, bent sidestand, non-functioning gas gauge, burned out speedometer bulbs, and bogging / lack of power in higher gears limiting me to about 75 MPH on flat road.



She was still a blast to ride and I was hooked. Since that first ride, I have:

• Changed the oil and filter - Shell Rotella 10W40 / Hi Flo HF-133 (when I removed the cover, the old filter popped out at me; the spring had been installed between the filter and the engine. Ugh.)
• Replaced the throttle cable and clutch cable with new ones from eBay - OEM throttle cable / Motion Pro clutch cable 04-0127
• Replaced the upper clutch adjuster and sidestand with used parts from GSR forum member
• Replaced front brake pads and rear brake shoe, freed and lubricated frozen caliper slide pins - Front SOK LD330, rear SOK 306
• Replaced front sprocket, chain, tensioned and lubricated - JTF513 16T sprocket, O-ring 530-108 chain, DuPont Teflon Chain-Saver
• Disassembled, cleaned, and replaced bulbs in the instrument cluster

(continued in next post due to image limit)

[JBender]

Currently I am in the process of rebuilding and rejetting the carbs, replacing the L bars with a drag bar, and fixing the wiring along with relocating the electrical components.



I bought new pilot jets (VM22 #45) and main jets (N102 #132.5 and #135) along with gaskets and o-rings to hopefully have her run right. I also plan on repainting the tank and engine covers.

Thanks for reading this far, will update this thread as the build progresses

[Big Rich]

As a fellow 450 owner, consider me signed up.

[pete]

Hey mate, tuning in! Looks like a good start and you're on the right track.

Make sure you put valve clearances on your list of things to check. At 22000 miles they definitely should be checked.

Do you have any idea of what brand pods are on there?

Some of the cheapies are as restrictive (or more so) than the stock air box so going richer on the jets may not be the answer.

Also, if you do need to re-jet, don't forget your needle will need raising or lowering also.

[JBender]

I was pretty surprised when I pulled the socks off and found K&N filters underneath. They aren't the oval-shaped pods that I've seen a lot of people using, but hopefully the amount of air they let in are comparable.



Thanks for reminding me about the valve adjustment; I'll be sure to do that once I've got her running. I'm a bit anxious about getting the mix right, but if the previous owner can get things close enough to ride around by adjusting the airflow with socks, I should be able to do a much better job actually rejetting and adjusting the mixture properly. My girlfriend's dad has worked on motorcycles quite a bit (his first was a GS550) so if I get stuck and y'all can't figure out what I'm doing wrong remotely, I can probably enlist his help.

[pete]

Ok cool, K&N's are good! Might be worth getting a recharge kit and giving them a clean and oil. If you don't oil them, they will breathe even freer but they also won't trap quite as much crud. Looks nice and clean in that photo though so the socks may have helped in that regard

I wouldn't worry about them not being oval as they serve the same purpose.

Don't be too stressed about getting the mix right. I was paranoid about being too lean but as it turns out I'd be riding mine for a bit over a year with it quite lean and had no ill effects. I always thought I'd made it too rich but I hadn't.

I only really got stuck into getting it tuned better a couple of months ago and now I'm kicking myself because it's like a whole new bike!

[JBender]

That's good to hear, thanks for the reassurance.

I had a few spare hours yesterday so I built an electronics tray, drawing inspiration for the mounting from this thread. The rectifier is mounted on the underside. I need to finishing routing some of the wires along the frame, terminating the new positive and ground lines, and soldering in a new fuse holder.



I should have more time this weekend to finish the carbs and possibly get her back on the road again.

[pete]

When I did my underseat tray like that, I ran a wire from battery negative to one of the starter relay mounting bolts as that's where it grounds, and then every other ground in that part of the harness got put on the same bolt. Makes sure they all have a nice solid common ground.