81 GS450 Cafe Project

[Guest]

I would like to thank everyone on the forum for all the useful tips and tricks. Couldn't have done it without you. Thanks.

Before....

[craigvg]

After

A few months later.....

[pete]

Hey mate, that looks like a good job! Any more/bigger pic's?

[craigvg]

Heres a few more.

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a516/chrisandcraig/IMG_20130526_130202_614_zps38377a3d.jpg

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a516/chrisandcraig/IMG_20130526_130234_557_zps932cf761.jpg

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a516/chrisandcraig/IMG_20130526_130149_207_zps6e54b27c.jpg

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a516/chrisandcraig/IMG_20130526_130114_000_zps7664a2a0.jpg

[83_450E]

Love the color on this bike. Just enough of a stripe to break up the white tank-seat.

[pete]

Have to do this for you... very nice work indeed!









How does it ride with the Ace bars and stock footpegs? And what's the colour on the engine called?

[craigvg]

Thanks for posting Pete. Havent posted to many pics on here. Not sure how to post the pics like you did.

The tank and seat are an eggshell white, with a forest green stripe. The clear has a green flake in it as well. The engine covers to be honest I am not sure what the exact color is. I attempted to match the stock valve cover the best I could to the samples the powder coater had. If you really want to know I can ask him.

[craigvg]

Not a fan of the stock footpegs. Still wanting to do something different there along with minimizing the speedo and tach setup. I picked her up this last December and got my first ride on her just yesterday. Amazingly she fired up on the first crank and was able to hit 85mph with ease. This with a stock carb setup.

[pete]

Excellent! No dramas on the case colour, just curious really.

85mph is definitely doable on a 450 with no dramas... I was hitting a wall at 130kph (80.77mph) a little while back before doing proper carb tuning but after some better efforts in that regard she's a lot more spritely... I'd like to hit the ton but it's difficult finding a safe spot to do that around here without attracting the wrong sort of attention.

There are Raask rearsets for the 450's but they're not particularly cheap and have had mixed reviews as to how good/bad quality they are.

Tarozzi rear sets may be a better option and from what I can tell I think they're a bit better priced than the Raask ones as well.

There are a bunch of cheap universal ones on eBay but I haven't heard any reviews on them. To my untrained eye on the auctions they do seem to potentially be a tad flimsy though.