GS850 Fix-up

[Steve]

I was looking for head gaskets. Am I crazy or is it cheaper to buy a complete gasket set for my engine than buy a head gasket by itself?

I recently did a quick price comparison. I don't remember the exact numbers, but a generic "complete set" was about $90. An OEM head gasket was about $75, a base gasket was about $15. That is a total of $180. I then looked at an OEM complete set, saw that it was about $200.

For the extra few bucks, next time I will just get the OEM complete set and skip the generics.

.

[Triam]

K, so I have the new head and I've taken it all apart to lap the valves. My question is can I tape off the stems and sandblast the end of the valves to clean them or will I regret this?

[Triam]

I'd certainly recommend dropping the oil pan and cleaning that out, too, both before and after you get her fixed up again. It'll get rid of any residual flecks. I tend to buy my filters in bulk for this reason, never know when you'll need a fresh one.

Cheers - boingk

I got it running today. Glad I followed your advice. After a bit of running I dropped the pan and this is what I found:





Sure glad I took the time to get those shavings out of the oil pan. That was brand new oil, and you can see what a few minutes of riding did to her. This engine was full of sludge. I added about 1/4 can of seafoam to the oil and ran it just to get it hot, then drained the oil to make sure I got the maximum amount of sludge out.

This is the oil pan after I had cleaned her:



It looses power and almost dies at or above 3,000 RPM, but I still have a few valves that have almost no clearance, so I'm waiting for my new shims to be shipped to me before I mess around with anything.

[Triam]

Newest update: The bike still waits for valve shims from Z1 enterprises. I finally got the fairing off and the headlight installed so it doesn't look fugly. This is how she turned out:



Hopefully tomorrow the shims will be in and I'll be spending more time riding her instead of talking about her.

Next project is to repaint her and get the dent out of the tank that I expertly hid with my camera angle. I'm pretty sure I don't want to keep the maroon, but I'm still thinking. I really like the color on the bike of this month's Cover-Photo-of-the-Month. Painting the plastic on the back is something I'm kinda scared to do, but I guess there's a first for everything, and if I end up having to do it more than a first time then it's just a learning experience.