1978 GS400 Barnyard Rescue

[850 Combat]

Super good looking work. Looks like it will be fun to ride, too!!

[850 Combat]

I did some digging, and actually found a great little cycle salvage off the grid about 45 minutes North of me. They had an exhaust for my GS. The headers and collector bracket are in great shape...mufflers, not so much.

In the original photos, the exhaust looked pretty darned good, I thought.

[SouthsideWJK]

850 Combat...my original newbie idiot plans were for a cafe racer and I tossed the old exhaust. Yeah, the original, in hindsight, was in great shape. So I learned a $150 lesson.

I could go into morbid detail, but you guys have read it all before...I have made literally every classic beginner mistake one could make, aside from pods. Ah well.

[SouthsideWJK]

The Lost Week

Work has been kicking my fanny this week and I had wisdom teeth pulled to boot, so it's been a slow week on the build. I did manage in my haze of painkillers to clean up the air box and cut a new filter..so it wasn't a total loss....





Tore the calipers down, cleaned them. Tomorrow's task is painting them while I wait for the gaskets I was shorted to arrive and rig in the wiring loom. I did manage ONE smart thing when I tore the GS down...I did an excellent job preserving the factory wiring so I am hoping it should be a snap!

[SouthsideWJK]

A slow June

Work keeps us slammed until the 4th of July, so I haven't had quite the progress in June I was hoping for. I originally wanted to spend the holiday weekend riding, now it looks like three days of finishing it instead. The only thin I am doing to this rebuild that can't easily be redone is changing the mufflers.

The originals were nice, in a moment of noobie ignorance I tossed them during teardown, Managed to get a second set and the cones were pretty beat up so I cut them off and welded on a pair of 12' shorties.....

[SouthsideWJK]

Minor setbacks...

Things like this have taught me some valuable lessons about organization as I meander my way through my very first build.

Had the head bolts. Painted the head bolts. Bolted them in. Removed bolts to clean head. Lost half of them. Ordered a new set. Five days. Head back on. Frustrating! BUUUUUT, lesson learned! Bag and tag those bolts like bodies on "Law & Order."

[SouthsideWJK]

Rebuilt my first calipers!

Painted them with caliper paint, replaced everything (those dust covers are a bit pricey, woof!) and now I'm ready for lines. And some extensive testing. Heard stopping was a pretty important part of the equation.....

[A74R1]

very good work my friend.. If I had the time and the space I'd be doing the same to my 425.

[SouthsideWJK]

Exhaust finished...

Work has calmed down a bit, so I am now able to get back into high gear on this project with hopes of squeezing a few months of good riding in.

Got the exhaust painted with 1500 degree manifold paint. I decided against heat wrap only because my last foray into it was messy, turned out kinda crappy and got dirty pretty quickly. Besides, you knida need four hands and this was much easier to do alone.

[SouthsideWJK]

Looks snappy!

Got the exhaust mounted, really digging the look of the shorty mufflers. Haven't fired it yet, but I'm hoping the User Reviews I read promising a bit more snarl than those factory cones were true. Plus, at $19 each, they were the lowest cost solution I could find...

[SouthsideWJK]

Starting to come together

The original factory headlight bucket had a huge crack through it, so I had to get a new one, found this one on dimecitycycles.com for about $50 with a newer, brighter H4 bulb. I found NOS originals for $75 for just the bucket, so I'm considering this a decent upgrade. The turn signals are just for mock up purposes until I find ones that like......

[SouthsideWJK]

Fork Question

I tore down the forks, cleaned them, powdercoated the lowers, replaced the seals, tightened everything to spec, added the factory suggested amount of fork oil, bounced it around a few times....seems to be a touch unresponsive. Any thoughts as to what I may be dealing with?

I don't quite recall what they were like when I got the bike, they just seem a bit slow to respond, not bouncing back with a healthy springing action. Am I crazy?

Second question: this is my first experience using fork boots. I put them on because I thought they looked cool. Go ahead, roll your eyes, I totally deserve it. When the fork compresses, all the air leaves the boot area, and it vacuum seals itself to the fork. Is this normal?

And yes, that last paragraph does makes me sound stupid and nit-picky, ha!

[RustyStuff]

I tore down the forks, cleaned them, powdercoated the lowers, replaced the seals, tightened everything to spec, added the factory suggested amount of fork oil, bounced it around a few times....seems to be a touch unresponsive. Any thoughts as to what I may be dealing with?

I don't quite recall what they were like when I got the bike, they just seem a bit slow to respond, not bouncing back with a healthy springing action. Am I crazy?

Second question: this is my first experience using fork boots. I put them on because I thought they looked cool. Go ahead, roll your eyes, I totally deserve it. When the fork compresses, all the air leaves the boot area, and it vacuum seals itself to the fork. Is this normal?

And yes, that last paragraph does makes me sound stupid and nit-picky, ha!

Poke a small hole in the fork boots, that will fix your vacuum problem.

Nice bike.

[clutchthirty]

Looking good. Interested to see where it ends up.

[Grimly]

Second question: this is my first experience using fork boots. I put them on because I thought they looked cool.

If you're planning on keeping the bike for a while, fork boots will definitely pay for themselves many times over, with the damage and corrosion they protect the stanchions from. Only problem with the cheapy ones is they don't last long.