Another New Guy With Pictures

[fred]

Hello everyone! My name is Fred and I'm a PhD student living in LA and going to USC. I must confess, I've actually had the bike (my first) for a couple of months now and have been lurking on the forum, but now that the semester is over I've finally had time to clean the bike and take some pictures, so here they are.

When I first got it it looked like this:


Now it looks like this:


Here's a shot from the back:


And here's what it looks like from the front. The headlight is from a 1977 Yamaha XS 650. The dual headlights it came with were horrible, so I went to the salvage yard and got this. I also added a Kissan headlight modulator to make sure people see me coming in the day time. It really seems to help and people get out of the way, which is nice.


Turns out the Yamaha headlight bucket is way way deeper than the stock Suzuki one, so I had to hack together solution using whatever was available at the local hardware store. I just got a summer job at a place that makes a lot of prototype stuff and they have an EDM and a water jet that should be able to produce a new bracket for me...


There is no fender. Not even a little bit. The license plate is held on by little bits of plastic that were cut from a bin of cat sand... You can also see my tiny U Lock that I use for a disc lock. I took the lock from my bicycle, which I store inside anyways...


The bike has many miles, but still runs quite well. Hopefully some day I'll run the odometer back to zero. If I do, I'll post a photo for you. You can also see the super high tech chronometer. It beeps every hour. I haven't figured out how to make it stop, but i can hear it at night from inside my apartment. You can also see the headlight modulator's light sensor attached to the brake line.


Finally, here's a picture with the downtown LA skyline in the background. This is right before it started pouring rain and undoing all the cleaning I did to get the bike looking decent for photos...


So that's my bike. It is my first motorcycle and the first vehicle I've ever worked on. Besides the headlight and mirrors, I've already replaced the speedometer cable (I broke it when fitting the new headlight, doh!), the clutch cable and the clutch lifter (which was actually what was broken, the clutch cable was probably fine). So far so good...

[Tang]

lookin good man

[scottpA_GS]

WOW! 83K  Thats some awesome mileage 

Still have the old dual lights? I may buy em from ya.. or trade ya for a stock GS headlight if you want 

Looks good 

[lilbill]

Looks great...welcome.  And  to the purple!  What type of PhD are you pursuing?

[ohgood]

Cool bike man- PURPLE RAIN !

With >80,000 miles on the clock, have you done a compression test ? I'm curious.

Congrats on a nice first ride, and wrench

[GeeP]

83k?  You realize we're going to require that you flip that, right? 

We expect a photo when the odo reads 00000.0   

[respite]

There seems to be a lot of us in LA on this forum..

[Teek]

Purple is the best color! Don't listen to anyone who says otherwise, unless I eventually paint my bike orange, then orange will be the best color.   

Welcome to the forum. You'll feel right at home here! 

[bucks1605]

Welcome and nice bike. 

It reminds me a lot of this one, from Pablo's site...

http://pantablo500.tripod.com/id55.html

[starwalt]

If you are interested in a restoration to stock, there are several of us with extra parts that could help and not cost you an arm...maybe a leg though. 

Seriously though dgyver mods all his stock GSs and has lots of stock parts. I have several stock light buckets in various levels of condition.

You are moving in the right direction. Duals can look good in certain situations on a GS.

[oramac]

Why does the first picture remind me of MST3000?  Ah, here's why:

[bombadillo]

I'm surprised on the dual beam thing man.  Most people say it helps so much to go dual beam and you'll never look back.  I like the look either way.  You just need a black buell xb9s flyscreen and it'll make that thing look really nice.  A vance or other pipe would be nice along with a rejet which is a 20 minute job, and a filter and you're good to go!

[scratch]

Welcome!  I'm glad you retained the stock purple! 

Remember:

Purple is for men secure enough with their masculinity that the bike color doesn't matter

[beRto]

Welcome! And nice looking bike 

I prefer the single bulb too.

[fred]

Hello everyone. Thanks for the warm welcome!

bombadillo I think the reason I hated those dual lights was that they were just random accessory lights, not really motorcycle lights. They were super dim and only monofilament. They were actually wired up to go off when you flicked the high beam switch. Not good. It is possible that with better dual lights, it would be ok, but these were pretty bottom of the barrel when it comes to dual lights.... I also like the single headlight better on this bike... I do agree that a flyscreen would be cool though. Since I live in LA, I'm usually looking to get more wind over me to cool down, but a small flyscreen would probably be ok.

oramac, I totally agree. I hadn't thought of it before, but now that you mention it, the bike did look a lot like crow...

GeeP, yes, I will have to flip the odometer for sure! I'm thinking of working out a video camera mount for my bike anyways, and hopefully by the time I'm near 100,000 miles, I'll have it down so I can actually film it roll over.

ohgood, I have read that a compression test would be a good thing, but I don't have the required pressure gauge. I guess I'll have to start asking my mechanic friends to see if anyone I know already has one. The bike seems to run well, so it is likely fine, but it would be good to know for sure. I bought this bike from a friend who maintained it himself, and he gave me his records with the bike. I know he just replaced the sprocket and chain and did the valves within the last 8,000 miles or so, so I'm good there... He also did the fork seals recently, so it seems like I've managed to avoid a lot of the usual stuff...

lilbill, I'm working on a PhD in Computer Science. I've been working at USC's GamePipe lab studying video games, but it looks like my thesis will actually be in computer vision...

scottpA_GS, you're welcome to the dual lights if you want them. As I said before, they are only monofilament, so you'd have to either live without high beams, or modify them somehow... They're just taking up space in my tiny apartment right now, so if you want them, I'll give them to you for the price of shipping them... If you really want to give me a stock headlight for them, that would be cool too, but it seems like that would be a really good deal for me and perhaps not an amazing deal for you. It is hard to tell from that first photo, but a major component of the wire hiding scheme for the dual headlights was made out of plastic grocery bag and zip ties...

starwalt, I'm not nessicssarly going all the way back to stock.. I just made the immediate changes to bring it to a place I liked... I think my next major modification will be to add some kind of luggage. I have to transport my super heavy laptop to school every day, and it would be really nice to get it off my back. I also like the idea of being able to leave things on the bike for a short time instead of carrying everything with me all the time.

scratch, I like the stock purple just fine, although the paint on this bike is pretty bad. The gas tank has a whole bunch of dents, including an ancient dent under the tank bra. Because the tank bra has been there so long, the paint underneath is a totally different color, so I can't really take it off without the bike looking strange. I would like to get a less dented tank and possibly repaint the bike at some point, but right now I don't have the budget for that kind of thing, so stock purple it is.