First bike/build maybe a streetfightery thing, I don't know the terminology yet

[BiTurbo228]

Picked up my GS500 about 2 years ago from a work colleagues for £50! It's sat in my garage for most of that time doing precisely nothing, but I've managed to get IoM TT tickets for next year and it's just not right to own a motorbike and not take it to the TT so it was bumped to the top of the projects list.

Started like so:


Fairly standard, but it never really captured me. There was altogether too much extraneous crap for my liking, so I set about chopping it up






Oh, and the tank got a respray:



Much better already:



Welded up a new frame for the cut down rear seat:




Made up a battery box to shift the battery forwards, obscuring it slightly behind the frame with just enough clearance to fit a K&N in front. It puts the midpoint of the battery roughly over the big bolt for the swingarm. Had to use a smaller (shorter) battery to get it to clear the tank mounting bracket. I think it's a Yuasa 9 if I've got the naming right. Could probably have got the stock battery to work, but clearances would have been tighter than I'd have liked for electrical connections. Plus, this battery is a smidge lighter.



Also cut down and repainted the front mudguard.




Tacked on a load of little brackety things scavenged from the old frame for all the electrical gubbins, all hidden beneath the seat.




I had originally planned on just hacking off the exhaust at the collector and welding on a bigger bore tube to fit an aftermarket slip-on, but upon chopping off the downpipe I was greeted with this monstrosity:



Pro-tip. Don't buy Motad exhausts if you expect good flow. Looked inside my mate's Kawasaki Zephyr Motad system and it's the same story.

So, off that came too and I decided to make my own.





Hadn't yet cleaned it up inside at that point, but it's already a hell of a lot better apologies if the welds are a little scrappy. There's a learning curve for stainless vs mild, and I was never the neatest welder anyway.

I also painstakingly cut a hole in the tubing for the rear of the frame to fit an LED strip light. A little nerve-wracking seeing as it took me 4 failed attempts to get the curvature right, but it worked nicely in the end




Next step was to get the whole thing stripped and painted as the silver frame just didn't look right. Sort of a case of making things up as I went along, but it worked nicely




Oh, and if anyone's intersted. Angle grinder sanding flap disks are wonderful things.




Definitely better, but still not quite right:



There we go. Paint the engine:



Another steep learning curve, but got the exhaust snaked around to where it needs to be.



Seeing as I was making my own exhaust anyway, I thought I'd go for 48mm tubing for the downpipe. Having the stock-size (35mm? 32mm?) exhaust runners dumping straight into a 50mm pipe would probably do bad things for gas velocity, so the slightly smaller diameter should hopefully make more power. That did, however, necessitate making my own silencer (I have an aversion to stepped tubes in exhausts as they'll have a similar slow-down effect on exhaust gases).





First start was not too bad started nicely, and I was surprised at how great the exhaust sounded. Definitely loud, but not ear-splitting. Needed a bit of fettling to get it running right, and we discovered it was backfiring through the intake so I should have probably taken my mate's advice and check the valve clearances while the engine was out of the frame...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSzmaImAQ4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs5awEvdTVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CsrsDDYIMk

Sorted the valve clearances (although, worryingly, one of the exhaust valves needed a 200 shim to get within the factory figures so it's probably not going to last all that long). Also rebuilt the forks and the front brake master, repaired the old choke cable because the aftermarket one I got was both too long and the wrong shape, fitted braided lines to replace the old cracked ones, new chain and sprockets, new tyres (I've gone with Bridgestone BT-45s, although my mate really didn't like them on his Zephyr so it'll be interesting to see what they're like) and new handlebars as I'd bent the last ones when I dropped it shortly after I got it (turns out that'll happen when you try and stop on a gravel slope without a rear brake). Oh, and stripped and repainted the tank again because apparently Halfords rattle-cans aren't in the least bit fuel-resistant which is problematic on a fuel tank.

Now I'm inches away from having it done, the only jobs being to solder up the LED rear light (made irritating because manufacturers love to use the thinnest wiring known to man for their LED lights) and get the fuelling dialled in properly (I can't tell if it's bogging slightly when you try to pull off or I'm just completely inexperienced. Probably a bit of both).

Here it is as it stands now, being ridden by my mate who can actually ride while we tried to adjust fuelling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wsV9DyJOFM

Can't wait to get it on the road!

[The Buddha]

200 shim ? you cant find these in less than 215. You using a Yamaha shim those can fly out, they are .5mm smaller diameter. I'd be very leery of those.
Cool.
Buddha.

[BiTurbo228]

Huh, I just looked on eBay and there one was. I do know that Suzuki unhelpfully made their shims 29.5mm rather than the more common 29mm so I was sure to get the right one

Here's the link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Suzuki-GS-500-F-2004-2006-Valve-Shims-29-5mm-Sizes-2-0-to-3-1/400961313374?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=670498236598&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Really, I would have liked a 195 shim given what I've read about giving the exhaust valve a little more clearance and a little more cooling time on the seat so it doesn't recede any further, but I guess I'll have to do that on my new head/engine when it tightens up again. Can't find a 195 shim for love nor money, and I'm a little leery of sanding them down.

[qcbaker]

Great thread!

[BiTurbo228]

Thanks man! Forgot to say it needs some bar-end mirrors fitting. I've read up about how bar-ends reduce vibrations and from what I understand it's a dampening effect from the weight of them (roughly comparable to my mirror) connected to the bars with a rubber sleeve between them to allow them to damp properly. The bar-ends I've got are a solid metal sleeve so I don't think that'll work for anti-vibration so I'll see what I can cobble together for a rubber sleeve

[qcbaker]

As far as vibration reductions via bar ends, I don't know that bar end mirrors will be weighty enough to appreciably reduce vibrations. I have weighted bar ends on my bike (no bar end mirrors though), and they help a bit. But, even before I had them I never thought the vibrations on the GS were too bad.

[BiTurbo228]

I was skeptical too given they're made of aluminium, but I've weighed them and they're actually both very similar in weight. I think the added mass of the stalk and glass compensates for the lighter material (although I did try to find ones that weren't alloy to no avail).

Glad to hear that vibration's not really a big thing though, so it's less important to get them damping properly than on something that buzzes away in your hands.

[Peter Tez]

cool tread! and nice sound!! I would like to see some good picrures of the bike when it's finished


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[qcbaker]

I was skeptical too given they're made of aluminium, but I've weighed them and they're actually both very similar in weight. I think the added mass of the stalk and glass compensates for the lighter material (although I did try to find ones that weren't alloy to no avail).

Glad to hear that vibration's not really a big thing though, so it's less important to get them damping properly than on something that buzzes away in your hands.

As an example, I crave bar end weights on the Buell Blast I bought for my girlfriend because that bike is extremely thumpy/buzzy (500cc single). My hands get very tingly when riding that bike for any large distance. But on my GS, they're nice to have but they mostly serve an aesthetic function. My hands don't get bad even when riding for extended periods.

[cbrfxr67]

Good stuff here!  Great pics and really like seeing it come together!  Can't wait to see more!

[BiTurbo228]

Thanks guys!

I'll get some good pics of it once I've got the mirrors on (and it's stopped raining).

Yeah my mate who was pretty keen on bar weights has (among other things) a Kawasaki XT600 which is another big single. Makes a lot of sense that.

Oh, and I also plan to weigh the thing when I get a chance. I weighed a big box in which I've stuck everything I've chopped off and it came to 11.1kg a little while back. I've lost a bit more since then, but also added some with stuff like the bullet indicators at the front being metal rather than the stock plastic ones. I'm hoping for ~10kg lighter which is nothing to sneeze at for a ~185kg bike

[ShowBizWolf]

Super awesome thread! Great pics too. Thank you for giving me something to scroll through while having my coffee

I enjoy how you re-used brackets and bits from the old parts of frame... and I'm diggin' that exhaust!

[BiTurbo228]

Thanks dude glad i could be of service

Yeah i didn't see the point in fabbing up a whole load of new tabs and brackets when i could just hack them off the old frame i think the only things i wholly made were the battery box and the seat mounting bracket.

[BiTurbo228]

Better photos inbound





Also had a friend solder up the rear lights as i'm pants at it, which has highlighted that the front brake switch is dead, but inches away from it being done i've also decided that my previous plan of pottering around up the driveway might not be sufficient to learn enough to pass the big bike licence so i've bought myself a little YBR125 to learn to ride on and then sell on when i graduate to the GS in a month or so's time (hopefully)

[iamhiding]

good stuff man, dead impressed with the way you're going about it reutilising what you can and crafting it you've given me so much welder envy though haha something i really need to invest in.

i'm so glad i done the bike test before it all changed, i was stuck on the 33bhp restriction but at least it automatically lifted after 2 years back then, are you able to go direct access or getting stuck in the silly 47bhp restriction where you need to resit it after 2 years to lift the restriction?

oh and petrol resistant lacquer is a magical thing, might save you a buttload of work in the future really need to be careful with solvents around halfrauds paint.

[BiTurbo228]

Long time no post!

First off thanks iamhiding! Glad you like it

Learning to weld was probably one of the most useful things I've done so far. Ran out of gas a while back and I felt genuinely at a loss as to what to do! Aside from the chopping up bikes and cars stuff, I've also made coffee tables and little metal flowers for presents/valentines stuff for the ex, fixed wheelbarrows and spades that would otherwise be junk. Dead useful

Managed to do Direct Access as I'm old enough so straight to unrestricted. Definitely glad I don't have to faff about with paying £300 for an A2 test only to pay another £300 for the exact same test 2 years later to get unrestricted!

As for an update, let me tell you the saga of my Isle of Man journey. It's a good one...

Left from just south of London about Friday midday with a hotel booked in Liverpool ready for the ferry at 10am the next day. Made it as far as the barriers of the M6 toll where the bike cut out and wouldn't start! Pulled to the side of the road and me and my mates started troubleshooting. Checked spark which was fine, then pulled the jets to see if there was some clag in them.



Cleaned that up...then realised we'd lost one of the o-rings for the float bowl. Fudgesticks (placeholder for much stronger language). Spent ages looking for it to no avail (think it was still stuck to the float bowl when I tipped the remaining petrol out into the bushes while being asked to fill in a report for the tollway recovery people who'd turned up).

So we set about trying to make one. Pulled our bags apart trying to find some suitable gasket material and found that the flexible plastic packaging for our camping cutlery sets was inexplicably fuel-resistant! So, we spent about an hour intricately carving a gasket using the razor blade from a puncture repair kit:



I'd love to say that worked...

It didn't.

Try as we might we couldn't get it to stop bucketing out fuel. Less from the sides, but more from the inside edge fouling on the floats and causing them to over-fill and spill out fuel through the inlet. The most irritating part is that I had a set at home that I didn't bring!

At this point, it was getting too late to call the AA, tow it home and ride back up. Plan B was to get the AA to take me to the ferry port, push it on and try and find a replacement on the Isle.

However, my mate (also my sister's boyfriend) had been keeping my sister informed of (lack of) progress, and at this point she offered to drive up with the bits! Wonderful person so, I got the AA to tow me to a services a little way back to wait for her there. Arrived at 12:30am, slept til 3:30am in the back of Costa until she arrived.

Fitted the o-ring in 2 minutes...and it still wouldn't start.

Fudgesticks. Again.

Started pulling everything apart I could think of. Pulled the plugs and churned the motor over and over in case the overflowing carb had flooded a cylinder. Used a nail-file my sister had to clean what looked like fouling off the plugs. Ran over to the service station to grab some extortionately-priced jump cables as the battery was getting a bit flat.

6am. Make or break.

It fires!

But won't run without the starter.

At this point my mates are awake up in Liverpool and suggest the fuel filter that sleep-deprived me forgot about. Took that out, blew a load of crud out of it, refitted...and it ran! Still dying at idle though.

6:30am. Ferry at 10am. Couple of hours from Liverpool. Sod it, lets do it in one shot.

Arrived in Liverpool at 8:30am, last checking 8:45am.

Good Lord what did I do in a previous life to deserve that! Bike was performing as if nothing was wrong by the time I got to the ferry too, so Lord knows what it actually was. Stick around though, as it's not over...

[BiTurbo228]

Rolled off the ferry and straight to the campsite in Douglas. We were finally at the TT!


Pictured: the camping backpack I was wearing the whole way because I'd chopped off anything that could remotely be used to secure panniers

Only at this point do I check the oil, to find that it's at the bottom of the distick. Huh. Could swear that was at the top when I set off. and why's my left boot black and the right brown?

Great. Gear selector shaft is leaking. It can't have liked motorway miles either as it's now making some very odd mechanical-turkey-like noises. Spent a day or so taking it easy while trying to find a seal somewhere on the island (no dice) and testing out various theories about the weird mechanical noise. Came to the conclusion that the turkey noise didn't sound like anything major. It would change with engine rpm, but stop entirely below 1500 only to start up again at 4000. The tacho also went haywire when it started so figured it was probably an issue with the tacho drive gear (probably caused by my probable nasty cam end-float). Also determined that seeing as there were no parts available having 1ltr/day (£13!) of oil leak out overnight was an acceptable rate, so sod it lets just enjoy the TT


Trio at Castletown

Just to say. The TT is stone-cold awesome. We went practice week which means more riding and less standing around watching the racing (there's still racing going on in the evenings when you can ensconce yourself with a pint). Much less busy too.


Day One. Not the dodgy cornering posture.

Learnt a massive amount about how the bike handles and responds to inputs, and did a load of carb tuning while I was there. Got quite a few comments about the bike too as not a lot of people bring custom-jobs to the TT apparently, let alone with their owner constantly taking them part and putting them back together whenever we stop for a rest (have to take the tank off to shut the fuel tap).


Day Three. Much better (and faster!)

Sadly, that tight exhaust valve must have receded a little further as it's quite significantly down on power and especially torque. Pulling away from a standstill involved either gently feeding the clutch in over 4-5 second while at 3500rpm or popping and spluttering like ChittyChittyBangBang. Went ok over that, and was better when it was really hot and the valve gap expanded a bit, but not what you want really. Still managed to get to 102mph on the Mountain Course though which I'm proud of (had a nice little dice with a 700 Katana who was a little less gung-ho than me in the corners but walked away on the straights).

Also, on the last day I finally got it right to come around the corner the cameramen stand on completely sideways off the seat...only to find they weren't there that time. It did happen! Honest!

End of the week rode home with no (new) troubles. £700 lighter, but with a grin ear-to-ear.

The GS is a perfect bike for someone just starting to explore the way that bikes handle at speed, and the Mountain Course of the IoM is probably the safest place on public roads to do it.

Lots of work to do on the bike, which leads neatly onto the next post!

[BiTurbo228]

So! Back in Blighty and on the lookout for a new engine. Lots up north, but took a while til I found one down near me. £170. 20 minutes drive. Perfect.

It also gave me the excuse to do a little bit of frame modification I should have done when I was making it the first time. I don't know about you guys, but I've found it's a bit of a pain in the backside to get the engine in and out, trying to find the convoluted combination of twists and turns to extricate it from the frame.

In the grand scheme of things, it's probably quite simple, but I have a low tolerance for corners cut that make maintenance harder. It would be so, so much easier if Suzuki had just made it a full bolt-on cradle rather than a half-cradle...which is where this comes is:



First step was to chop the little bolt-on cross-brace of the frame off and weld on a solid section (cut from the middle of the new frame cradle). Kept the engine bolted in to try and hold the frame straight, and made sure to try and support some of its weight on an axle-stand so it would distort as little as possible.




We make sure we keep the brackets intact as we need them for the next bit.




One by one, chop out sections of the frame and replace them with brackets. Not that I'm sure it needs it, but I was sure to make it so that they all face the same way so the frame can be taken off sideways. Didn't want to weld one on chicken-eyed and have it wedge while trying to remove it downwards if that makes sense.





Forgot to get a pic of the last one! However, at the end of it you should end up with a full bolt-on engine cradle which I can confirm makes engine changes significantly easier



Had a few teething problems with my new engine. Turns out it's from a later model so it doesn't have a mechanical tacho drive (decided I can live with that until I get another head to have a go at porting), has some weird PCV tubes coming out of the front of the block which I had to make blanks for, and uses a different toothed wheel and sensors for the ignition timing. Sorted though and it's running!

What a difference!

Night and day. Completely different bike, even compared to when I thought the old exhaust valve was in spec. So much more power, especially in the midrange. Nearly dropped it while first pulling out of a junction because I was expecting to have to give it some beans to get moving and it just went! Still a bit of tuning left to do as I've basically been trying to make it run nicely on 1.5 cylinders, but no doubt at all I'll be able to beat my 102mph IoM TT speed record next time

[cbrfxr67]

Sweet updates.  I'd forgotten this one and reread the whole thing!  Thanks for sharing!  Loving your progress!

[BiTurbo228]

Thanks dude thought it was about time for an update.

I was spending some of the downtime at the IoM researching stuff like 4-valve head conversions and big bore and the like given that I was being left for dead on the straights. Not so certain that'll be the case anymore! Not exactly expecting much given that my mates are riding a ZX6 and a ZZR1100, but I went out for a ride with my one of them on his other bike (Dorsoduro 750) and while he was certainly quicker it wasn't by quite enough for him to just walk away cross-country so I'm dead pleased

Still interested in porting and big-bore stuff, but content to bomb around as-is at the moment

Oh, other little bits I've changed since the IoM is getting a set of bar risers which, while ugly, have massively improved the seating position so they might have to stay. They've also let me drop the forks by 10mm which has helped make it a little sharper until I fit an R6 shock and progressive front springs