tobyd '98 GS

[tobyd]

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sigh, a good start.

So 6 months ago I had a boned bike in a load of bits and everything was broken and what wasn't broken was probably sad and it was quite depressing.

Well, in those 6 months (and i'm aware this is a piss-poor effort time-scale-wise ) I have done some things.

What started out as an exhaust replacement turned into a frame + top-end rebuild.

Sept -> now went something like this.



the studs holding the top of the engine on had corroded, so getting it all to separate was painful.



in the end i had to knock about 15 wooden wedges between the crankcase and lowest fins to drift the barrel over the corrosion. i have no idea how much muck went into the crankcase. probably a lot. it'll probably just blow up next month, that much. once i'd gotten the barrel moving it was just a case of gently moving it back and forth until it was free.



it went off to the machine shop (if your in suffolk, Pat Seager is your new machine-shop hero) and got rehoned. i thought about doing it myself but it was £10 and a honing set was at least £15 so it got done professionally.

got all that stuff back a week later.




the stuck front engine mount took another week at least. The bolt running through crank case i'd cut at either either to free the engine from the frame, this left a good 25cm of steel shaft stuck. drilling either end wasn't helping as my aim is terrible and without supreme control the drill bits wander, the metal work hardens and you are just grinding metal on metal and making a mess. eventual cure for this was to very carefully dremel out the exposed section, giving two stubs that weren't able to fight you together. then drilling through them and cutting a slot in the hollow and bashing them out with a drift.

screw you front mounting bolt. i thought i'd taken a picture of this but i must have lost it. if you were me it was ace, if not, well maybe it won't be a story to tell your kids.

so, left with a topless engine under a tarp, the top of the engine in pieces in my living room, and the entire rest of the bike boxed up, having to work outside and it being now, i don't know, November? work slowed to a crawl. New piston rings, and circlips appended to pistons.





then put it back together ish.



*i have no pictures of any of these 4 months. imagine putting all the bits back on a GS500 and replacing nearly every effin bolt in the mean time. so here is a Triumph 'holy' Toledo festering in north Wales and the inside of an old, fubardo scirocco i once owned.*





I'll update this with all the bits i ended up retro fitting, bolts i replaced and what with and my top-500 investment tips for retirement.

some fun things that occurred after this
none.

some crummy things, in no order.
someone had mullered 7 of the 8 JIS screws on the carbs, cheers for that, i bet you were the same moron that mangled the pilot jets ( i had to drill into these and work them out with an allan key and i might not recover ) and fitted 115 jets. 115? why? oh i remember, JIS bolts, pilot jets mangled. moron.
replaced with 14mm M6 stainless cap bolts all round. replaced jets with stock EU spec 125 + 40s set up. cleaned it all up. needle jets have a 4 clip arrangement so left at either position 2 or 3. vacuum diaphragm things seem ok. didn't lose tiny O-rings (i think)

RR lunched itself, when i was turning it over the first time the charging system was dead. seems powder coating is a great ground. better yet, a PO had hacked up the electrics so nothing worked. putting that back together was too-much fun. £10 ebay 2nd RR seems ok although i had to drill out its bolts since it came supplied rusted onto its bracket.

anyway, in no particular order, but scored with 0-10 over how much it cost x how much of a hateful job it was x how long i waited for the bits this is what i did once i got the cylinder head back from the machineshop. there are probably other jobs that I've blanked out for being too traumatic. like aligning the back wheel.

new piston rings, genuine (couldn't find pattern) - not a bad job (i say this now, they'll probably be boned) - 7 (on cost)
base and head gaskets, bizarrely genuine was the cheapest i could find. - 3
new o-rings for barrel join - 1
ebay valve cover - 2
valve shims - 7 (i had to buy loads because it was well out and that rubbish chart from suzuki is a pack of lies)
valve lapping tool + spring compressor - 10 (alright, it was a pittence but i already had both, lost, so i'm angry)
exhaust studs (bought nissan spec 47mm ones, SBW was right somewhere on here, 50mm in the minimum stud length that works) - 8 (50mm studs are expensive)
fuel hose - tygon 6.4mm -5 (pricy, easy to fit)
carb kits x 2  - 5 easy to fit, expensive
chain guard fittings - 8 (these took about 40 days to arrive and i probably should have just learned to tap+die and DIY'd it ( i had to drill them out))
torque bar bolts - 6 (again, expensive, look unique, were rusted and wrecked)
stator cover gasket - 10 (athena gasket cost nearly nothing, removing the old gasket took *hours*)
indicators pt 1 - 3 (£7 ebay, only two worked, spare bulbs + landfill)
indicators pt 2 - 6 (£8 ebay, all worked but had to make up a new cable assembly, SELOTAPE ISN'T AN INSULATOR!!!!)
stuck rev counter - 9 (why is this crimped into the pod?, who is going to diddle it???, patience worn thin...)
stock airbox - 10
setting the timing - 9 then 3, its nerve wrecking clamping the cams down since they are not only expensive 2nd hand but meant to be a touch brittle. lots of fun when it jumps a tooth when you reinstall the tensioner. lots of fun indeed. not so bad once you get down to it. had a to buy a smaller torque wrench though...
tacho cable house in cylinder head - don't be a loser like me and try and reseat it by tightening its screw. thats how you find out its £25 and a months delivery away. 254234. better yet, don't remove, i had to because the cable nut had rotted.
seat lock mounting nuts - rotten, drilled out, did measure what they were, suzuki wanted both my kidneys, lost measurement, definately a stock size. 345345234623465234



this particular novelty is the tank-petcock. you can possibly make out the o-ring which is horked. thats a nitrile-70 2mm CS x 10mm ID from ebay fix right there. you can still see where the leaking petrol stained my new powder coating and sometimes hear me crying late at night about it.

Jumping the gun, since its got an idle problem that i have no idea about - I'd do all this again. If i had a garage. if you have to frame up rebuild the bike and do a top-end job + fix 14 previous owners dodgy hackery and 19 years of neglect its doable. Buy a dremel and a lot of grinding disks before you start though.

anyway, the thing starts on the button. and valve shim adjustment is way easier than youtube makes it out to be.

[ShowBizWolf]

omg YAY Toby is back!!!!

...and still with the very entertaining way of posting

That GS of yours sure didn't know what it was in for when you found it. Cheers to you for never giving up!

[cbrfxr67]

applause for thread resurrection!  great update,....  really interested in your progress!

[tobyd]

So, the ebay £10 RR is still working and putting out 14.5v, this is good. electrics also still work. chain is clean and de-ranked. marvellous.

The bike runs like a bag of marbles though. not great.

mr72 has been quite patient explaining much of the carbs trickery and I've been playing around with trying to get this to work. Replaced the intake boots earlier today and with the smallest drip of oil the carbs just glided (glid?) in. When i originally reinstalled them i had to drive them in with a mallet. it was hovering around 0 (celcius) then though but the boots had been sat in hot water previously. replaced the spark plugs. according to the chart on NGK once they are sooty and black and carbon fouled they are for scrap. not sure i agree but for an entire £4 delivered for 2 i thought new ones might be a good idea. something else to tick off. considered NGK iridium-ultra-power-rangers-s-club-7-x plugs but maybe once i know its working.

last night i swapped the O-rings i'd replaced into the mixture screw with some slightly different ones. looked like it was going to rain after tightening the side-panel (fascia?) things down so didn't see if they worked. the bike seems great on choke warming up then rapidly gets worse. hopefully those O-rings were just not right and it'll work now. Hoping that the original ones were too fat and i was adjusting the thing way out of range.

of course, the valves might be leaking, the head gasket might be leaking and the pistons rings might be backwards in worn-out bores. no signs of burning oil so i'd faintly happy compression is ok and its just shoddy mixture and me cheaping out on orings.

anyway, its MOT is booked for next month with some new tyres to go (i assume they fail it on emissions, fit the new tyres then bill me a fortune) but hopefully by then it'll be working properly.

carb sync bottle method is nothing but win, well worth it just to see it working.



resplendent with exhaust that started all this. the best bit is i think the exhaust is too loud and i am considering something else if it passes its mot. if any stud snaps the whole thing is getting melted down and turned into bed pans. replaced the levers and bar-ends with ones that weren't pink. also the brake light switch failed on the front. don't take it to bits thinking its fixable, it just explodes everywhere... just pay the 1.99 delivered on ebay and replace it...



quite like this grey colour. might have to get the fork outer tubes done the same colour but i think someone has mangled one side trying to remove a seal so maybe i'll find some newer tubes to get sorted along with the-bit-the-key-goes-into part. you can see the missing fin.



if you look carefully you can see where i went all avant-garde and got the swing arm and those triangle things coated in black. not so sure the triangles work but the swing arm looks better (i think). removing powder coating from the frame to expose the frame number is fairly grim (although there is at least a thick coating of anti-corrosion stuff under the colour coat). a dremel fan-grinder-attachment thing did a great job and 151 clear lacquer worked well for 2 coats but then the can all swelled up so i went inside for a while in case it blew up. frame number is all shiny now.

[tobyd]

MOT today. Allowed to ride the bike on the road to get there, may have gotten lost near my house and had to ride around a bit.

The good: well the bike starts runs and stops. pulls quite hard all the way to 4krpm (still being gentle on the new rings), brakes are good. Electrics all work.

The bad: I think the clutch is either a bit sticky or I've adjusted it badly and its not fully engaging, gear shifts are a bit haphazard, its been sat a while so might just need some usage. Throttle response from low rpms is a little hesitant. Might be the jets or the needle isn't right but something to work on, once it was warmed up with a bit of on-road time it seemed the idle mixture wasn't right so might just need tending to again. The 'new' gas shock that came free with a replacement suspension knuckle is not so good. it felt a bit slack but was untested and looked shinier than the original to gave it a go.

The MOT place (a honda + triumph place) was quite quiet so i just sat in the waiting room refreshing the 'has my vehicle got an MOT service?' the government kindly provide page every 2 minutes. after ages 'You have no MOT and will be fined £1000' was replaced with 'MOT expires May 2019'.  The MOT guy afterwards said the shock was borderline fail but everything else was in good order. So i'll chuck the old one back on tomorrow evening and budget for a newer 2nd hand spare or an R6 unit next month.

Once i find the paperwork with the right reference number i can tax it and take it on the road again. that'll be nice.

whats next no one asked? Well a bit of a shakedown I suppose. The throttle response from low rpms needs some attention but can't be too hard to work out. I'll check over the clutch cable, I don't think there is a whole lot of adjustability left in it, I don't know if thats the clutch wearing out or the cable stretching. Its currently got about 1/3 to a 1/2 of the bar travel before it resists (I adjusted this like this thinking that was how it worked but in retrospect what?) so i'll back it up a bit. I don't know where to measure the freeplay, at the pivot? on the bar end? by feel for resistance? anyway, I suspect that'll clean up the gear shifts. I'm mulling over a gel battery, I thought I'd kippered the old one but it seems to be quite happy now. the gel battery is courtesy of a gift voucher I got for leaving my previous job and its the only thing I can think of using it for. The seat is a bit tatty and one corner takes on water so you get one wet leg which looks ace. The head needs to be re-torqued in a bit and i should replace the copper gaskets under the head nuts, one made a feeble effort at leaking but since stopped. might tackle that next month.

be nice just to ride the thing again.

[mr72]

Fwiw I think the new conventional wisdom is to ride wot and high revs on new rings, they seat better. That's what I did to the extent possible and my bike burns barely any oil. After 100 miles or so it doesn't matter.

I think you probably are lean at idle. But you need to ride and get it fully warmed for 20 minutes before trying to adjust. If you have that dialed and still have sluggish throttle response then I suspect a vacuum leak or damaged diaphragm.

You likely need less clutch free play. There's an adjustment to be made under the cover on the left side that will probably fix you up. Look up clutch adjustment in the FAQ, or hit me up and I'll find the factory manual section and send it to you.

And if you want to pay the shipping I'll give you a working rear shock. Probably cheaper to buy one locally.

[cbrfxr67]

Great read!  Hope you get it sorted out to your liking!

[tobyd]

After locating the registration document for the reference number to tax the thing I stumped up the £64 for a years road fund.

Went out.

Came back.

Clutch adjustment was ok, gears selected better than before but the cable is out of available adjustment. I know about the free play screw behind the cover and thats set up to 'turned until it resists, then back off a quarter' but I can't turn the cable fully into the handlebar without adjusting the other end out of the housing. Not sure if this means the cable is stretched and kaput or the clutch is up for replacement. There is enough there for now but something to investigate.

Chain was way too tight, I know the grindy sound that makes so adjusted it. re-torqued all bolts the MOT place would have been near to refit the tyres.

Re-checked the carb sync which is still ok. After some idling whilst doing this I pulled the plugs, LHS was a nice tan colour, RHS was white, gave RHS a quarter turn more mixture, will check this again tomorrow maybe. The pickup is still slightly hesitant at low RPM, not entirely sure why. Its never been great below 3000rpm. I'm not sure its overly keen on the 125 jets @ 3rd (of 5) clip position. I might put the old 115s (sledge says these were stock for my year) back on and see if its any happier. I know nearly nothing about jetting beyond changing it for altitude (narrower when higher (I think) - we dont have meaningful altitude in the UK, especially not in Suffolk where I live) or changing it for a freer breathing system (bigger jets (I think)). Maybe 125s are too big and its too rich, it doesn't seem to pull as hard.

Went out again to test fixes, chain grind noise has gone, clutch still only so-so. Might replace the cable, since they are less than a tenner on ebay.

Ran out of fuel at about the midpoint of my test route (town, to open road, to dual carriageway, to open road, to town - circa 14 miles). Overtook an XC90 and halfway through the bike spluttered a bit so I backed off then it just died. I did try to catch it on the reserve but failed (couldn't find it by feel), thought the bike had expired but after some cranking came back to life, headed home via a petrol station where I got 11 litres in. I thought there was more in it when I left off. Evidence suggests otherwise. 2nd time I've had this happen and both times I didn't think 'oh, its just the fuel tap' and immediately started thinking of the worst...

The old shock works fine but might see if there is any preload adjustment in it. I have no idea what setting its on and it wasn't going to be moved by hand so its at whatever setting its been on for 2 years or so now. I'll investigate shipping on that offer mr72, if its not crazy I might take you up on that - cheers

Interesting what you say about piston rings, I was going to run it at sub 5000rpm and short shift everywhere for 500 miles (effectively half a break in procedure) but might accelerate this a bit.

Avon Road Riders are ace, really happy with the grip. Brakes seem fine too.

[cbrfxr67]

"Ran out of fuel at about the midpoint"

[tobyd]

There was only going to be that one-point to run out, why is it never 1 minute after setting!... If it had been worse than just needing to flip to reserve I would not have enjoyed either the walk home or the recovery bill...