1990 GS500E scrambler build

[konrad8365]

Hi everyone, thanks for letting me join the GSTwins forum.
I recently acquired a GS500E for very cheap and decided it was a good base for a project bike - since I'm a millennial the scrambler aesthetic has always appealed to me so... that's the direction I decided to go with. Right now I taken care of the electrical and mechanical bits that were wrong and did some minor upgrades... First things first I swapped the forks for something stiffer, being a 6'6" 240lb guy so .9 kg/mm seemed like the right choice. I also swapped the front brake calliper for the newer ('96) ones as the old one was seized and got the EBC HH pads. I had to fix the blinker harness (the previous owner did a very poor job installing LEDs...), swapped the speedo & tach housing as the previous was bent beyond repair and I happen to like the retro look... Looking forward to getting white faces for the dials next week, I ordered them from a guy who makes them locally... well I wanted to, but the odometer stopped counting miles, so I will be swapping it tomorrow for a Chinese digital one (I tested it and got it to work just fine, just waiting for a few bits to ship). Speaking of white, the bike will be painted white... I actually started from the fender, I trimmed it to make it a bit more scrambler-y. I don't know what to do about the seat - I really like the current one (the previous owner had it professionally reupholstered), but I'll probably end up swapping it for a custom one instead of modifying it. Well, here are some photos:



Edit: Updated image links...

[Roofaloof]

Welcome! That's a great looking bike.

Sounds like a fun project. I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

[konrad8365]

So I got the speedo/tach combo working - I'll post some pics later today. BUT! Turns out the master cylinder is toast (it leaks through the little window, and let me tell you that stuff melts paint, corrodes metal and destroys marriages) - might as well get to doing that first... dad said he's got some 99 SV650 MC so might as well get that thing on there. Seems simple enough I guess. The bad news is he's on holiday till Tuesday so that's a bottleneck. Might as well use that time to get the wheels painted black and finally get the courage to do the tank. Oh by the way I swapped the grips and bar ends to black. I'm going for that black and white theme




EDIT: Add pics. I got the gear indicator working, now it's just the fuel doohickey blinking at me - I'm not sure if it's worth doing, we'll see. And yeah my battery is basically gone now, I know - new one coming Monday. The speedo's pretty accurate (around 10 above, tested up to about 140km/h) and the tach works almost perfect.

[konrad8365]

Welcome! That's a great looking bike.

Sounds like a fun project. I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

Oh and yeah, thanks for the compliment. My idiot brain didn't think about that earlier. Well the project's not gonna be that fast since I'm trying to keep the bike rideable most of the time, so it's the case of taking small bites one by one.