I have a 94 that a bought a couple weeks ago that has been giving me plenty of things to work on. One week after I got it, it began leaking oil near the kickstand area. I took off the sprocket cover and sprocket and it looks like someone has beaten the area inside there with a hammer.
The boss that the shifter shaft seal goes into had been hit and deformed to the point that the seal was leaking between the case and the seal. Here is what it looked like after I got the deformed seal out.
(http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z219/Black97SS_M6/GS500/shiftshaftseal.jpg)
(http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z219/Black97SS_M6/GS500/shiftshaftseal02.jpg)
(http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z219/Black97SS_M6/GS500/shiftshaftseal03.jpg)
(http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z219/Black97SS_M6/GS500/shiftshaftseal04.jpg)
I got the bore that accepts the seal cleaned up and replaced the seal, it has less sealing surface now, but is not leaking.
From reading here on the forums I think that the chain may have broken and got balled up around the front sprocket causing this damage. The PO had built a dam out of caulking material inside the sprocket cover area. This allowed a huge pool of oil to form in there before it began leaking out and onto the ground.
My question is how can you tell if you should be using a sprocket with a shoulder or without a shoulder. My bike is a 94, and from reading here it should have a sprocket with a shoulder, but the sprocket on the bike has no shoulder. I'm wondering if they replaced it with the wrong sprocket or if my 94 came that way.
Thanks,
Paul
Go to a dealer, quote the VIN and they will tell you which sprocket your bike will accept.
The 89-93 models came without the shoulder and the 94 and on came with a shoulder. The sprocket with the shoulder won't fit on the 93 and older ones, they altered another part to make room for the shoulder. If you have room for a 8.8 mm wide sprocket with shoulder the bike came with that one.
http://www.jtsprockets.com/52.0.html?&L=0&sel_uid=4901&p=
For years Sprocket Speialists supplied only the one without the shoulder for all years GS500/E/F and I ran them for tens of thousands of miles on my 97 GS without any problems. No spacer required, the front is aligned by the chain from the rear sprocket. Just keep your rear wheel adjusted properly.
Thanks for the input, I'll measure the available width for the sprocket. Sounds like I don't need to bother changing it even if it came with the shouldered sprocket. My bike was built in April '93 and the serial number at the end of the VIN is 16, so I was wondering if they might have been using leftover engines/shafts from '93.
I made the same mistake when I first got my bike...mine is titled as a 1994 Suzuki, but build date tells all. My '94 was built in April of '93, so there's the answer. If you took off a shoulderless sprocket, put one back on. Good luck!