My son recently took an interest in street MC's. He's 17. I'm surprized it took him this long since I've been riding him around on the back since he was 6 yrs old. He has had a suzuki 125 dirt bike for 3 years, and he's taking the MSF beginner course next month.
Two weeks ago we picked up a 1993 GS500 in Boston with 11,000 miles. We paid $600. The PO didn't want it since he had 2 other street bikes. So far we've cleaned the carbs because the bike wouldn't pull past 5000 rpm without terrible sputtering. I've also ordered the jet kit because the old plugs were ash white and it has stock jets.
Also ordered a Clymer, a K&N lunchbox, replaced a clutch lever, ordered some fork seals, some valve adjust tools, and gaskets. We also intend to add a short spacer in the forks while we got them apart to counter the soft spring rate. The rubber is good but the paint on the tank is faded and all the decals are gone. We are considering painting the tank and the front fender. Also ordered up an oil filter and intend to change the oil even though it looks clean. Also, we want to do the backing plate timing mod., to get her to run up to potential.
Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
Sounds like a great project! May you have many fun hours together.
Remember, a spacer in the forks will increase preload (reduce sag) but does not change the spring rate. They will still be soft.
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Good Point! I watched him ride it around a parking lot for 2 hours last Sunday and I noticed what I thought was excessive nose dive under braking. My idea with the spacers was to try and correct the dive a little.
It's sort of a moot point since you already ordered a jet kit, but for future reference look here (http://wiki.gstwins.com/index.php?n=Upgrades.Rejetting) for jetting info specific to your year and set up, then buy jets here (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=N100.604&_sacat=See-All-Categories). Way cheaper, and way easier to zero in on your correct jetting.
Also a good investment would be a new set of springs. I recently upgraded mine and it doesnt nose dive nearly as much, handles much better in corners, and just feels safer while breaking. ran me like $73 or so. Progressives in mine, though a lot of people seem to go with the straight rate. Check out the wiki again: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~sanjayd/gs500/Upgrades/FrontSprings.
The wiki is your friend.
Hey thanks for the reply. I pretty much did just that, except I ordered an assortment of jets, 2 new idle jets (40's) and 4 pairs of assorted mains from 125 up. The place on e-bay took my best offer and charged me 42 bucks with free shipping, so I thought that price was OK. A good cheap trick is to drill out your mains to suit your needs. I used to run Sportsters at the drags with some friends and we did this all the time, as the S&S jets were just too hard to come by. I have never seen a hole size chart for Mikuni jets so I am planning on checking the hole sizes when I get them and publishing a little data here about that. If anyone knows of a source for hole size data on Mikuni main jets, please hook me up.
I am just hoping that not too much damage was done to the exhaust valves by running lean for 11,000 miles. Dam that EPA bull****!
http://stores.ebay.com/nichecyclesupply
That is the cheapest supplier of genuine mikuni jets that I've seen.
Quote from: bombsquad83 on April 25, 2012, 11:32:48 AM
http://stores.ebay.com/nichecyclesupply
That is the cheapest supplier of genuine mikuni jets that I've seen.
thats what i linked him to!
Quote from: cheetahman on April 25, 2012, 10:15:53 AM
I am just hoping that not too much damage was done to the exhaust valves by running lean for 11,000 miles. Dam that EPA bull****!
I ran my 97 GS for 80k miles and have 93k miles and counting on my 02 GS and never touched the carbs on either. The 97 with 2 circuit carbs, same as your 93, was a bit lean and could have used jetting for winter riding here in NE Ohio but I had an old CM400 I used for a winter bike back then. I've used the 02 year around here but it has the newer 3 circuit carbs and is not as lean as the 97 was.
Doubt you'll ever harm the exhaust valves due to the lean jetting alone but they do receed into the seats a lot faster if set at the tighter limit of the Suzuki specs, I started setting them wider on the 02 GS and they should live longer than me that way. :icon_lol: Anyway, I found it to be 30-40k miles before the accelerated exhaust valve wear began and it can still be stopped/slowed after that with the wider settings.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v443/jcp8832/GSvalvelogs.jpg
That's some great information right there. Thanks.
So to update this thread, my son, my GF, and I rode around Laconia this weekend as it was the first weekend of motorcycle week, and we had a very good time. I was on the trusty BMW GS 1150, he rode the GS 500, and she has a sportster.
The GS 500 performed nearly flawlessly except the petcock diaphragm did fail closed, so we had to run it in "Prime" position for the weekend, but I ordered a petcock today anyway.
After we bought it, we replaced the rear skin due to weather cracks, we did the R6 shock and Progressive fork upgrades. We also cleaned and re jetted the carbs. Right now we have an aftermarket can which is a glass pack with no baffles, and the K&N lunchbox. We are running 42 idle jets, 132.5 mains, 2 turns on the low speed screws, and 3 washers under the needles. The bike rolls up through the rpm range nicely with no hesitation whatsoever. My nose tells me however, that it is a bit rich, so my thought is to try 40 pilots and 2 washers under the needles. When we first tested this setup, we had hanging idle pretty bad, but the screws were set at 3 turns, so I cranked them in and reset them to 2 turns and the hanging idle completely went away.
Other things we did: Valve adjustment with new gasket, Vance and Hines ignition advancer thanks to this forum, and we got the billet fork brace, the stainless chain guard, the Chinese aluminum foot pegs for 9 bucks a pair from e-bay, new fuel lines, changed oil and filter, new chain, painted the front fender, and installed new used handlebars due to rust. We changed a lot of fasteners to stainless and we had to install a new clutch lever because th PO had a mishap.
I think this little bike is a perfect machine for him right now and it is performing very well. We spent more than we set out to, but I think it will pay off in the end. If he keeps it 2 or 3 years before he moves up, it will definitely be worth it. He shouldn't have to do anything more except routine maintenance, for a long time. By the time he needs to move up he'll be launched out of the house and hopefully he learned from all this stuff we did. He'll be mostly on his own for the next upgrade decision in 2 years anyhow.
Well looks like you did it all! I'm sure he'll love it. If he wants to make it look a bit sexier, he should get a belly pan, a ducati S4R windshield, factory '89 clip ons (rare) and anodized brake levers matching the tank. Every time I walk up to my bike I think how sexy she looks, could not say that before said ornamentation.
why not het the jets from budha? i got the jets for $25 including shipping
Cause depending on what jets you already have it's way cheaper on ebay. I could also choose my own sizes.
You can choose your own sizes with Buddha :dunno_black:
Mary
buddha was out of the ones I needed, I needed 147.5 and he only had 145 and 150