My first post here, I would really appreciate any input you guys could give. Possibly a newb question, I am new to motorcycles in general, but have been trying to learn as I go. I recently acquired a 2007 gs500f on a trade. It was running very rough and only had compression in one cylinder. I found that it had a bent exhaust valve that was slammed so bad that I couldn't even remove the shim bucket. I bought a used cylinder head thinking that this would solve the issue. Got it installed and everything put back together and bike, will try to start but not turn over. My assumption is that something is messed up with the timing. When doing the timing I have the crank with the single pickup on the right. I have the RT | mark lined up with the pickup, and the numbers on the cams aligned correctly as far as I can tell. My question is with the RT mark on the pickup should the right piston be at TDC or the left. I was under the impression that with the RT mark aligned to pickup that the right piston from the perspective from the rear of the bike should be at TDC, but with it aligned like this my left piston seems to be at TDC as from facing the bike from the rear, is this correct? I also tried aligning the LT | mark to the pickup and actually got it backfiring when trying to start which seemed to be an improvement from the previous condition. I made that mistake from looking at the manual direction for the older models that had dual pickups. Sorry for the extremely long post, but I am out of ideas as to what to try next. Thanks again for any advice in advance.
I am also facing trouble with this issue. I understand that in order for the right piston to be at TDC, you line up the RT mark to the pick up (in my case, there is only 1 pickup on the signal rotor). Though because the camshaft turns once for every two full spins of the crank shank, the camshaft lobes could be in 2 different positions even with the RT mark lined up with the pickup. Does this make sense?
So my question would be, in order to make the right piston TDC - so that I could install the camshafts according to the timing marks - does it matter how many times I spin the signal rotor to align RT with the pickup?
When you align the R-T mark on the rotor with the pickup coil which piston is up on your bike, left #1 or right #2 , left and right as when sitting on bike?
Another member has said the left piston is up but a diagram in the 89-99 Suzuki shop manual says the right is up. I've had only 97 and 02 models with 2 pick-up coils.
I know my diagram for timing the GS camshafts is correct for 89-02 models with 2 pickups but need to confirm which piston is up for this diagram for single pickup models:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v443/jcp8832/gs500signalgenerators_zpsbnlhkgl9.jpg)
This question will probably sound extremely ridiculous, but, how exactly do you check which piston is up? Sorry I'm a complete newbie when it comes to engine work.
Pull the plugs and peek in the hole with flashlight, you should see the top of one piston but not the other with crank on mark.
Got it. Thanks! I plan to do this on saturday so I'll check back in when I get to it.