Could be impact, could be a poor reassembly job.  Either way, do your forks look bent?  If not, no prob, easy fix.

impact damage....the fork would be bent!

that is due to a couple of bolts not being tight enough....
loosen the fork leg up in the clamps and pull it down...then retighten....properly

Nope ... does not mean damage ... does mean one clamp is tighter than other ... also one tube has a extra large speck of rust ... or other shaZam!.
I have been trying to fit clip on's of late on the bike... I should know ... this shaZam! is common if you try to slide them up into the triple. Getting hem equal is no joke.
Cool.
Srinath.

The great thing about motorcycles is they attract gearheads. My nephew is one. I've got to get him interested in the GS so that when he is older he won't have any trouble getting a date.  :lol:


We pulled the right side cover just to see what is up in there. No chunks of metal or debris fell out. It is about time I caught a break.

One thing I noticed - tell me if this is normal.
With the bike in gear, if I rotate the rear tire, it moves several inches before the drivetrain seems to catch. This is the case with movement in either direction.  By "catching" I mean when the "slack" is taken up, the clutch begins to move and consequently the crankshaft, etc.

I know mc's have no reverse but it seems to be a lot of gear backlash prior to engagement.

What say ye the group?

Mostly drive train lash in the GS is chain slack ... No real other lash is there  ...
Cool.
Srinath.

Since the last post I have repaired the tachometer mounting posts and experimented with LED replacements for lamps.

A couple of shots of the tach repair:

The nuts on the mounting posts were hard to get off even after the posts were broken. With age and vibration, it is no wonder they snapped.

I am using black electrical tape as a dam and 5 minute epoxy for casting resin.

One side complete!


The finished product.


Now for electronics.
Here you see a meter and the current draw of one lamp, nearly 1/4 amp!


An jumbo yellow LED draws about 1/4 (at max allowed) the current of the lamp.


Now this might seem like a good idea for a lamp replacement. From a power use perspective it is. From an application perspective, not so. Here's a shot of a lamp in the tach in simulated darkness. (Sorry about the blurr)


Same meter with the LED. Notice the shadow between 5 and 8 caused by the metal heat shield in the tach housing.


Why such bad performance from the LED? LEDs are directional with their light. Bulbs are omnidirectional. LEDs are great for directional lighting, ie indicators and Brake lamps (in clusters with lensing). Our GS instrument housings were designed for lamps that have omnidirectional ability. A modified housing could be used for LED illumination of the existing face plate.

One thing in the tach shots to notice is the affect of fading black paint. Sun fade causes the "star glow" in the upper half of the tach. I can think of no fix for this except replacement or recovering the face with another identical plate.

More to come - stay tuned.

what about those multi-directional led's?  What about using aluminum foil to make some sort of 'hood' to help disperse the light?

The problem with led's is that if you want to light something up you have to use a bunch of them, and even if you use alot of them there light is very diretional compared to that of auto mini-blulb. If your really wanted to you could find a way to put an array of them in the housing, but that would be way to much work

As far as the hood, you actuall have to put the bulb in backwards, so it faces to the rear of the tac, and then producing some sort of reflection device.

The color of the plastic housing for the tach and speedo is the reflective part of the original system. I actually have another plan for the instruments and it does involve LEDs.

I haven't posted the pics yet but I cut the retention ring off a tach from a junk GS. The meter face was totally faded out (I am working on another idea for that) and the ring was bent. It is an easy enough chore with the right tools and I may modify the process yet.

The idea is to modify the housing with an array of LEDs so that their  coverage pattern overlaps. Much light is wasted on the black backround of the instrument. If the backround were white....(oops don't want to speak too soon).

I also spent some time researching the theory of the tach. It is referred to as an eddy-current tach. A spinning magnet is inside a conductive cup. The cup has a shaft attached to its center. That shaft has a fine spring providing torsional force against the eddy currents induced by the magnet (read that as return to Zero RPM). The faster the magnet spins the more current is induced in the bell, the more magnetic field is induced in the bell, the more it rotates in the direction of the magnet.

Simple operation but I sure would not want to do the equation a physics instructor would put together on it. Much rotational forces, omegas, dV/dt, and such.

More to come.

So you say that the inside of your tach or speedo has crap or moisture or some other stuff that's driving you nuts? Here's a sure warranty violation method that will allow you access to the inside of the glass and may just lead to some other developments in the wings.

First spend several days developing a rotating electric table that make filing away the back side of the aluminum crimp ring easier and less messy than using a Dremel.  The rotation speed of the table cannot be too fast. You need to be able to sense when the thing is trying to toss your tach or speedo across the room. I used a 24 VDC gear  motor run at 12 VDC to start and then 24 when I was more confident.



Here you see the setup at rest.



And the desired results that allow you to get to the inside of the glass AND put it back on without looking like you used a fire axe to get into it.  :lol:




With a little effort you can get a good looking instrument and be able to clean both sides of the glass.

Hmmm? What else can we do when in there?


Anybody try this before?

Opening that guage is easy ... use a pick and a small screwdriver.
Closing is easy as well ... sit it on a cloth and sue a drift type punch but have the tip set to sit on that edge ... in the end ... it will entirely even out ... and last part use a PVC pipe or aluminum pipe and sit it on the edge and knock away ...
BTW jared had white face guages templated and stuff and some people also bought from him. Fun in doing and your table spinning looks cool is a bit complicated ...
Cool.
Srinath.

You weren't planning to put that table in Reverse and "file away the miles" were you?  

Just kidding.  Besides, I don't even know if it would even work on these speedos.  Honest!

It does take a little time to remove the ring on the back side of the gear. The postive side to this is being able to lightly tack it back on with Black RTV  and remove it at will.  I did the first one with a Dremel. Ughhh! Messy!

I also considered leaving the ring in place and cutting the housing away. The layer of housing removed would be insignificant  but the possiblitiy of hitting a bump and having an instrument break in two wasn't too cool.

It is good to know someone else has toyed with withface gauges. Did Jared use a transparent film on new dial plastic or just cover it up with paper? It is time  consuming and I am surprised Suzuki just doesn't offer it as an option. My company car has them. Go figure.

No Kerry, odometer tinkering is a federal offense. I am a warranty breaker! Different thing. The junk bike used to experiment with had a mashed odometer. A few minutes of looking it over convinced me that it takes someone with way more time on their hands than me to fiddle with it.

Oh, the rotating table has more things in store for it than gaining access to instruments. How about an ignition simulator? Why do that? Test-bed for a uP system monitor. I gotta have some kind of senior project in several semesters and I don't think my E-zuki will be ready by then.  

OK then I wont post the 2 min turning back trick ... Works well albeit somewhat limited scope ...
Cool.
Srinath.

Srinath, are those black helicopters I see circling over your place?   If you happen to notice several SUVs with dark windows hanging around, head for Murphy, NC. You might be able to hook up with friends of Mr. Rudolph.

On the other hand, nobody probably cares if 15 year old motorcycle odometers are tinkered with...diconnecting the speedo cable does the same thing...sorta. There should be a direct rpm/gear ratio/speed relationship.

And for that matter, why does putting an internal combustion engine of a certain size in/on something make it suddenly interesting to a government? Being able to tax something must have criteria I guess.

How is it coming, Starwalt?  

I just got my black GS off e-bay for $700.  No keys and wasn't sure it had run in years.

New battery.  Changed gas.  Fires right up and pulls strong.

Hey, I'd rather be lucky than good.

Being Lucky is great when it comes to Ebay. Congratulations on your win Jake D!

I received a starter motor, wrong size (pics are posted on my webpage) but I have one lined up with a GStwinner and will probably buy another listed on ebay also (covering my 6).

Work has kept me buried the last couple of days so the holiday will see some GS time for sure. I am really excited to get it running so that I can ride and practice skill building. No racing aspirations here although I must admit to the attraction of going fast.

It would be fun to wrench for a race team, endurance perhaps. I have a few things to do before getting involved with that.

So you have cut open all the tachs and speedos in your garage and are looking for something to do with your rotating table?

Make an ingition simulator/tester!


Knowing what the output of the signal generator is can be helpful in troubleshooting a suspected ignition problem. If the bike won't run, how can you test it?

I connected the outputs of the signal coils to 27K ohm resistors to provide a reference. I then scoped both channels at the high end of the resistors. Actually a 1K would probably work. I just couldn't find two of them quickly.


Here's what the output looks like.

Notice that the pulses are out of phase. Makes sense because the coils are mounted directly opposite each other. The time between the same two peaks of one waveform is a possible electrical source for RPM. It is more accurate than the eddy current tach and can be reocrded by a computer system if one should have one on said bike.

Enough said for now.

Doug......do you think making a off-bike tester for the stator is feasible?

Hey duuuuude ... I have a rear projection TV I need to have tested ... I should cart it down to you I think ...
Cool.
Srinath.