Hello everyone. This is my first time actually signing up and posting after over a year of unofficially using the site for gathering info at different points in my build via Google.  I must say thank you all for the wealth of knowledge. I figured I might as well share what I've done to my own bike.

Here is the bike.









And here is the album showing how it all went down

http://imgur.com/a/CIzFM


This is the first motorcycle I've ever owned. First thing with two wheels and an engine larger than 50cc's actually.
This is all being done on my phone so the formatting might be a little funny. I'll try and cover what the pictures may not show.

Stock air box removed and Uni pods/battery put in its place
Exhaust is just the stock setup cut off with a Biltwell Mini muffler slipped on
Carbs are running 150 main jets at the moment. Had 145's last summer and the plugs were going white.
Removed a bunch of stuff. Center stand, belt guard, front fender, etc...
Home fabricated seat and seat base
Rear chassis fabricated from the other frame parts that were cut off
Club racer whatever handlebars.
Cheap LED tail light and LED signal lights from eBay
Plate mounted off battery box.
Nighthawk black pearl painted gas tank (Honda factory color) spray can job
Random set of aluminum footpegs I found in my shed
Black sprockets and gold chain (one less tooth in the rear)

Future upgrades that I'm sure most people here are familiar with

Full jardine exhaust (headpipes)
Race tech emulators
Rear sets from another bike or aftermarket
Aluminum fork brace
Smaller digital gauges
Ignition advance?
Megacycle cams?
Kibblewhite valve springs?
Long lost big bore kits?

Anyway. I'm planning on posting here a fair bit from here on out. Any comments are greatly appreciated.

Welcome aboard! 

Nice work, not usually into the bobbers but this looks sharp.

How do you like that muffler? And what made you go for the smaller rear sprocket?

Quote from: Tekime on May 14, 2016, 12:24:56 PM
Welcome aboard! 

Nice work, not usually into the bobbers but this looks sharp.

How do you like that muffler? And what made you go for the smaller rear sprocket?

Thanks. Even though the fiberglass packing blew out and I had to remove the internal baffling the muffler is still what feels like a nice quality piece.  Of course the bike is now about as loud as it could possibly be.

Light weight is also a big thing for me. I'm only a 120lb guy so I like to take it as far as I can.
It was also 1/3 the price of a traditional sized slip on.

As far as the rear sprocket goes. With 46,000kms it was pretty much mangled so I needed to replace it anyways. Figured I'd set it up for slightly more acceleration over top speed. Price was about the same or cheaper than getting OEM stuff too which is nice.

I hit a sweet spot with the gearing too. In 6th gear at 5000rpm I'm at exactly 100kph. 9000rpm gives me exactly 180kph and so on.

Cool, same here my first street bike, and barely 130lbs.  I'll most likely go for a Yoshi pipe when I swap, so I don't wake up the neighborhood lol, but want to peel weight off wherever I can. I've gotten in the habit of filling 1/2 tank just for that extra bit of pull, it's actually noticeable to me now.

Hmm.. maybe I'm confused but going down a tooth in the rear sprocket would reduce acceleration and improve top speed. Down in front would improve acceleration. And vice versa. I went down a tooth in the front and it's very noticeable. Really torqued out on the highway though, up in 7,000's around 80MPH.

I've looked at those emulators but might just go for a front end swap, or settle for some new springs.

Quote from: Tekime on May 14, 2016, 04:59:27 PM
Hmm.. maybe I'm confused but going down a tooth in the rear sprocket would reduce acceleration and improve top speed. Down in front would improve acceleration. And vice versa. I went down a tooth in the front and it's very noticeable. Really torqued out on the highway though, up in 7,000's around 80MPH.

My bad. Now I see why your confused. I'm stuck in snowmobile mode. I added a few teeth in the rear.
The ironic thing is you made me second guess myself as I work at a bike shop and a Co worker did up the package for me one morning while I was occupied.

I think if I dropped one in the front now I'd be taking it too far lol.

Gotcha. Was hoping it was just a mistype.

Not bad at all.
You could fab or buy a fitting that has a tail light and a license plate holder and fit it @ the rear of the seat.

That way it doesn't look like "I spent 2000 man hours on this bike and forgot that it needs a license plate".

Cool.
Buddha.

That is sick as fun bags!

How did you paint the engine?

Nighthawk I love what you've done to your GS!!!  And of course, welcome (officially) to the forum 

You'll love that aluminum fork brace when you get one... any plans for a fender of sorts? I went without one for a while and didn't like all the crap that got flung up onto my pipes and that little "shelf" on the front of the engine. Made a couple of custom ones before I settled on a design I really liked.

Still can't get over how simple that seat and tail section of the frame is... super clean and tidy. 

How do those clubman bars get along with your wrists/shoulders/back? Clipon bars mounted under my top clamp are an experiment for me in the future (once I get through a list of other stuff I have going on right now LOL) and I'm imagining that to be very similar to how you've mounted your bars.

I really appreciate the kind words.

The Buddha -  The LED tail light actually came with the plate bracket attached to it. I just never liked the way it stuck out. I just popped it off and jammed it into the battery box. I think I was afraid of it sagging down and getting nailed by the tire lol. But in the event of a nicer looking rear shock I might do it differently.

KayneArgand - This one was teal with white wheels. Gloss black engine right from Suzuki.


ShowbizWolf - My most noticeable problem with having no fenders is how quick you can get wet. I mean riding in the rain is going to be wet no matter if you have fenders or not but hitting a puddle the size of a loonie is enough to make a small mess on my jacket/helmet. And yeah the spatter on the front of the engine/exhaust is a minor headache too but I'm barely bothered by either of those things overall.

Seat is kept on with velcro actually. Forgot to mention that in the write up. I wish I could've worked the key release setup into the new seat but the velcro works perfectly for me.


The handlebar situation was interesting. I originally mocked them up in a slightly more "towards me" setup and something never felt 100% about it. So then I tried them a little bit on the "thrown out" side and right away my back felt very unhappy.  Much worse than the first try.
So then I ended up filing away some material from the top corners of the triple tree in order to set them up perfectly parallel to the forks. For whatever reason that setup felt very natural for me so I kept it that way.
It's worth mentioning again that I'm only 5'5" and 120lbs though.

I've actually thought about clip ons as well though just because with the bar end mirrors it's kinda wide. With clip ons and only one mirror it would be so much easier to walk around the shed. Lol

With the stock seat I needed a lowering kit but after chopping it up and fitting a seat 1/5 the size I don't. Running lowering links backed up to the stock height now but on the bright side this may give me options for fitting a nicer (often longer) rear shock.

Another thing I just thought about is someday I might as well get a pingel petcock too. I have on quite a few occasions had the bike act like the tank was out of fuel while doing extended high rpm runs. When this happens right after passing a line of traffic it can be annoying.

I'm gonna go to bed now and think about getting a real keyboard.

Thanks for posting more info about your adventure with the bars!! I'm 5'7" and about 130 so hopefully when I get around to putting on the clipons I bought, it will be comfy for me. I am really glad you found a handlebar setup that works for both comfort and looks 

And velcro... that's pretty darn clever. 

Quote from: NighthawkNFLD on May 16, 2016, 08:05:41 PM
I really appreciate the kind words.

ShowbizWolf - My most noticeable problem with having no fenders is how quick you can get wet. I mean riding in the rain is going to be wet no matter if you have fenders or not but hitting a puddle the size of a loonie is enough to make a small mess on my jacket/helmet. And yeah the spatter on the front of the engine/exhaust is a minor headache too but I'm barely bothered by either of those things overall.

Seat is kept on with velcro actually. Forgot to mention that in the write up. I wish I could've worked the key release setup into the new seat but the velcro works perfectly for me.

Ain't the the truth about no fenders.. literally makes riding in even the slightest bit of water unbearable.

I will admit, I am not by any means a fan of street fighter style bikes. Just not my thing, but you've done a pretty nice job here man. my only concern is how square your rear tire is .. do they not make roads with turns where you live? =P

sweet exhaust btw, that thing looks loud as the dickens.

Thanks again people. I actually tried to get an exhaust video for you tube yesterday but got pulled over for speeding on the way out of town.  Good thing I'm not on a high powered bike lol.

About the rear tire. I have to blame the previous owner/owners for that. This summer I'll be getting a round tire. Might get a katana wheel and fatten it up as well if money allows.

Quote from: NighthawkNFLD on May 17, 2016, 08:11:31 AM
Thanks again people. I actually tried to get an exhaust video for you tube yesterday but got pulled over for speeding on the way out of town.  Good thing I'm not on a high powered bike lol.

About the rear tire. I have to blame the previous owner/owners for that. This summer I'll be getting a round tire. Might get a katana wheel and fatten it up as well if money allows.

getting caught for speeding on a GS500... haha, was it through a school zone?

Yeah the speeding ticket was on one of those roads where the limit is 60kph and you could do over twice that safely. But anyways. I found myself in a little tucked away spot a few minutes ago and I decided to lay the phone down for a sound clip.

For the record the only time I usually hit really high RPM is out on the highway in 5th and 6th gear. I don't ride like this around town.

Now I have a question about jets. I know how much information is available on this subject (a ton) throughout the forums and the Internet but I've run into something outside the normal range.

After finishing the build I had the chopped off exhaust and the uni pod intake setup. Nothing has changed here. I screwed in some 145 main jets and found out a few days later my spark plugs were white as chalk.  I've since changed them out to 150 mains and the plugs a few days later were a nice golden brown color. Everything was fine and still seems to be. But now my plugs are what I'd call a very light brown. Almost beige.
I'm just wondering if I should  try out 155 main jets or should I stop where I am now and call it good enough?
Thanks in advance.

Hi Nighthawk. Your bike sounds good! What'd you end up doing with jets? Or did you do anything? I've been working on getting my bike to run smoothly the past few weeks, and am curious what you came up with. Right now I've got a K&N lunchbox and the muffler's been chopped off (thanks to PO), so I'm not sure what I want to do about my muffler/jetting situation -- or if I've even got enough header left to fit a slip-on or anything for that matter lol.

This is the thread I started: http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=70709.0

tyre combo looks super odd to me but i like it man  short tail looks so good on them.