I already have a 2000 GS500E, but I found a steal on Craigslist and wound up expanding the fleet to include a 2005 GS500F.











The good: Cheap. I got it for $1k with a box of "extra" parts. Runs. Decent shape. Newer than my current bike.
The bad: It was neglected. Hasn't been run in over a year. It was dropped in a low speed crash. Comes with a box of "extra" parts.


I won't say abused because it fell over and broke a turn signal and scuffed up the cowl and fairing, but it doesn't run as well as my 2000. The 2000 runs like a top, so I listen to the 05 and know something is off.


The previous owner rode it over, so it worked well enough to get him a couple miles but he couldn't get it to idle without the choke or it would stall. I still paid the man and took the bike knowing it would take some time and possibly $$ to get it to where I would trust it as my primary ride. I shot a video so you can hear and see what I mean. I don't know what it is, but it definitely ain't right.


https://youtu.be/xz-LZezKxWY


That was just a quick video to try to capture the sound. I hear this occasional tic/clack while its idling and it idles very rough.


Later, I was able to adjust the idle to keep it running, but it still randomly dies. That clack is generally followed by a drop in RPM which drops to zero occasionally.


Where the idle is set now, it hangs pretty often, so either its 1,100 or 4,000.


On top of that, it doesn't seem to be charging the battery. The seller told me he had to jump it to get it over, but the battery in it was purchased last year. I swapped in the battery from the 2000 to get it started. I put the dead one in the 2000 and jumped it, let it run and it seemed fine. I don't think the battery is bad. I'll keep it in the 2000 and see in the morning.


There's those two things and a few other odds and ends.

So it begins...

The box of parts had an entire upper cowl in it, and the one in the photos only had a crack from the hole where the turn signal goes through to the edge of the cowl. Maybe 2". Don't know why he felt he needed a new one of those and he kept the scuffed up fairing.That will probably wind up in the for sale thread. His invoice was $220 for it and he never even opened it.


He must have planned to do an oil change, because he gave me 5 quarts of oil and a filter...


There's also a bunch of those kits to replace all the bolts with blue anodized farkle. Meh...


I just found a new stator, magneto cover gasket, and exhaust pipe gaskets...the plot thickens.

Looks to be in pretty good exterior condition. I would do all the normal maintenance things since you think its been neglected. Do the oil change you think the PO was gonna do, check the valve clearances, etc.

Ahh awesome!! Congrats on the new addition chrisafitz!!! Thank you for sharing, I'll be watching this thread 

Haha blue anodized farkle... 

Quote from: ShowBizWolf on November 07, 2016, 02:15:24 PM
Ahh awesome!! Congrats on the new addition chrisafitz!!! Thank you for sharing, I'll be watching this thread 

Haha blue anodized farkle... 

I have blue anodized shorty levers, and blue anodized valve stem caps lol. I wouldn't replace every bolt with it, but farkle has its place in my book, haha.

Absolutely!! Different levels of bling 

In my experience metallic valve stem caps always seize to the valve stems.

Be sure you grease em.

Quote from: Watcher on November 08, 2016, 08:03:28 AM
In my experience metallic valve stem caps always seize to the valve stems.

Be sure you grease em.

Well, they have black plastic threaded inserts. They are basically a tiny blue metal tube with a slightly smaller plastic tube glued to the inside of it.

I filled up the tank with clean gas and some Seafoam, and got a chance to take it out for a good ride of about 20 miles.


I was able to get the carb adjusted so it idles well, and just occasionally stutters but doesn't stall when warm. I haven't taken anything apart yet, but this shows promise. I think it had some really bad gas.


It still has a charging problem, but I put it on a tender and it's good for now. The ride didn't drain it to the point where I ran into trouble.


After the long ride, I pulled it in to the garage and let it run a bit to look for leaks and found that there was some light smoke coming up. The left cylinder has oil on it, but it was dark out and I didn't pull the plastic off to hunt it down yet, but it was from the top.


This is now venturing into the type of work that I've never done before...so it looks like this winter will be an adventure.

I don't know how to quote on this board...


As for the farkle, yes there is room on the bike for some, but there is also over the top. I used blue bolts for the license plate.


It was 70 degrees and sunny in the middle of November. That is not common here. It was really cool to walk into the garage and say to myself "which motorcycle should I ride to work today?"


I rode the old reliable to work, and took the new one out for a ride afterward, so both bikes got some usage.

Quote from: Watcher on Today at 09:04:53 AM<blockquote>

</blockquote><blockquote>
</blockquote><blockquote>Why does it always look messed up when I preview/post then? What am I missing?</blockquote>

Quote from: chrisafitz78 on November 18, 2016, 09:57:53 AM
Why does it always look messed up when I preview/post then? What am I missing?

I'm not sure what issues you're having...  It seems pretty straightforward when I am doing this.

Thanks for the help on quoting. In the video, when you hit quote you get a different editor than I did.  You see all of the UBB tags, like you are editing in a source mode. That isn't what happens to me.


I see this WYSISYG editor that hides all the tags, but when I do use the editor tool to toggle, it duplicates all of the tags and replaces "quote" with "Blockquote" and that messes up my reply. If I try to reply in the WYSIWYG editor, it puts my response in the quote, not after.
I guess I'll have to manually fix in source mode every time... I can do code, I just don't like to. Too much like work.

I can't interpret a lot of what you said since I don't know coding or source language.  It is odd that you get a different editor than I am.
Maybe a browser setting?

I use FireFox and I know I fiddled with some settings but nothing of major consequence.  Just plugins and permissions and such.

Quote from: Watcher on November 18, 2016, 12:01:55 PM
I can't interpret a lot of what you said since I don't know coding or source language. 

Yea, I do work with code, so I'm more familiar with it. It's part of my job.

That's probably why I didn't have the patience to monkey with it here... :lol:

QuoteIt is odd that you get a different editor than I am.

I just found a little checkbox in my account settings that said "Show WYSIWYG editor on post page by default".



Unchecked. Saved.

Works fine now. Mystery solved. Thanks!

It was really irritating that it kept replacing the "quote" tag with "blockquote", but that is fixed now too. It's clearly a bug, but it isn't my software, so I'm not going to be bothered to report it... at least not unless I'm drawing a salary.

Good find, I'm sure this will help others as well.  You can't be alone in that experience.


Ugh, I know we're getting way off topic here but I am curious what the nature of that editor is.  Why would someone use that instead of the default layout?

Quote from: Watcher on November 18, 2016, 01:23:04 PM
Good find, I'm sure this will help others as well.  You can't be alone in that experience.

Ugh, I know we're getting way off topic here but I am curious what the nature of that editor is.  Why would someone use that instead of the default layout?

It's raining, I don't feel like working even though I'm stuck here, and I have no news on the bike. So what the hell... it's off topic, but it's my thread...ha ha!

If it isn't obvious, WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get" and in the context of the software world that means that you use tools like editor buttons to dynamically change the look of the content rather than having to use "code" and wrap tags around the content that you want to make changes to.  You "see" your changes as you are editing. Think of it like this, "Word" is a WYSIWYG editor. If you want to make something bold, you highlight it and click bold, and you see the text is emboldened. Easy.

The regular editor does not show you the result dynamically, so you have to "toggle" between the editor and the viewer mode. The code editor would make you "wrap" the text you want to be emboldened with the appropriate code and then you'd switch to view the result.  For example:If I wanted to make text bold, I would type this into the regular editor: [b]BOLD[/b]

The "b" and "/b" are the code that tells the app what to do (bold) and do that to everything between the begin and end tags. Every text decoration has a specific tag. I would then have to toggle the editor, hit preview, or post in order to see what it will actually look like. In that editor, what you see is not what you get.

The "bug" I found in this board's application is that in the code-based editor you used, it inserts the right tag to create a quote: [quote]quoted text goes here[/quote]

The WYSIWYG editor uses the wrong tag, it tried to use the HTML code <blockquote>quoted text goes here</blockquote>

I was getting frustrated in my original post because I KNEW that blockquote wasn't the right tag, but I didn't know that I could turn off that editor, so I just got annoyed because without being able to edit the code I didn't have any way to make the text look right. I was at home, so it was easier to complain than to dig around to figure it out.

Now that I'm at work, I may as well dig in to app, find the code, find the bug...and normally I would create a report and an engineer would write a fix and we would schedule a maintenance window to release a new version . That may annoy me MORE now that I know it and can't do anything about it.

Who is tech support around here?  I have a bug report!!!!

Back on topic:

Quote from: qcbaker on November 05, 2016, 07:23:25 PM
Looks to be in pretty good exterior condition.

Now that I know how to quote, I'll respond. 

I only took pics of the left side for a reason. It was laid down and the fairing and cowl are scuffed up and the right front turn signal is broken off and dangling. That part was NOT in the box.

consider a thorough carb cleaning. i had always "dunked" mine for 12 hrs. besides with winter upon us, youre not under that much pressure.
Aaron