great progress!  stoopid bird

mr72, there's really nothing I did to the tail other than take the fairing off. Only thing was to take the seat lock cable out off the lock in the fairing and leave it in the mechanism under the seat. It's kinda dangling out the side now, but I can still use it to pop the seat off.

It looks kinda ugly at the back where the taillight is mounted, and there's all sorts of struts and tabs visible that aren't pretty. I think it'd be possible to clean that all up with a little bit of work and make it look pretty decent without the fairing though.

For me, this is only a temporary state, I'll be building a new seat next.

Also, I briefly parked her under a tree to collect some bird shaZam!, but I don't think that's what you're referring to... 

Must be the '01+ seat sits differently on the frame than my '92's seat, because when I take the side plastics off and let it live naked it shows all kinds of wiring and crud, there's a big gap that shows between two frame elements. I can also do a lot of cleanup with an angle grinder and a can of paint if I need to, and I might. But I wanted to see if you had done something already.

I have some ideas but I don't want to shorten the seat since I may still occasionally ride 2-up. And I have a rear rack with top case attached. I need to keep the rear pegs. I guess I need to take it all apart and see if I can first clean up the wiring. That's the most critical problem.

BTW I removed the seat lock and cut the cable housing shorter, used an aluminum crimp end to form the cable into a loop and zip-tied the cable so the loop is accessible just beneath the side fairing. I can pull the cable loop and it pops the seat. Works great. But I need to find a way to get rid of the side plastics.

I decided to tackle the scary bits - cutting and welding the frame. I had a little bit of welding instruction in the past, enough to realise that I might just be the world's worst welder, so I've been a bit hesitant to get started on this.

I bought a seat hoop from these guys, they've got all sorts of sizes: http://mostynindustries.com.au/product/tail-loop-for-frames

Cut and de-tabbed the frame. Also removed all the electrical components hiding behind the battery. With the lunchbox filter installed, there's now plenty of space in front of the battery, I'll move everything there:



Nothing to do after that than buy a welder, screw up a few practice pieces and then start welding the frame long before I'm ready. Came out ok and solid, but don't look too closely at the welds...



Now I need to fabricate a brace to weld across and then start laminating the seat base.

rocking!  Love it

Seat tabs and electrical stuff...

Got working on relocating all the electrical bits from behind the battery box.

I mounted the rectifier at the front of the battery box. Not sure if I'm going to leave it there, it might get too hot. Alternatives are putting it under the battery box, or fabricating some kind of small air scoop to make sure it gets decent airflow. I'll keep an eye on the heat.




When I first got the bike many years ago, I was living in an inner city area, and some petrol-sniffing lowlife got into the secure carpark of my apartment building. The idiot proceeded to cut every single cable and hose on the bike until he found the fuel line and could drain the fuel. The mechanic had to do a whole bunch of work on the wiring harness to get things running again, and boy did they do a terrible job. Everything was bunched up and tangled, so I had to re-tape most of the wiring at the back.

Got things into reasonable shape, and with the help of many zip-ties, got the cables out of the way. Because I want everything to be in front of the battery, I ended up turning the ignition unit on the left side of the bike around so the connector is now at the front:



I also needed a way to mount the seat, so I went rummaging through my parts box for a brace or something to weld across the frame. Couldn't find anything that would fit, so I ended up repurposing the old headlight mounts. I'll cut down the stock rear fender to make a little stubby fenderlet for the back, I'll mount that to those tabs as well and put a small metal plate underneath to give it some extra lateral stability. But I think it looks quite neat:



Just need to put the tank back on now and start fabricating the seat base.

As we say in Cali....   SUHHH   WEEEET!!!

Really like the progress, looks terrific.  Can't wait to see how you put together the seat.

Looks good so far mate. Keep at it!

Rocking on.  That rectifier is going to be toasty tucked in there though

I like how you repurposed the headlight brackets.  USe what you got!  That's good stuff!

Can't wait to see more.

Heat is the killer for the iffy design of the regulator rectifier. Id put it somewhere else.

Bolt it to a nice big piece of aluminium as a heat sink.  I am making a semi air box to go around my lunchbox and will bolt the rectifier in there to ensure airflow the whole time the engine is running.

Thanks all for the input on rectifier placement - I guess it's a bit of a giveaway that if a part has enormous cooling fins on it that it might overheat...

I'm planning to weld a couple more braces across the frame to give the seat pan a bit more support. One behind the battery, and one a bit further back. Will bolt the rectifier to the underside of one of those, that should give it plenty of airflow. Or underneath the battery box, that seems to be a fairly popular place for it.

Spent the last few hours tracing an electrical problem, that wasn't fun. Turned out to be two things - a ground cable had come loose, and the sidestand switch had failed, so I ended up bypassing that for now. Why is it always two different things, that makes diagnosing this stuff so much harder, almost drove me insane.

great job, looks exactly as I plan to make my GS.  How are those tyres handling? What size are they and where from is the front fender?   

carpathianGS - the tyres are Mitas E07, the front is a 120/90-17, rear is 130/80-17. The one on the front is actually a rear tyre. Another alternative that looks pretty much the same are Heidenau Scout K60, a friend of mine has those on his bike: https://johonline.net/suzuki-gs500-scrambler/. One thing to note is that the front tyre needs to be mounted with a tube, the rear will go on tubeless.

Handling is fine, obviously she's a bit less agile now and feels like a much bigger bike. I haven't had any issues, but I ride like a grandma anyway.

The fender is just the stock fender cut down with a dremel and hand files. If you're planing to do something similar, make sure you leave a little bit of meat on the sides of the fender, especially around the mounting points, otherwise everything becomes a bit flappy. I also cut some aluminium tubing to make spacers to lift the fender up by 55mm and got longer bolts.

I cut up the old rear fender today to make a guard for the battery and a new little fender for the back.

First, I cut off the ugly square end bit of the old fender. With a bit of additional dremel work, this mounted nicely behind the battery. I used the existing mounting tabs to secure it to the bike:




And here it is snugly fitted where it needs to go. I'll make some side panels to hide the battery, cables and guard, so this won't be visible once everything is finished:




Cut the rear fender to size, drilled some holes for the indicators and the taillight cable and mocked everything up:




Side view. Still need to weld a tab to the inside of the seat hoop for a third mounting point for the fender, and find some way to mount the number plate:



Almost time to start glassing the seat pan.

that rear tire is gonna hit the underside of that fender you made. Wanna know how I know? because mine did, and still does even with the modified version of mine.. Got a kat600 shock too, and it still can slam into the flat plate I got under there now.

J_Walker - thanks for the heads-up. I did measure clearance beforehand, and I've got at least 130mm all around. The specs I found list the rear wheel travel at 115mm, hope that's not wrong...

If it does happen, I think I could get away with longer dog bones to raise the back a little bit, the new tyres raised the front more than the back.

You'll want shorter dogbones to raise the rear. I have a set on mine, they raised the tail about 1" and I like them!

Very good thread, I'm enjoying the progress and how you've re-used parts!

Thanks ShowBizWolf, that would have been interesting...

Did a bunch of work but didn't take any pictures because my phone died.

- built a fibreglass seat base
- painted the frame and rear fender
- installed rear indicators. Since the indicators are all LED now, I needed to solder load resistors across the indicator wires. I ended up with two 12 Ohm/10W resistors in parallel for each indicator, which works out to 6 Ohm/20W per indicator.
- installed LED taillight

Riding her to the upholsterer with only the fibreglass seat pan was an interesting and somewhat uncomfortable experience. Here she is, patiently waiting for her new clothes:



Only a few cosmetic bits and pieces left to do, but as soon as I get her back with the new seat, she's ready to ride. Woohoo!

Almost done!







I'll be moving across the country soonish, so it'll be a while until I get a chance to do the last bits and pieces.