I enjoyed the last few posts.

I am kinda in the same spot with wanting to fix up my GS500. I can't take them as seriously as others do.

And I do plan to purchase a Triumph Trident or Bonny, or maybe a XSR 700 next year too, for all the same reasons you laid out.

That's new Triumph Trident looks really good if you want a naked bike like that. Bonneville is a whole different animal than the modern naked bikes you mentioned. I'd likely buy a used XSR900 before a new Trident even though I have a closet full of Triumph apparel.

I just want my GS to work. I need to figure out a mothballing regimen that keeps it running without doing carb work every time I want to ride it. Taking months off of riding due to foot surgery and a motorcycle wreck and recovery did not do my gs any favors. When it's working I love it. Unfortunately I don't know how to keep it in that state with the current usage pattern.

Im a very new rider, so the moderate and linear power delivery of the Trident appeals to me over a more jumpy bike.

My other bike right now is a Ducati Monster 600, and at only 500sumthin CC's, it's still very torky and jumpy and intimidating for me as a new rider.

then just quit fooling around with aesthetic distractions n get your GS running correctly. It's about as user friendly when riding as a motorcycle can get.

That said, a new 80 hp triple is not going to be my more easy to ride than your Ducati. On the contrary, I figure the Trident will be a wheelie machine. If you can't ride the Ducati smoothly, a bike with gobs more torque is not going to be any better. Maybe a Bonneville really is for you. Or better yet, a street twin or street scrambler. Those are docile, low center of gravity, reliable, and have rain mode and ABS. Maybe a street scrambler will also meet your desire for a scrambler looking bike. IMHO sell both of your bikes and get one of those!

The monster 600 weighs just under 400lbs and over 50 ftlbs of turks. Plus it's been super aggressively jetted with an aftermarket full exhaust.
Every review I've heard of the triumph trident is that's its real docile until you wind it up a little.

How 'bout a Royal Enfield?
Methinks that should satisfy the torquey feeling without too much excessive wheelying n'est ç'pas?

Totally agree, a RE650 would be a really good choice. Affordable, still air cooled like God intended, with ABS and a warranty.

OK, so good news.

Maybe.

Quick catch up on history. Last summer I got the last of the mods on the GS done and got the jetting and needle shim sorted out at long last, so it was running great and life was good. Then I had foot surgery and couldn't ride any motorcycle for nearly two months. Then I didn't ride it, but I did ride my other bike and wrecked it, broke my same foot I had just had surgery on, and couldn't ride for another two months. Then after sitting for 4+ months I went to ride it since the Triumph was still in repair, and it ran fine but didn't want to idle and would stall at idle. That's when the death spiral began. I think the only problem was bad gas maybe with a little bit of cloggy pilot jets. I put some Seafoam in a fresh tank of gas, rode it a little more, it didn't improve a lot, and then simultaneously the Triumph was finished and winter came so I didn't ride it again for like over a month. When I finally went back to ride it again, I left it on PRI too long, gas ran everywhere including the crankcase, I didn't know there was gas in the crankcase so I tried to ride it and wound up getting the idle all screwed up just trying to get it to run long enough to get home. That was maybe December.

OK, so yesterday I went out determined to fix this right.

Drained the oil and changed it, there was a lot of gas.

Cleaned the plugs, they were black.

Reset the pilot mixture to 2.5 turns out.

Bike fired right up once I primed the carbs again and it idled ... at 7K RPM!!! with no choke!!

So I finally got the idle set back to where it belongs and it runs and idles fine now. I didn't actually ride it, though, due to time. Will test ride today. I think the pilot mixture is too rich since it starts without choke when cold and stalls when I put on the choke. So the plan is to test ride and set the idle today.

With any luck, the seafoamed carbs will hold up and I won't have to pull the carbs to clean.

What I think was wrong was just bad gas. And then I screwed up the idle mixture and idle speed while trying to get it to run before the Seafoam had done its job, then everything went south once there was gas in the crankcase... I think when the crankcase gets overfull and diluted with gas it blows oil past the rings into the cc and with enough gas in the oil it makes it run REAL rich and fouls the plugs at idle, thus my problem.

So perhaps all is back to nearly normal. Time will tell. I really wanted to ride it yesterday but didn't have time, but man it makes a sound I love!

I have to get it going because the tags are expired so I need to get it inspected. That's the goal today, get it to run well enough to get it to the inspection shop, get it warmed up enough to adjust the pilot mixture and idle speed.

Well. Test ride today was a mixed bag.

Bike finally started and ran but only after extended cranking with a few loud backfires in the process.

Then I rode it and actually once I got the idle speed turned down low enough it basically ran ok. But then it did precisely what it was doing before all this. If you let it idle more than a few seconds the idle speed falls to below about 500 rpm and it dies. I can crank up the idle speed to about 3K and it'll "idle" there, but if I get it below that it basically falls until it stalls.

Which would be not horrible news (back to square 1), except that the battery is also not charging. I ran it on the battery tender all night, today it started with fairly long cranking then I rode it like 20 minutes, it stalled one time during the ride and I started it right back up, but now that it's home it won't turn over. So that sucks.

I am going to jump it and get it back up into the garage and then tear it down for real now. The tags are expiring so I'll probably just have to let that lapse. I suppose I'll pull the battery and take it to be tested. Really sucks, this battery has like 2K miles on it, even though it is over 3 years old.

Quote from: mr72 on February 22, 2021, 01:13:53 PM
I am going to jump it and get it back up into the garage and then tear it down for real now. The tags are expiring so I'll probably just have to let that lapse. I suppose I'll pull the battery and take it to be tested. Really sucks, this battery has like 2K miles on it, even though it is over 3 years old.

2k miles in 3 years is not much riding. Do you keep the battery on a tender when its not being ridden? If not, the battery is likely toast. Non lithium batteries don't do well sitting for months at a time.

I really need you to fix your bike so you can go back to posting your GS carb blog post on every carb question thread. Have you tried referring to your own blog post?

LoL. I have to go read my blog post just to remember how to fix these carbs. I should edit my signature to have the actual carb blog post link in it so I can just refer folks to the link.

Well it's not in fact the battery. It's a short in between pads in the commutator in the starter. Discovered this by trying to jump it... Smoke coming out while the starter button is down is a dead giveaway. Put it in 2nd and rolled it a little bit and viola, it started right up. So it's in my garage now. Guess I'll be pulling the starter. Along with the carbs and the tank and the airbox. This isn't making me much happier.

If my GS behaved like this, I would seriously not be feeling the love for these bikes like I do.

TBH I only put about 1,000 miles on each year... I don't ride as much as I'd like to, due to a number of different things.
That being said, I've owned my bike for 9 years now and I've had very very few problems... and I'm thankful to never have ended up with bad fuel. The gas in the oil thing happened to me a few years ago and I dealt with it asap.

Good idea about the carb link in your signature! I continue to wish you luck getting this all sorted. Being frustrated sucks. I wish for you to have a GS like mine that always starts and wants to go and treat ya good.

Quote from: mr72 on February 22, 2021, 05:01:04 AM
Totally agree, a RE650 would be a really good choice. Affordable, still air cooled like God intended, with ABS and a warranty.

I have a picture of an Ice Queen Continental hanging up in my cubicle at work. Was going to be my 'second bike'. But there's not a RE dealer for 100+ miles near me, AND they just don't seem to be good deal new or used. Like yes, $6500 is a fair price for the bike. But you can't seem to find the 650 used at all, and frankly... I can get an XSR 700 for basically the same price. You know the japanese bike is better made and more reliable than the Indian one. I seriously called a few yamasaki dealers this christmas, got quotes for a 2019 leftover XSR700 for $7300 OOTD.

Supposing it does break down, where do you take your RE bike if the closest dealer is two hours away?

Just hasn't seemed practical the more I think about it. But there's 2 yamaha dealers, and triumph dealer in town.

Well, an INT650 and an XSR700 are entirely different motorcycles. I wouldn't worry about the distance to a dealer, but what do I know? I don't trust dealers as far as I can throw them and do all the work on my bikes myself.

I also don't agree that a Yamaha is necessarily a better built or better quality motorcycle than a RE. I mean, KTM and BMW both build motorcycles in India. My Thailand-made Triumph is a far better bike in quality, design, performance, reliability, every measure, than my Japanese bike or any of my dad's three Japanese bikes.

But anyway, in the off chance there is a problem with a new or under-warranty RE that's covered by warranty, then I'm sure the 100 miles to the dealer wouldn't be a game changer to me. But I live in Texas, and around here 100 miles is nothing.

One thing's for sure, there's a lot more TO go wrong on that high-tech WC Yamaha than there is on an authentically-old-school RE. The thing about the Yamaha that rubs me the wrong way is that it's a basic, standard modern motorcycle with goofy looking dress up parts trying to make it look "classic". At least a Ducati Scrambler does a much better job of making a modern bike look classic. But the Triumph and RE both have real classic chassis and the right lines. There's no pretending. Street Twin and Street Scrambler are both pretty inexpensive used since the Brit bike fans tend to think of them as "not real Bonnevilles". I'd still rather have a new RE than a WC Triumph but given the chance to pick either of them I chose a late model used air-cooled Triumph twin. Simplicity and authenticity win out over age. They still made them as late as 2016.

Hey, maybe you should add a Moto-Guzzi V7 to your list. I seriously considered one when I bought my Triumph but in the end they just felt too small for my long arms and legs to fit comfortably. But I see them all the time in low miles great condition for under $4K used.

maybe the used bike market is better in TX.

Here in RVA, even though there's a KTM/Triumph/MotoGuzzi dealer, there is very little used inventory at that dealer, facebook marketplace or craigslist.

You're not wrong, I looked at all of them. And I like them all. If I could get a good deal on a super basic street twin, I think that's what I would want. But I can't. So the Yamaha is appealing.

You view the Yamaha XSR as a fake classic. I see it in the same light as the GS500. It's a modern sport/standard bike (MT07), but with out dumb 'modern' stuff on it. So nice round headlight and UJM ergos, instead of the alien plastic looks all it's japanese contempories have now. And look at the power plant: that parallel twin is modern, it's also WILDLY popular across a myriad of successful bikes (parts bin bike just like GS500).

Well.... I finally bit the bullet and took the GS apart to "fix it right".

Last time I had the carbs apart and evaluated (and changed!) the condition of the o-rings was probably 3K miles ago and probably 4 years ago. Since then I bought the Triumph and basically stopped using the GS. Probably hasn't had more than 1000 miles put on it in the past 3.5 years. I was hopeful that by using only ethanol-free gas in it, that would forestall any short-term issues with o-rings, but I was wrong.

So I ordered a pair of carb rebuild kits and took it apart to see what all was wrong.

The main problem making it not run was obvious to me before I took it apart. I assumed the pilot jets were clogged, and in fact they both were completely blocked. Even if they had been clear, though, there would have still been running issues on pilot because the pilot needle o-rings were shot. One side was leaking fuel from the pilot needle and the other had a cracked o-ring making it like a "C-ring". Who knows why that wasn't leaking.

Also, as I pulled the carbs I noticed lots of fuel in the intake boots. So the bowls were leaking as the bike sat, which explains why it was so hard to start after sitting overnight, requiring PRI. Hopefully only a few CC of fuel made it into my fresh oil since it's only been run once since the oil change. Anyway, my first thought was that the float needles must be leaking but they look like they are in good shape. However, the needle seat o-rings are completely shot. So this adds to the range of problems I was having, including likely inconsistent float level due to leaking fuel.

And the float bowl gaskets are ruined.

Parts are supposed to come in Monday. I guess I'll try to be smart and replace the starter while it's apart. Sure is easier to get to with the carbs out. I'm pretty confident that once I get the new o-rings and seals in and the carbs cleaned up right, it should go right back to working right. I'm going to add enzyme fuel treatment to my fuel regimen in hopes to keep it from breaking down the carb o-rings so quickly. And I also ordered an inline fuel filter, I might see if I can find a way to cram that in there. I just think that with the infrequent use the bike gets, this may be worth the effort.

So maybe next week I will get the old GS back in good working order, but the fact remains that with the limited usage pattern I have, this bike may not be a good choice for me to keep. I keep going back and forth, but the truth is I won't be able to ride it often enough to keep this kind of thing from happening once a year or more. So I might get serious about selling it this spring. We'll see. It still has the very unique combination of power, weight, and hand-built cool factor that would be difficult for me to replace. I just need it to also have fuel injection. Perhaps building a Microsquirt for it might be worth it rather than investing a few more grand into a whole different bike.

Quote from: mr72 on February 27, 2021, 05:46:48 AM

And the float bowl gaskets are ruined.

Any idea how that happened? All the o-ring/gasket problems sounds like over use of solvent carb cleaner but I know you wouldn't do that. 3.5 years of sitting doesn't seem like enough time to ruin the carb other than bad gas/clogged jets. Especially if the bike was used a few time during those 3.5 years. Very weird if you ask me.
Did you use name-brand parts for your last carb rebuild or was is no-name stuff from eBay?

For comparison, my 2006 GS still has most of the originally rubber parts and has gone through many 6+ months periods without use. Carbs rubber bits and fuel lines were recently replaced out of caution during a top end rebuild but they all looked pretty good honestly for being 15 years old.

I got it all buttoned up today. New starter, freshly cleaned carbs, new float needles and o rings and float seats. Dialed in the float height. Once it was all together I pumped the tires up and went on a test ride. Bike fired up instantly and after a few minutes it worked out a stumble at 4.5k on it's own, and now runs and idles flawlessly.

Makes me want to go on a trip to seek miles of gravel roads. Regency bridge. My parents' place out by Castell. Love/hate has swung back to love.

Good to hear your GS is running fine again.

Congrats.