what did you wrench on today??

[trevor]

Looks fantastic! I know what you are saying about the rear rack....pita

[Baatfam]

Finally got the paint complete on the 1100E. I painted the tank and front fender about a year ago and just now got it back together after painting the rear cowl and side covers.

That rear rack is a PITA to install. You need 4 hands, tiny little fingers and a blessing from the pope to get it all lined up! Anyone that has installed one knows!

Looking good, Ron!

[rphillips]

Yep, everything looks great... One of the very, very few GS1100E's I've ever seen with a rack.

[johnod]

Looks very nice

[alke46]

Looking good, must be ready to sell.

[storm 64]

Looks great Ron. If you do think you might want to sell it. Give me first dibs, seriously.
I have a 82 but I chopped it into a dragbike when I was a crazy young man...
Now that I'm a crazy older man I'd like another.

[1978GS750E]

Looks great Ron. If you do think you might want to sell it. Give me first dibs, seriously.
I have a 82 but I chopped it into a dragbike when I was a crazy young man...
Now that I'm a crazy older man I'd like another.

Sorry Norm, this one's a keeper! I've sold two recently and I'm down to only 2 old Suzuki's now. Of course, winter is on the way and there has to be one needing rescued out there somewhere!

Now, if you're interested in a '79 GS850 we can talk!

[scratch]

My old fuse box was leaking some serious juice, outputs (from 10.4v to 11.8 measured on the output side, lowest at ignition fuse) and went to rebuild it to discover brittle fuse holders and a pile of solder & grime that shouldn't have been there... could have cobbled it back together but, my parts bin turned up a universal 4 blade box and decided to wire it and test it out... I'll need to clean up the wires and fab a better mount plate (this is just mounted to a fit piece of 3/8" ply cut & wedged into the old bracket to test it out) but, the trial really changed a lot of things for the better... all the lights got brighter etc. Coil volts were borderline before, I'll have the tank off later in the week to check how they are now but, for under $10 and some bench time with the soldering iron, it made a hella difference. (yes, I need a 12v blade fuse... yes, there are still a lot of other connections to clean... )

[trevor]

I just have to restuff the seat and touchup the grounds and I think it's ready to roll in the spring.

She's a beauty!!!!

[Shin-Ken 1074]

Had planned to go for a ride last weekend on the Kat however, one slow wind on the starter motor and the battery was dead so no ride Saturday. Put the battery on slow charge for a couple of days and all seemed OK and went for a ride to a mates place. I was telling him about the flat battery and he offered to test the charging output with a multi-meter. Fired up the Kat, meter on and zero charge from the system, only showing battery volts and they were down to 11.9, yikes! HHmmmm, the stator and reg/rec are the original ones fitted from the factory 43 years and 210,000 km ago so our thoughts were the stator was on the Fritz. Not using the headlight would give me enough power to get home, so I thought. Key in and turn, hit the button and nothing, no click at the starter relay and no starter motor action.

From running to nothing, great!

Pushed the scooter into the garage and we started checking things, kill switch to "Run", fuse box, ignition (key) connection to the harness, right switchblock connections, removed the starter button from the switchblock and cleaned copper contacts on the starter button and circuit board, tested the kill switch contacts and reassembled the switchblock. Key on, hit the button, nothing.

Used the meter to check the harness from the ignition through to the starter relay, all good. Put power to the starter motor and it spun up no problem there. Put direct power to the starter relay and it clicked away just fine. Now we were running out of ideas so rang a mate for some advice. Told him what we had done and still no start. He suggested we check the electric panel earth where the reg/rec earth wire is connected to the panel. Bingo, bad earth. To ensure a good quality earth he suggested we install an earth wire from the reg/rec earth wire to a solid part of the frame. Selected one of the airbox mounting bolts and sanded off the paint as well as sanding the electric panel Reg/rec earth mount.

Fitted the new earth wire, reconnected the battery, hit the button and she fired up! With it running we checked the battery volts and then checked charging volts. The system is now providing 13.60 volts. The bad earth had taken the charging system off line over the last few days causing the flat battery and then the same earth point for the starter relay on the electrics panel decided to pack it in so no circuit for the starter relay - no engine start.

So after a couple of hours tinkering she is back together and running well. Will take her out for a longer run on Thursday and then check the battery and charging system again. So far so good.



No start 1 by Max Mutarn, on Flickr


No start 2 by Max Mutarn, on Flickr


No start 3 by Max Mutarn, on Flickr


No start 4 by Max Mutarn, on Flickro start 4 by Max Mutarn, on Flickr

[steve murdoch]

Nice group effort in tracking down the problem.
Any thoughts on what would have caused this "ground" to go bad?

[Shin-Ken 1074]

Nice group effort in tracking down the problem.
Any thoughts on what would have caused this "ground" to go bad?

Hi Steve, two contributing factors for the bad earth.

1) A build up of road grime, dust and rust over many years under the reg/rec earth point. Yes, regular cleaning of the earth point would be the way to go.

2) Suzuki using the electrical panel as the earth point for the reg/rec. The panel is mounted on rubber grommets with only the M6 bolt threads making contact with the captive frame nuts, not much contact area as well as being a good grime trap.

By installing an additional earth wire from the electrical panel to the frame it provides a solid contact point and a good quality circuit, earth problem solved and now the reg/rec is working like it should.

[oldGSfan]

I worked on 3 bikes today, firstly the '83 GS1100E had two issues with the flashers - the turn signal control unit was not supplying ground, and the original 3-pin flashers I had were both toast. Two problems can make troubleshooting tricky, but most of my job in avionics has been fairly complex troubleshooting, so it wasn't too difficult. I bypassed the TSCU with a jumper and put in a new relay. 2nd up was the '66 Norton N15CS; the front brake lever was getting progressively farther away as it heated up during a ride, so I bled it. 3rd was the '03 KTM 450 EXC. I got an LED headlight/fairing combo to replace the AC-powered, cracked-lens original. and decided to do the wiring behind it correctly. The PO did a good wiring job, but there was no diagram for his mods. I installed new switches to fix the inoperative turn signal switchgear. Now it has an on/off/kill starter switch on the right, and turn/horn/lights on left, i.e. normal setup. Plus a sort of hidden master power instead of a key. I decided to make a diagram (work in progress still, using Google Draw) to help out in the future, no matter the owner.

[KiwiAlfa156]

My 650G Katana, has been smoking, worse and worse. When I restored it a few years ago, I replaced gaskets and cleaned up the inlet ports, gave it a hone but didn't swap out the rings, or valve stem seals as it didn't smoke before the top end tear down.

Compression was good hot or cold, and she made good power, but the smoke got worse, on starting and if you gave her a handful. There was heavy carbon fouling on the plugs. I suspected the oil control rings might be stuck. Tried to use solvent to free the oil rings but this had no effect. The smoke on start up suggested valve seals were buggered too.

I got all the parts I needed, and last week pulled off the head and barrels. My plan, fresh rings and hone, lap the valve seats if they looked iffy, decoke the head and valves.

Cleaned the pistons. The ring grooves were full of poo, and the oil control rings were well and truly glued in by oil residue





Out with the cylinder hone, cut about a 40°cross hatch.



Valve seals were like rock. Popped on a fresh set of seals. Fitted the rings. Have used Cruising Image rings before, and they seem to be good quality




Wire brushed the crud off the valves. Got the tungsten carbide burrs out and cleaned up the exhaust ports (I had tidied up the Inlet ports last time the engine was open). The inlet seats and valve faces look quite good, but the exhaust seats looked carbon stained. Lapped all the valves in




Got the scales out and weighed the piston assemblies. 3 of the were in 0.5 of a gram, but I e was close to 2 grams heavier. I relieved metal around the pin bosses, until it was within half a gram.









Just need to bolt it back together