what did you wrench on today??

[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