My new old GS550L

[Steve]

I thought I would need to leave them in longer, but I seem to be getting good results after about 3 hours on the jets and pieces, 6-ish on the carb bodies, and the bowls will definitely be over 24 hours...

Sorta backward on the logic there.

It's the bodies that have the most areas that can cause problems. They are the ones that should be left in the 'dip' the longest, in my opinion.

The jets might not need as much time, as you can easily poke through the holes with a strand of copper wire.
The bowls only have the passage for the enrichener circuit (the "choke"), so not much problem there.

I agree that it's easy to tell one carb body from another, but it sounds like you have multiple dips going on there. I just keep all the parts together for each carb by using a 6-place muffin tin for each carb and dipping the body, bowl and jets all at the same time, all for the same 'day in the dip'.




(no, the slides in the tins do not belong to the rack of carbs in front)

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[jqueen]

Almost there!

Wiring seems to still be good, nothing is frozen or stiff, bike is actually relatively clean.. so hopefully only a few weeks from a road-worthy bike.

So.. 3 1/2 months later (but only a couple weeks work), and I'm getting her inspected tomorrow. Waiting on a mirror to come in, but I believe I only need one in Texas to be legal, so I'm going to get it legal while I can get away from work..

As far as mechanicals, it needed a carb clean badly, 2 new coils (go figure), new tank, flasher, some wiring re-done, replace missing engine mount bolts, valve adjust, fork oil change and preload adjust, master cylinder from a ninja 500 (FYI, they have offset holes for the handlebar perch, so you can't just use a regular mirror adapter with them). Still needs some stuff, but just want-to-do items now, not need-to-do.

Here is the after pic. As stated, it's not going to be a 'restore', but I'm really happy with it so far. You can't see, but the paint is not smooth at all - didn't even attempt to wet sand, and no clear coat for easy touch up.. but I like it.. it is kind of like a flat finish to my eye, but with a gloss paint.

Can anybody guess what the side panel is? The other side is stock, so it's not as interesting.