1981 GS450E Rebuild

[pete]

A little further along tonight.

Firstly, the frustrating news is that I won't get to cleaning the carbs this Saturday.

Given Valentine's is a Monday night and next weekend is a bad weekend for celebrating it, this weekend will be our time for Valentine's, so no carbs.

I'm actually not complaining as we should hopefully have a nice relaxing weekend, and I should be able to get at them next weekend.

The good news is my shims should be on there way overnight again so I should have them tomorrow.

Now back to the bike...

Grabbed the starter motor and gave it a run with jumper leads directly from the car battery tonight and it spins. It sparked quite a bit with the crappy connection with the jumper lead as it's an old set with the insulation missing off the handles, so I couldn't get a good firm connection, but good enough to show me it still spins.

Here it is in all its grungy glory:



And cleaned up with the old nearly brittle O ring on the right and the new supple one on the left:



O ring went on, a bit of engine oil on the pinion, and sat it in place:



For the observant who have been following this thread, you will notice a serious lack of a cam chain tensioner, which was actually there before... turns out the starter motor can't squeeze in under the cam chain tensioner. I can assure you some choice expletives were uttered as I removed the tensioner...

Starter motor mounted:



I seem to have misplaced the lead that runs from the starter to the solenoid at the moment, even though the harness and electrics were all put together, so I wasn't able to bolt that to the post and put the cover on tonight.

Cam chain tensioner back where it belongs, and I also repeated the timing checks and the anti clockwise rotation of the knurled knob and crankshaft to ensure it still operates correctly:



Next up, cleaned up the gasket surfaces on the valve cover and breather cover:



Oil separators back in:



New gasket in place:



Breather cover sat on top:

[pete]

And bolted down with shiny new stainless allen bolts with anti seize on the threads:



Underneath, will need to give the gasket surface a once over with metho before mounting it, but it's pretty much ready:



And sitting on the head:



So next time should hopefully see the valve adjustments complete (as long as I don't need any more shims!!!) and hopefully I can get the end caps on, the rubber half moons in, and maybe even get the valve cover on properly.

If there's more time than that, then onto the harness, coils, and electrics and try to find that misplaced wire for the starter to solenoid connection so I can get the starter motor cover on.

Stay tuned...

[pete]

I just had a good look at the diagram for my 450, and the lead from the starter to the solenoid is black.

I could've sworn it was red, but I took it out years ago, so I'm probably remembering wrong.

I did see a fat black lead there while looking for what I thought was the starter lead last night, so looks like I haven't misplaced it after all

[scottychop]

It's black on mine Pete!

[pete]

Cheers for that Scott, I'll get a closer look next time I'm working on it (hopefully tonight) and should hopefully get the starter cover on too.

[landshark]

Pete,
Do you find that most of the colours on your diagram match up?
None of the wires on my bike match the colour of the wiring diagram i downloaded from bikecliffs site.
Just wondering, thats all.

[pete]

That's actually a good question at the moment, as the only one I've looked for so far has been the starter solenoid to starter lead, and it is indeed black as the diagram says.

As I clean up the loom and check it out, I'll let you know if it's accurate or not.

I suspect the RR won't be as it was replaced with a GSX250 one (according to the writing on it) before I bought it.

[pete]

A little more tonight, but when I say a little, I mean a little.

Shims didn't turn up today and it looks like he's charged me less for postage, so he may not have express posted this time. No big deal there, just have to wait an extra day or two.

So, first things first I dug out the starter to starter solenoid lead and the starter cover:



I'm obviously doing something wrong when polishing the starter cover. This is the second time I've had it shined up only for it to go rusty in no time at all.

I really want it to shine and I don't want to paint it matte black like the cases.

I'm thinking I need to put the Mothers over it after a good buff and polish as I expect the polishing compound on the bench grinder is not actually protecting the finish at all which would explain it.

Anyways, lead bolted to the starter:



Next up, pulled out the end caps for the valve cover. They are polished up but have gotten dusty sitting around, so I will give them a once over once I've got the valves done and valve cover back on properly:



Screwed onto the valve cover and I used thread locker on the screws so they don't vibrate out while the engine's running:



And how it will look once on properly:



Then I pulled out the half moons for the head to get cleaned up and put back in:



But, while cleaning the old gasket crud and sealant off them, I discovered two are busted:



Not easy to see, but both have splits that I'm assuming the sealant used to keep together to prevent oil leaks.

So, I'm now developing a bit of a list of parts I need to get including four new half moons, two choke assembly gaskets for the carbs, and my stripped front engine mount bolt.

[pete]

Anyone have any idea if my you beaut Threebond sealant will be good for putting the new half moons on? It's 1211:



Hopefully the shims rock up tomorrow and hopefully I get time to finish the valve adjustments off which would be real nice.

I can then pull the harness and coils and things out and start cleaning and testing electrical stuff which should be hours of fun.

[hillsy]

Yep - that stuff will do the job. Just go sparingly so you don't have any blobs form (and eventually break off) inside the cam cover.

[pete]

Cheers Hillsy, I'll try to keep it nice and even and thin like I did with the cases and it should be good.

Have you had any time to get yours further along yet?

[SVSooke]

You are going to have to put some kind of harder finish on that cover.No way round that one,the steel will rust without one.Try a clear coat.

[pete]

I was afraid of that... I do have some clear coat here that I was initially going to put on the case covers.

I'll have to put that on the list, at least it's not exactly urgent.

[pete]

Well enough of frustrating no success times... tonight I got a move on! Yeah!

Take note that a lot of the pic's tonight were taken with the flash off. I finally worked out how to turn it off so I'm trying to make the batteries last a little longer because I'm going through them like there's no tomorrow at the moment. Hopefully it doesn't take away from the pic's too much.

First of all, sick of sweating like a pig so set the old pedestal fan up which didn't help a huge amount, but did let me at least wander over in front of it and cool the sweat a bit...



I really need to finish sorting that mess in the corner. The only power point for the garage is against that wall at the back and it's a pain reaching over everything to turn it on and off.

Next up, opened my envelope because these arrived today:



Yes! This meant I could finish up the valve adjustments hopefully, and that I duly did. The left exhaust ended up with a 2.35mm shim with 0.06mm clearance, so glad I decided to get both the 2.35mm and 2.40mm this time around.

So, if I had half moons that could go in the ends of the head, I could have had the valve cover on tonight. Oh well, them's the breaks, hopefully won't be too far away from getting some so I can do that though.

Anyway, I know you can't see from this pic, but this is after the adjustments were done:



So, signal generator time.

Measured both coils and they came up with 67.9 ohms and 66.6 ohms, so I need to find out whether that's ok or not. This is partly for Flaming Chainsaws to see if that helps him at all with his no spark problem.

Also, on that note, here's some bad pic's of how the connections look:



Mounted it up with the oil pressure switch connected also:



And cover on with anti seize for the stainless bolts:



Charlie, if you look closely, you will see there're finger prints all over that right cover now! Not so clean any more!

Moved onto the coils then, and man were they grubby!

[pete]

Looking much better:



I also measured the primaries on the coils and ended up with 4.4 and 4.5 ohms.

Going by the wiring diagram, it appeared the coil with the white wire is for the left cylinder (number 1 I believe), so that's how I determined which side to mount the coils, and that may end up wrong yet:



And that's where it stops tonight.

Can't see me getting back onto it until probably Sunday night at the earliest, but next time I'll start having a go at the wiring harness I think and see if I can't tidy that up somewhat.

If I keep progressing like this I'll be twiddling my thumbs waiting for a Saturday to clean the carbs and paint the oil filter cover! With any luck I'll be able to order my parts next week and get Saturday on the carbs and painting and pick the parts up. If that works out, the week after that should be assembling the carbs and getting ready for that first start. Now I really am getting close...