1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Suzuki_Don]

Hi Pete, to test the solenoid just rest the metal body of the solenoid on the negative post of the car battery and touch the yellow/green wire on the positive post and the coil should pull in the solenoid. You probably know how to do this, but it beats mucking around with meters.

[pete]

Cheers Don, that's pretty much the plan, but I want to make sure I don't have 0 ohms resistance (dead short) so I don't blow the car battery up by effectively shorting the terminals...

[Leigh]

This is making me grin, Pete..
Nine years of staring at it and all of a sudden you get the wind up and there's no stopping you.

Good stuff, mate.

[pete]

Mate it's happening alright! Like George Costanza's smoking... I can't stop now!!! (There's a Seinfeld moment for everything isn't there?)

And tonight, I got to put power to the wiring harness for the first time! Yeehaa!

So, first off, the harness pic's after finally working out how to route it thanks to Charlie and SVSooke's help...

The main harness goes under the lower triple clamp and the instrument wiring goes over, all on the left side of the steering head:



Main harness and gear position indicator go over the bar where the tank bolts, then under just before the coils. You can see the branch in the main harness also goes under the cross piece just in front of the one the tank mounts to and goes over to the right side:



The first thing you'll notice is that I really should have painted my lower triple clamp, ugh. However, this sort of shows how the instrument wiring goes over it to the left, whereas the main harness goes under, also to the left:



At this point, I took a break from running the harness to test my starter solenoid.

No pic's, but I measured the resistance of the coil and it was just over 9 ohms, so I was happy to give it some juice without fear of shorting the car battery out.

Body of the relay on the negative terminal and yellow and green wire on the positive and I hear "click", nice one. One working starter solenoid...

Then, seeing as I can't find the bolts to mount the electrics plate properly, I just sat it on top of the battery box for the moment. You can see I hooked a temporary ground up to the starter solenoid bolt there also:



Right side's a little messy as that's where all the plugs are for the left and right control wires to come through as well as things like the gear position indicator. Both sets of control wires should come through the right side, but I only have the right control mounted at the moment as it's the one with the starter button and kill switch:



This is pretty much where I stopped trying to route them properly for now, and also shows where the signal generator joins the main harness:



Three plugs I can't seem to identify from the diagram at present:



And signal generator cable routing under the right case cover:

[pete]

Had a quick look over to make sure no positive leads would be touching any earths, then hooked the car battery up with jumper leads and turned the ignition on to see a neutral and oil light for the first time in lots of years



So, I intended to do three tests tonight: igniter, starter solenoid, and gear position indicator. I managed to get two done...

I couldn't do the igniter test because I appear to have thrown my old spark plugs out... sheesh. Oh well, I'll be getting a set when I pick up the carb choke assembly gaskets and my cam cover half moons.

So, next up the starter button definitely clicks the starter solenoid, and also registers continuity across the posts for the starter circuit, so that should be good to go.

And, finally I disconnected the gear position wiring and grounded each pin to see the numbers 1 through 6 light up, so providing the sensor itself grounds them properly when changing gears then it should be working properly also.

That's it for tonight, not sure what to do next now until I get time to clean the carbs up...

I'm seriously contemplating a custom harness though as the diagram is probably somewhere around 75% accurate with wire colours, but the ones that seem to be wrong are the individual bullet connectors, not the six and nine way connectors that you can't get wrong...

[pete]

Oh, and Leigh, it's definitely making me grin too

[SVSooke]

Very happy to see that I helped in some small way.Your triple comment is why I'm painting everything I possibly can.

[pete]

You definitely helped indeed, and thanks again

At least by the time I get the headlight on you won't see the lower triple clamp... still looks ugly in that pic tho

I'm liking your painting everything though, it's all lookin' real good and should continue to do so for years to come...

[pete]

Well, I managed to get some time to do the horrid carb clean today, and I also picked up some new spark plugs.

I still have bits and pieces of the carbs to clean, but they're all the non soak type items that just need a once over, today I just concentrated on the bodies, jets, float chamber, etc. that have the gummed up old fuel in them that is potentially blocking passages.

So...

Got the portable gas hotplate out along with a cheap stainless steel strainer, saucepan, morning fresh detergent, and bucket for the soapy water:



Some random before pic's to help me put things back together and also show the state of the O rings and why they should be replaced:

[pete]

So I mixed up the same concentration Don used which is 2:1 Yamalube to water, which meant the whole bottle of Yamalube and 500 mL's of water, and in went the left carb body to start with:



With the size of the saucepan and quantity of solution, I had to do this in four parts. Left carb body, then left float chamber and other stuff, and repeat for the right.

As you can see, solution not even boiling yet but definitely doing some work:



So, while that started to boil away, grabbed out the oil filter cover:



And gave it as good a sand with 240 grit as I could:



Rinsed it off and let it sit to dry while I pulled out the left carb body and whacked in the other bits and pieces from the left carb.

Freshly out of the solution:



I let it cool for a bit, then cleaned all the solution off in the soapy water, and blew all the water off with the compressor.

I then squirted carby cleaner through every hole and orifice I could see and made sure carby cleaner came out the other end of the passages etc. Blew it dry with the compressor again and it all looked nice and clean and it appears all passages are nice and open.



While I was waiting for the carb body to cool, I squirted some metal ready on the oil filter cover to get the surface nice and prepared for the paint. Let it sit for a good 15 minutes before rinsing it off:



At this point I was able to pull the left carb bits and pieces out of the solution and get the right carb body going.

Then I repeated the soapy water, compressor, and carb cleaner squirting on all the left carb bits and pieces.

Then I got the first coat of Black Velvet on:

[pete]

I was then able to get the right carb body out and right carb bits and pieces in.



I'm glad that was the last lot because you can see clearly there how much crap the solution has gotten out by how dirty it is. You can't even see any of the parts in there!

And while those last bits were going, I did the soapy water, compressor, carb cleaner thing with the right carb body.

And also got my shiny new spark plugs gapped so that the 0.6mm feeler guage was just a little loose in them:



This now means I can test for spark when I next get a chance too.

By this stage the right carb bits and pieces were ready, so once again soapy water, compressor, and carby cleaner to finish them off.

I now have the two carb bodies, various jets and internal bits, float chambers, and choke bodies cleaned ready to go:



And that sticky feral stuff whatever it was on the inlet side of the carb bodies is gone too:



And there we have it, makes me a happy man tonight

So, tomorrow afternoon I have to spend the whole 5 minutes to put the second coat on the oil filter cover, which means the oil filter can go in ready to fill with oil.

Then, this week I should be able to test for spark and start assembling the carbs.

I haven't gotten any stainless allen bolts yet, but I'm not too concerned right now as the screws all came out dead easy after a liberal application of WD, so I can reuse them all for the time being as none were damaged.

I can get stainless ones later when I have some time to chase them down.

The only thing I can't assemble on them this week is the choke assemblies as I don't have the gaskets yet, but hopefully should be able to pick them up next Saturday along with the cam cover half moons so I can put the valve cover on finally.

All in all, a good days work I feel

[SVSooke]

Yeah even my relatively clean carbs made the Pine Sol I used pretty nasty.Even though my carbs seemed to be working good the new Oring kit was definitely in order.

[pete]

The O rings on the float chamber bolts were like sticky plastic. I had to use a razor blade to get them out and as they came out they basically cracked.

I'm still impressed at how clean they came out.

It's one thing to see everyone on here cleaning their carbs and post up pic's etc. but it's something else entirely to see the results for yourself.

I just need to make sure my fuel tap is all cleaned up when I drain the tank so they don't get clogged up again.

[pete]

Got some more done today.

Second coat on the oil filter cover done early this avo', and unfortunately it's just shown up bad prep work yet again:



This paint drives me insane! It's good stuff, but if your prep is not absolutely 100% perfect, it will kick your butt. I'm going to leave it though and touch it up later on as I don't want this to delay the first start up.

I then ducked down to the local auto store in the hopes of getting the replacement engine mount bolt, some stainless allen bolts for the carbs, and a couple of clamps for the intake boots. I remembered today that one of my clamps for the intake boots was too large and just sort of floated around, so I need to replace one and am probably better off just replacing both.

Only thing the guy had for me today though was the engine mount bolt and lock washer for it, better than nothing!



Only difference to the Suzuki ones is that the head is 13mm instead of 12mm and the lock washer is silver instead of black, big deal.

So, tonight I wanted to check for spark before I did anything else.

First thing I did was check resistance from the coil to the spark plug cap looking for around 20K ohms. Left side shows me 21K ohms, right side shows me infiinite. Bugger.

The right cap was basically not even touching the wire in the HT lead, so I'll need to trim it back and possibly replace the cap. If I'm doing one I might as well do both, but no idea how much they are.

Not a real good quality pic but it might show what I mean:



So I figured I'd test for spark with the left plug anyway, but no joy. Disconnected the signal generator, ignition and kill switch on, hooked up to the car battery.

Negative lead of the multimeter in the black/white of the igniter, then tried the positive onto the brown and then green/white wires that come from the signal generator, but no spark from either wire. Had the multimeter on 200 ohms then continuity hoping it would generate the required 1.5 volts.

At this stage, I have no idea if my testing is flawed or if my igniter or something else is toast. Not stressed about it at the moment, early days yet and I still have a lot of disconnected wires on the harness too.

Anyways, just for fun I screwed in the rear brake light switch and hooked it up:



So, moved on to the engine mounts once again.

Got the trolley jack out with a block of wood on top and used that to jack up the motor from the sump cover so I could get the left front engine mount bolted in properly as the way I had it was making the motor lean to the left a little.

That allowed me to get the left front mount sorted and torqued up properly (double checked torque setting and no stripped threads this time).

I was then easily able to get the right mount torqued up and get the front of the engine bolted in properly finally.

I slipped the sprocket on the drive shaft and did what's been suggested to me to get a straight edge and make sure the front and rear sprockets line up. The only straight edge I have is a level, so I used that and it appears that they line up, so I finished torquing all the engine mounting bolts back up again.



A little detour from the normal programming saw me clean up the old exhaust bolts so I can use them to mount the old exhaust for the first start up. They still look feral, but much better than they were. I'll replace them once I get the new exhaust sorted:



And so onto the carbs...

New O ring on the needle jet:



And on the pilot air screw:



And on the float bowl plug:



Apologies for the horrendous blurry pic's tonight, hands were a bit shaky for some reason.

[pete]

Main jet back in the float chamber:



And plug back in:



Pilot jet in:



And last thing for tonight was the pilot air screw going in:



Got both carbs to the same point so I know exactly where I'm up to.

For the moment, the pilot air screws are seated, but I will wind them back out the number of turns I noted earlier at some point before the first start.

Valentine's Day tomorrow, so don't expect to be back into the carbs til probably Tuesday or Wednesday night.