81 GS550T in Co Sprgs

[cowboyup3371]

Thanks Ranger but I think I'll be pretty happy with the choice. It's actually along the same lines as I was thinking and said in my poll I put out a while back. In fact, it seems others on here agreed too with my choice.

[Ranger]

Sounds good, not sure I recall your poll. Might have had responses during the hours while I was in class so must have missed it.

Hope it turns out good, you should let your daughter spray for you I don't think you'd mind a thick spot of dripping paint on your tank if she's having fun

[cowboyup3371]

Yea, I told her she could paint the tank when we got around to it. But first I have other stuff to do and it might be later this spring or early summer before we do.

[Ranger]

Gonna teach her young so you can have someone paint your toys when you're too old or too lazy to do it on your own huh?

[cowboyup3371]

Although not as much as I had wanted, I still managed to get some things done today. While waiting for my farrier to come to trim my horse, i realized almost too late that the mail had come and maybe I should go check if I received a package (my local post office closes at 1030am on Sat). Sure enough my sample grease fitting and these came in the mail today:



So once the farrier finished it was off to work on the bike. I started by cleaning up the new fuse block I put in and connected most of the wiring. All I have to do now is connect up the grounds:



While connecting that, I found a couple of issues. First, I attached the ignitor to the bottom of the air box how I remembered taking it off. Unfortunately the connector wouldn't reach to the other end so I turned it around. Now I need to figure out how i'll attach this ground wire from it:



I think I will just go to the fuse block mount but am still thinking about that. Any ideas as it won't reach another hole in the air box that I think it was supposed to screw into.

I also found the power wire from the RR burnt so I replaced the connector there but need to figure out a better way of doing things. I guess I may just spend the money on some Weatherpack connectors:





I then replaced the spacer on the rear top engine mount but had problems getting the bolt in.



Fortunately, after submitting a question here I was able to get a good answer and loosened up all of the mounts instead of just the one on the bottom rear. Once I installed that though I realized it was still too loose and short so I decided to run back into town to get a smaller one. I really didn't want to hear it rattle anymore while riding down the road.

Things got a little interesting tonight though as my step-daughter and I started re-tightening the engine mounts. I realized the left side of the center stand was going to fall off my wood stand so I threw the bottle jack underneath and started to jack it up enough to move the block. Unfortunately, the bike fell off the jack and almost hit the ground hard. Fortunatey, she and I caught it enough that no damage was done. I really need to get that rear wheel put back on soon.

I also tightened up the valve cover and the breather cover today and boiled the tops to the carbs for a few minutes. Now I just need to boil the carb bodies themselves, paint the tops and bodies, attach the chain and sprockets, and then get everything else back on the bike. I'll wait obviously for the paint to cure though before doing too much. Hopefully I have done most everything correctly but I'll see in a few days . At least I'm further along than before and once I get it running I intend to give the extra gas money to Uncle Sam to pay off that bill.

Thanks for looking guys.

[pete]

Mate that's all lookin' real good, although the electrics are starting to get somewhat cramped. Hard to do anything about that on a bike though...

I'm expecting a delivery similar to yours in the not too distant future, although I already have a shiny new rear sprocket, but I'm expect a pair of K&N filters instead along with the front sprocket and chain.

Glad again to hear you got your mount sorted and you were able to catch it before it fell too!

[cowboyup3371]

Well I finished painting my carbs last night and will post pictures of those when I get them put back together later this week. I can tell you that my daughter's selection turned out to be lighter/brighter than I really wanted but I think it looks good. I decided to go with a darker shade of the same color on my tank which I will do this weekend. I decided I want to do it as a rattle can project for now due to the costs and will fix it up more in a couple of years or so.

In the meantime, my daughter and I put the rear sprocket on the wheel tonight.



and I found this too that I already posted a question about in the tires section.

[cowboyup3371]

Well, I decided that if I was going to paint my carburetors and the engine covers, I might as well get the tank done too. So tonight, in preparation for going to a buddy's house on Saturday, I began stripping it. The top layer came off pretty good but then I found some interesting things:





Yep, there's red underneath that grey and blue too around the bolt holes. I also found a fair amount of bondo so it looks like I'll have some work to do there. Essentially I think someone tried to strip it previously but did a half-ass job and still left the previous red or blue paint. I say half-ass because there plenty of silvery metal showed through once I started scraping the old stuff off.



Either way, I finished in time to run into town and get my colors I decided on as well as some cheap clearcoat for now. Once Tkent02 gets back to Denver I'll go to his place and shoot a better clearcoat onto the tank. But this is where the tank sits right now. I'll do another stripping tomorrow night and then take my grinder with wire wheel attachment (if it's repaired by then - Dewalt is giving me a warranty repair even though it's 4 years old ) to finish it off before applying new bondo and paint.

[tkent02]

That's not much Bondo, those small dents will be easy to get right.

[cowboyup3371]

That's not much Bondo, those small dents will be easy to get right.

I hope so Tom but what you don't see is a whole bunch of bondo along the bottom edge. I'll probably take my metal scraper to it tomorrow so I can get some of that out of there (plastic ain't doing it).

[tkent02]

I hope so Tom but what you don't see is a whole bunch of bondo along the bottom edge. I'll probably take my metal scraper to it tomorrow so I can get some of that out of there (plastic ain't doing it).

The nice part about working the bottom edge is that when it's on the bike no one can see both sides at once, it doesn't have to be perfectly symmetrical to look nice.

[cowboyup3371]

So while at my brother-in-law's place today, I painted three of my engine covers (sorry but didn't take pictures of those) and worked on the tank. Unfortunately, it turned cold by this afternoon so I was barely able to primer it before deciding to put it away for the day.

Here's it after completely stripping and removing the old bondo:



A previous owner bondo'd pretty much the ENTIRE bottom side of the tank, including that little ridge around it. I think it was because he put in some welds where it possibly might have leaked. So I'll be keeping an eye on the tank for awhile.

When I bondo'd it I only did the few dents that really were bad.



After taking his air compressor hose to spray out any dust from the inside, I primed it with that self-etching stuff but you can still see the bondo markings. Do I need to spray some more primer on it or will the regular paint I'm using (will be dark) cover it okay?



I hope to add the color coats either tomorrow if it warms back up or sometime this week.

Thank you for looking.

[Flyboy]

Nice work there, I can't wait to see the colour go on, keep them coming.

[pete]

Mate that's some good progress there! Like Flyboy, can't wait to see the colour go on

[Buffalo Bill]

Not so fast…You got more work to do.

After taking his air compressor hose to spray out any dust from the inside, I primed it with that self-etching stuff but you can still see the bondo markings. Do I need to spray some more primer on it or will the regular paint I'm using (will be dark) cover it okay?

Now you need to build a heavy layer of sandable primer over all. Then sand that down again. It'll fill in the low spots around the bondo and paper scratches. After that comes a seal coat primer, then the color.