GS(X)-250E Motarding.

[pete]

Haha don't worry, you got fork seals to get out yet

That's one of the few things so far I *haven't* had to do... let's hope once I'm riding I still don't need to...

[mike-s]

Well got the fork seal out. Am unsure how much heating the thing up helped things. Who knows, perhaps it helped, but more than likely just had me scalding my hand a couple of times on hot aluminium (not really, but i did touch it when I knew better).

However it was more than likely the persuasion of my using a cold-chisel and wire cutters that got things moving along nicely.



The beauty of this happening means that now the whole thing is going to be interchangeable, and i can reverse the changes significantly easier than if I only had the one pair of forks to work with.

Next step is to clean up the seal's home and remove any debris getting in the way of removing/seating the seal and then it's time to dust off the dremel, suck down a beer or two on the balcony and size-up the hole to fit the head of the hex-bolt. Oh yeah,looking forward to it.

Unfortunately only managed to squeeze in an hour or so of bike stuff tonight as I had a lot of domestic duties to ful-fill over the past few days.

[pete]

Mate that's a tough job out of the way, paves the way for easier work next time hopefully! Nicely done...

[Smokinapankake]

Pete,
Are you the only one watching this?
Looks to be an interesting project; I'm waiting to see the final outcome.

[pete]

Pete,
Are you the only one watching this?
Looks to be an interesting project; I'm waiting to see the final outcome.

I was starting to think that was the case actually, so good to see I'm not the only one now

I like what Mike's doing, something unique I haven't seen on here before... will probably leave my "scrambler" wanna-be for dead too... haha

[mike-s]

I was starting to think the same, but I'm not worried. Some may have been put off with the semi glacial pace it is going at at the moment due to my time being spent elsewhere, which is unfortunate, but at least progress is forwards, not backwards.

This is a build thread and is here just as much for the sharing with you lot & associated commentary/appreciation as it is for me to have up to go over later on to give my ego a boost (hey lets be honest here). Also if anyone else is watching then they may be reserving commentary until it is completed, as at the moment it's got the slight step forward along with cussing problems out and trying to figure out other issues. I mean lets face it, it's taken almost a month for me to get around to finally getting that blasted oil seal out.

Phase 1 is just getting it completed, and thanks that seal becoming history, out,the goalposts are a lot closer than before.

Phase 2 is bashplate, paint etc.

p.s. appreciate the feedback.

[Tim Tom]

I'm also watching. I like the idea of making a street bike an off-roader. It looks like fun to me. I don't respond as much to this thread as others but do not dismay, I do my best to keep up with all the build threads. Probably because I wish I had the time, tools, and space, to do my own, but as this is not the case I live vicariously through you guys .

Keep at it!

[pete]

Actually I've noticed with mine that I'll put a few posts up with progress over a few nights, and there are no replies.

Then I'll put one post up which seems to pique someone's interest, and then along come several replies.

The same seems to happen if there's a question.

I think the answer is simply that a lot watch, but only a few post, which is fair enough... I do that myself too just like you Tim Tom

[mike-s]

Progress, one fork is mostly done, all i need to do is add the fork seals and the oil and it's together.

I used my dremel in my neighbour's garage as i don't have a power socket (i need to fix this, but it's quite an extravagant operation to do so) and used a grinding tool to take the bottom out sufficiently to fit the fork bolt thread and head. I gave it a brief test and it doesn't appear to leak with engine oil in there and the fork pumped to try and force any leaks.

I then used a brass mini wire wheel to get rid of any rust and corrosion around where the fork seal and it's retaining clip reside. As it turns out the spring from the GSX is a couple mm too wide to be able to fit in the TS fork uppers, so i've had to make do with the TS springs. I'll just compensate for this a little by putting a bit more oil in the fork upon final assembly.

Comparing the old fork upper with the new one, the new one is longer.


The only thing I'm not looking forward to is the fact that there is going to be a lot more faffing about trying to reach the fork bolt location with the next fork as it is significantly more enclosed. But i'll work something out.

[pete]

That's a reasonable amount of extra clearance there! Nice work

Progress is a good thing...

[mike-s]

Started attacking the second fork today. Unfortunately the head of the valve retaining bolt was stuck in the gsx and i had to drill it out to get it out. It doesn't matter as it is from the internals i no longer need.


I then tried to remove the internals from the TS185 fork, but unfortunately the valve kept turning with the bolt despite my best efforts. So as i didn't need the fork lowers i extended the fork as far as it could go so i would not cut into anything I wanted to keep intact.


Using the dremel (well generic brand drill that does the same job, i.e. spinning at 8k-22krpm) to make the fork lowers suit the larger retaining bolt. I got it to work by using the drill extender as it has a much smaller tip than the drill itself and seemed to do the job quite nicely.



Tomorrow morning I'm going to go out and make some final touches to the drilled hole as i should have gone for a 10mm drill, and not 9.5 like i ended up doing. Fill up the forks (apparently the TS185 uses 137cc of fluid, I'm putting in 150 to 160cc due to the increased bike weight) as well as try and sort out the stuck fork drain screw, be it making it un-stick, or just forcing it out and buying the right sized screw to replace it with.

Oh and i'll be calling the engineering shop in the morning to see if they've done the bashplate today when they said they'd likely do it. If so, i'll be picking it up. Thus far they've had it a week now, it can't be that hard to slot it in.

[pete]

That's some serious amputation of the fork leg there! Glad you got it sorted though, tidying up the hole is easy...

Looking forward to see what your bash plate looks like too!

[mike-s]

Called the engineering shop, not done yet. From what I'm told it's a job that is pretty low priority, so they are going to squeeze it in when they have the time to tool up for my once-off before changing for the next job. I guess I can't complain as paying for it to be done as a priority would probably tripe how much it's going to cost me, and i can do without that.

I finished doing fork #2, which took a fair quantity of work as unfortunately i was running the dremel too fast and aluminium powder kind of melted onto the bit, slowing progress quite a lot . But it got done in the end, which is the important thing. Next i need to take the top caps off, remove the springs and put a bit of ATF fluid in there and leave them compressed & standing over some clean paper for a day or two to ensure there's absolutely no leaks whatsoever. This is easily done and i'll do it shortly. The last thing i want to do is assemble them and find i've managed to acquire a leak for some reason.

Unfortunately no photos aside from this slightly trippy one of the innards.

Another photo to come soon of the forks, including ones of them fitted.

Something else i decided to do while i had access to my neighbours powerpoint was to use a paintstripping wheel i bought for my drill & go to town on the old fuel tank to see just how rusty it actually is. Please note that i wasn't after a perfect strip, i only wanted to take most of the paint off and see what i had to work with. There were some dents that didn't look too bad, they really showed themselves in this naked condition, they will be "mostly" sorted out and i'm going to do what i can to the crease in the right side without getting to bash metal.





There's some at the front left lip of the tank as well as some moderate pitting along the top, but the lower edges are fortunately relatively good, despite a lot of light surface rust, it hadn't eaten in too far fortunately.

I'm keeping the tank in the far back of my garage where it's the driest, and will take to it with a wire wheel proper in the near future. Then I'll give it the POR-15 treatment it deserves & a painting sometime afterwards.

The last thing I'll say about the tank is although i was expecting it all to make a mess, holy hell even though 3/4 of the paint was taken away by the continual 30km/h breeze blowing past the garage, there was still copious quantities of bright blue powder on me, on my clothes and on the floor. At least the next time it'll be 1/100th the mess it was this time.

[pete]

You know that tank actually looks pretty good like that... almost makes we wanna polish and clear coat mine, but I think that'd hurt the eyes in the sun somewhat...

[mike-s]

Going to have a crack at finishing the GSX up tomorrow, but thought i'd throw in a note that I think I've found the topcoat i'm going to use on my tank (and other parts) once i fully prep them inside & out. I'll be using Por-15's Hardnose paint. I'm putting this here for myself to have as a reference just as much as a guide for others.

From reading online it seems that although the guide that come with the paint says to thin it by 10-15% when spraying, even the guys at POR say to thin to 30-40% and to use multiple light coats instead of the two "not too thick, but also not too thin" coats that is recommended in the guide. Which is what i would likely do, given that this stuff is challenging to work with.

[edit]However that being said, this stuff is still nasty to work with and needs to be used with nothing less than high levels of ventilation. I'd likely just do it under my garage door and not in the garage, on a quiet (so no one else is around) low-wind day with a fan cranking behind me to the side to blow fresh air past my face, oh and while wearing a decent filter mask.[/edit]