This is my first post, but I have been on the site many times reading the forums and doing research.
I picked up a 1980 GS550E a little over a year ago. I knew NOTHING about motorcycles. Literally, nothing, and I knew even less about the bike I had purchased, other than it was red and made me smile. After about six or seven good months, I started running into issues.
Long story short (which I'm sure I'll post in the proper forum, sometime) I ended up rebuilding the top end. All new valves, pistons, rings gaskets and seals.
She's running again! I've put just over 150 miles on it since the rebuild. However, I have been noticing smoke coming from the air filters after the bike gets hot, maybe 5-10 minutes of riding it seems to be overheating. It's not a ton of smoke, but enough for me to see it clouding up in front of my headlight at night and it seems to be overheating.
I checked the valve clearance, thinking that maybe the intake valves weren't closing completely, allowing the some of the exhaust to escape into the carbs and out of the air filters. All of the valves were within the proper limits.
I also checked the cam chain, thinking that it could have jumped, causing the timing to change, and again allowing the exhaust to sneak past the intake valves. No go, again, as the proper amount of pins (20) were between the 2 and 3 cam marks.
Besides the smoking, the bike won't get past 6,000 RPM. It bogs down and lags in all gears, but up to that point, it's running great.
Since the engine is getting very hot, very quickly, one would assume that it's running lean, but the spark plugs look as if the bike is running rich.
While I've learned a hell of a lot over the last couple of months, I'm running out of ideas, and frankly, don't want to mess anything up by playing a guessing game with the engine, so I've decided to turn to the friendly and experienced experts here at GS Resources.
Info on the bike:
It didn't have the stock exhaust when I got it. Looks like a MAC 4 into 1.
Wrapped exhaust pipes.
Replaced the air box with K&N filters.
Went up three main jet sizes from 92.5 to 100
It's idling fine.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
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