1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Guest]

Pete

The Tach plug you fitted, is that a Suzuki part?

I dont recall on my 400 if there is a lock tab like you have there on the 450 - I recall just unscrewing the tach cable on mine. Looks like a very neat solution though which I would love to use.

Mark

Yup, sure is! Let me know if you want the part numbers, I haven't emptied the bin yet and the packets are still in there

The tacho cable does just screw in, but it screws into the tacho drive which is what I removed in the second photo there. That whole drive is held in by the lock tab and just pulls straight out.

The plug slides in in its place and is again held by the lock tab. Hope that makes sense...

I just did a reverse lookup on the tacho drive sleeve and it seems to have been used on nearly every GS from the 77 400's onwards so I think this will work for you too.

 

[ndaugbjerg]

Pete,
Made some progress this week. I need to paint the wheels and mount new rubber, paint the center stand and swingarm and I can have a roller in a couple of hours. And my 450 has a name now. When I joined the forum and saw all these bikes with names, I thought everybody was a little goofy. But "When in Rome, Do as the Romans do" so my 450 will henceforth be known as "W3". That's an acronym for (Hope you are ready for this) "Widdle Wed Wocket"
Niels

 

[Guest]

Pete,
Made some progress this week. I need to paint the wheels and mount new rubber, paint the center stand and swingarm and I can have a roller in a couple of hours. And my 450 has a name now. When I joined the forum and saw all these bikes with names, I thought everybody was a little goofy. But "When in Rome, Do as the Romans do" so my 450 will henceforth be known as "W3". That's an acronym for (Hope you are ready for this) "Widdle Wed Wocket"
Niels

Nice one Niels! You really need to get Photobucket sorted so you can get some pic's up for everyone to see... I know I really need to see some

And I love the name... hahha... very clever...

I think I'm one of the few on here that doesn't have a name for theirs...

 

[Guest]

And on a separate note...

I had some "fun" yesterday... got about a km from home on the way to work and she started running on 1 cylinder. Bugger!

Pulled into a car park but couldn't see anything obvious so I limped home (all up hill) and parked it. Got the tank off and again nothing obvious so had to head to work on the train.

I got in there last night and checked both plugs, right one smelled of fuel so it was obviously the non-firing culprit.

The voltage was good at the coil and it tested fine (5.1 ohms, Dynatek coil), but no spark.

Swapped the plugs over, no spark.

Swapped the HT leads over, spark!

Turns out the HT lead on the right side has the lug that clips on the plug is quite loose. No idea how it lasted nearly 4000km's like that but there you go.

I have two more sets of parts to make another lead as the Dynatek kits give you enough for four leads, so won't cost me a cent to fix it permanently provided a test ride shows me it actually fires on both cylinders.

And the most frustrating part of not riding to work yesterday is that I need new hand grips. The cheapies on there are worn out already, but I also have found them to be too small a diameter for comfort.

I was going to head to the dealer near work at lunch and find a set, but I'll need to do that some other time now.

My wife and I fly down south tomorrow for holidays too, can't wait! No work for almost a week and a half

 

[surviverguy]

Pete- Are restorations ever REALLY completed?

 

[Englishman]

Have a good holiday Pete.

Mark

 

[Guest]

Good news! Got to take her for a spin up the shop and back today and ran just fine and dandy on both cylinders. When I get more time when I haven't been consuming beer and red wine I'll make a up a new HT lead to be sure and all will be good

Pete- Are restorations ever REALLY completed?

You may have a point there... every time I think yeah I'll just do this and she's done... well that's when I think of something else...

I'm hoping the carry rack will be it though, really want to move on to something new and different!

Have a good holiday Pete.

Mark

Cheers Mark, I hope so! Hopefully I can come back and see some more progress on that 400 of yours too

 

[ndaugbjerg]

Pete,
You've slipped to page 3, that's unacceptable. How long is this holiday of yours going to last? I finally got my build thread started and you aren't here to critique it. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels

 

[Guest]

Pete,
You've slipped to page 3, that's unacceptable. How long is this holiday of yours going to last? I finally got my build thread started and you aren't here to critique it. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels

It's all good Niels, back late yesterday so trying to catch up this morning... have a lot of unpacking to do yet though

 

[ndaugbjerg]

Pete,
With the help of The Wiz, Billy and others, I was able to get a link up to my photo album.
Niels

 

[Guest]

Pete,
With the help of The Wiz, Billy and others, I was able to get a link up to my photo album.
Niels

Nice one! Photobucket keeps crashing my browser at the moment so I'll get to look at some point

 

[Guest]

I s'pose I should put a bit of an update in here...

Twice now I had her go back to one cylinder a couple of km's from home, so I spent about 2 or 3 hours yesterday with the tank off fiddling around swapping coils, plugs, leads, etc. to determine the issue.

I initially thought it was a loose spark plug lead but that theory went out the window after swapping the leads because the issue has always stayed on the right cylinder no matter what I did.

At one point yesterday I feared the Dynatek was having issues, but then all of a sudden I got spark again. I thought it may be heat related but since getting it back together I've rode a number of km's into the city and on errands yesterday to pick up some stuff and then to work and back today with no issue.

Given it ran for about 4000km's up to this point with no trouble I have no idea if it's fixed or not, so I guess I'll just suck it and see and hope it doesn't happen in the middle of nowhere...

And as for my errands yesterday... my hand grips were worn through and on the throttle side I could see the throttle tube, obviously not high quality items!



I've also started feeling the cold on my neck so wanted to replace the neck warmer I had years ago.

So here're the purchases:



And I also have gotten jack of putting the tank bag on and off constantly and have a mark on the tank where some grit must've gotten between the bag and the paint, so I finally found a pair of panniers that I can mount and clear the exhaust:



They also come with triangular colour inserts as a nice touch so you can colour code with the bike:



I also have them mounted a little higher now and so far so good on the trip to work today although one of the bungy cords ended up sitting on the inside of the exhaust and melted a little, so I found a better point for that this avo.

And I did get the new hand grips on yesterday too and they're a huge improvement over the old ones as they're a little larger diameter and a nice soft foam which I'm finding much easier on my hands:



All I need to do is get that carry rack done now...

 

[rustybronco]

All I need to do is get that carry rack done now...

And get rid of those dorky looking mirrors

 

[Guest]

And get rid of those dorky looking mirrors

Hahahahahaa believe it or not Dale I actually like them... they give me a good view behind amazingly enough...

I still think of bar ends every now and then but that would cramp my style in traffic I feel... I don't lane split much but when I do I don't want bar ends stopping me...

Do you have an alternative in mind though?

 

[rustybronco]

Hahahahahaa believe it or not Dale I actually like them... they give me a good view behind amazingly enough...

I still think of bar ends every now and then but that would cramp my style in traffic I feel... I don't lane split much but when I do I don't want bar ends stopping me...

Do you have an alternative in mind though?

Pete I wish I had the vision to be able to tell you what would look good on it but I don't. All I'm good for is paying attention to the finer details.

I'm thinking maybe something in black, not quite as high and possibly rectangular? Dunno..

 

[Guest]

Pete I wish I had the vision to be able to tell you what would look good on it but I don't. All I'm good for is paying attention to the finer details.

I'm thinking maybe something in black, not quite as high and possibly rectangular? Dunno..

Hmmm... now come on Dale I thought you were gonna shoot me a magic bullet!

I went circular mirrors due to the circular headlight, figured rectangular would be out of place... although the indicators are rectangular...

They're cheap crappy Chinese or Taiwanese ones so I'm sure they'll need replacing at some point anyway

 

[Big Rich]

Looking good Pete! Any problems with the foam grips getting wet though? I think that is the biggest concern with those........

 

[Guest]

Looking good Pete! Any problems with the foam grips getting wet though? I think that is the biggest concern with those........

Cheers Rich!

You know I never even thought of that... given she's a daily rider she'll see some rain before too long so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

The hand guards keep a lot of wind and rain off when moving, but stationary's a different story and there's a lot of that in traffic... fingers crossed they don't get too soggy!

 

[john82q]

Usally foam grips are water proof/repellant its the nature foam material used..

I find they get ripped before they wear. good for vibration dampening, if you get tingles in the fingers!

Cheers john

 

[Guest]

Usally foam grips are water proof/repellant its the nature foam material used..

I find they get ripped before they wear. good for vibration dampening, if you get tingles in the fingers!

Cheers john

Cheers John, hopefully that's the case! My hands are definitely a lot more comfy with the foam grips, I think the cheapy rubber ones were just too firm.

One thing I'm wondering though is if I need some 'bar end weights... these motorcross 'bars are very light and I seem to get a a reasonable amount of mirror vibration happening at times. Not sure how the weights would go with the hand guards though... something to think about I guess...