1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Guest]

So, bottom of the left and right sides mostly trimmed and neatened up for the right lines:



Now, for the front of each side, I'm following the lines of the stock duck tail and it kicks out a bit towards the bottom to flow in with the panels that run along the bottom of the seat pan, so I got those bits trimmed down pretty much right, which means these next pic's are the mesh completed:



Except for one minor refinement of extending the size of the hole for the seat lock after checking with the grommet for size:



And that's the mesh all done, ready for glassing.

I'm pretty happy with it overall. It's not perfect, and some bits will need to be refined with a combination of the fibreglassing and putty, but that's what both those things are for, so all is good by the looks.

I had to duck out and do some things and when I got back I wasn't sure if I'd have time to do the fibreglass or if I'd be rushing, so instead I got organised for the spraying of the caliper paint.

Gathered everything I need to paint first up:



Including my 'bar mounted choke adaptor bits:



Then setup somewhat of a spray booth by tacking a drop sheet up in the corner of the work bench and hanging a bit of rope I can tie the bits onto:



So I should be all set now to both paint and do the fibreglassing, although I believe I'll be doing some house cleaning tomorrow so I'm not sure that I'll get both things done, havta wait and see.

All in all, coming along nicely so far!

 

[Woodsy]

hurry up and glass it!

 

[Guest]

hurry up and glass it!

Geeez and I thought I was impatient!

I'm hoping tomorrow, but I don't want to rush it... I just realised that having my birthday on Monday means it's been around 21 years since I last did any fibreglassing... makes me feel old!

 

[Woodsy]

What tail light are you going to use?

 

[Guest]

This one from the CL360 I picked up:



'Tis on all the mock ups I did for the paint and tail etc.

 

[mike-s]

Just had a look through the last few pages, you're trundling along faster than i am at the moment. Lookin' good though.

 

[Woodsy]

i like how your using the stock mounts, is it glassed yet? lol

 

[mlc216]

HEI version 2?

HEI version 2?

The external circuit was required because the signal from the pickups was opposite of what the HEI is looking for. The circuit is an inverter, when the pickup says low it tells the HEI high, when the pickup says high it tells the HEI low. You could eliminate the need for an external circuit by simply swapping the wires on the pickups.

So,

Notice that [in the picture] the black wire on the lower pickup goes to the black wire on the upper pickup. You can cut this wire off right at the upper pickup (red arrow). Now you have two individual wires from each pickup. Fish a new wire through the old loom OR cut off the old loom, add a wire to the group, install new loom OR simply run a new wire next to the old loom. However you get it in there, hook it to the black wire from the lower pickup. And that is it

At the modules;
Hook Black wire to G-pin on HEI module 1
Hook Green wire to W-pin on HEI module 1
Hook Brown wire to W-pin on HEI module 2
Hook new wire (hopefully you made it a different color than the other three) to G-pin on HEI module 2
With any luck, that is all you will need to do to hook up the HEI modules.

If the wire swap on the HEI works then that would be a far simpler solution. If you wanted more juice then use an aftermarket HEI module, like Accel or Mallory, which has a higher current limiter.


All of this is directly from Mr. Riggs at gofastforless.com He's used HEI and TFI modules adapted for many different car and bike applications. I hope it works! Looks like I'm not going to get to test it...

 

[Guest]

Just had a look through the last few pages, you're trundling along faster than i am at the moment. Lookin' good though.

Well maybe... but only coz I got a week off work I have a feeling I'll be slowing down today though as the house needs cleaning... and thanks, so far I'm happy with it, especially as this is the first time I'm doing this stuff

i like how your using the stock mounts, is it glassed yet? lol

Yeah I really don't wanna mess too much with changing mounts and things, I really want to try to keep as much as I can able to be returned to stock. Admittedly welding the rods on the original duck tail framework defeats that, but it wouldn't be too hard to remove them if necessary.

And no Mr Impatient, not yet

The external circuit was required because the signal from the pickups was opposite of what the HEI is looking for. The circuit is an inverter, when the pickup says low it tells the HEI high, when the pickup says high it tells the HEI low. You could eliminate the need for an external circuit by simply swapping the wires on the pickups.

So,

Notice that [in the picture] the black wire on the lower pickup goes to the black wire on the upper pickup. You can cut this wire off right at the upper pickup (red arrow). Now you have two individual wires from each pickup. Fish a new wire through the old loom OR cut off the old loom, add a wire to the group, install new loom OR simply run a new wire next to the old loom. However you get it in there, hook it to the black wire from the lower pickup. And that is it

At the modules;
Hook Black wire to G-pin on HEI module 1
Hook Green wire to W-pin on HEI module 1
Hook Brown wire to W-pin on HEI module 2
Hook new wire (hopefully you made it a different color than the other three) to G-pin on HEI module 2
With any luck, that is all you will need to do to hook up the HEI modules.

If the wire swap on the HEI works then that would be a far simpler solution. If you wanted more juice then use an aftermarket HEI module, like Accel or Mallory, which has a higher current limiter.


All of this is directly from Mr. Riggs at gofastforless.com He's used HEI and TFI modules adapted for many different car and bike applications. I hope it works! Looks like I'm not going to get to test it...

What he says all makes sense, but unfortunately it also needs amplification as the stock pickups don't generate the 1.3 (turn off point) - 1.6v (turn on point) the HEI module needs to trigger it and it seems they only generate something like 80mV.

One thing I did try with all my testing was just to reverse the connections to the HEI module with no amplification and unfortunately it was a no go...

Now having said all that, with the way he describes it there, one side of the pickup coils won't be grounded in that scenario, so that could have a big difference compared to the stock wiring where one side is grounded.

I might keep an eye out for a cheap signal generator on eBay or something and if one pops up, I could muck around with that and see what happens rather then messing with my good one.

Thanks MLC, it might help yet

Oh, and why do you think you won't get to test it? Is that a bad thing or a good thing?

 

[landshark]

To do the heat shield it would have to be flat for the laser cutting, i believe you would need to have a piece of metal cut to the correct length, but bigger than required in the direction you want to curve it. This would allow it to be bent on a machine and then have the excess cut off.
Thats how i imagine it.

 

[Guest]

To do the heat shield it would have to be flat for the laser cutting, i believe you would need to have a piece of metal cut to the correct length, but bigger than required in the direction you want to curve it. This would allow it to be bent on a machine and then have the excess cut off.
Thats how i imagine it.

Cool, that does make sense actually. Now I need to see that pipe to start thinking about it properly... wonder how much bending and chroming would cost? I really need that exhaust...

Oh, and stay tuned... uploading pic's for an update at the moment too

 

[Guest]

Ok, pic's uploaded! Update time...

So, resin measured by weight, so borrowed the kitchen scales. Best guess of what I needed was about 1/4 square metre, so 250 grams resin and a smidge over 7mL of catalyst was what I worked out I needed.

Double checked to make sure the frame was ready...



Cut suitable sized squares of the matting for one strip down the middle and one on each end:



And trimmed the sides roughly in shape and snipped the sides of the centre bit where it will need to curve as well as cutting a wedge shape from the bottom. I sort of cut the hole out for the seat lock as well, but I completely forgot about cutting the grab rail holes out on the side pieces:



I don't have in progress pic's as that would've made it even more painful than it was, as well as getting the camera covered in crap. Needless to say working that matting over the frame and dabbing more resin/catalyst mix on without it moving around was, well... interesting. It did seem to end up ok though:



So that was the first layer on, so now time to let it sit for a few hours while I started prep'ing all the other bits for the caliper paint.

I managed to completely neglect pic's up until the point where I had sanded everything and had put it in the tub of marine clean. Amazingly enough, this grungy looking tub of marine clean is still really effective after having so many bits and pieces through it. It still gets grime and grease off and worked well for cleaning these bits up. This is the same mix I used for the crank cases... months ago!:



I left them in there to soak for a good 15 or 20 minutes, although the actual caliper got probably the best part of 30 minutes for good measure. Then I gave them all a really good spray with the hose while wearing gloves so I didn't get any sort of finger grease on them or anything. I really want to give the caliper paint the best chance of bonding well to the metal.

I then discovered I still had metal ready left over from the last lot of painting I did, so figured I would put some of that to use on these bits as well as it certainly can't hurt. I discovered that it really frothed up with the galvanised steel that I made the choke lever adaptor with too which is in the tub:

 

[Guest]

And once again a really good hose off while wearing gloves, and the middle pic shows you what the metal ready did with the galvanised steel. The paint should bond to that no probs at all!



By now it was time to get back to the second layer of the fibreglass.

More matting ready to go:



I didn't both with any holes this time as I realised it seemed to conform to the shape of the frame well enough that I should be able to cut them out real easy once it hardens.

This second layer went on so much easier than the first as it seems to stick really well to the first layer, and made it so much easier to dab more mix on and get it to sit and stay in place very well in comparison to the first layer.

Once again no in progress pic's, but here it is, second layer done:



So, that means the fibreglassing is done, and man am I glad that's over with! Stickiest messiest crap I've done for a loooong time... in fact probably since I did it 21 years ago...

There's lots extra there I'll use the dremel with a cutoff wheel to remove, and I need to get the seat lock and grab rail mount holes all opened up, but that should be relatively straight forward once it's hardened up.

Any idea how long I should wait for that? Finished by about 2:30pm this avo, so I figured by the time I get painting done in the morning it'll be about 10 or 11am. Should that be long enough to be able to start cutting the excess glass off?

Once I've done that, I can get the blade putty onto it and build it up to make sure it's all nice and smooth and the right shape ready to prime and paint with the rest of the tank and mudguards etc. I still need to decide on colour yet...

Anyway, with the fibreglassing out of the way I was pretty much out of time to do any more, so I got the compressor out and blew any remaining excess water off the parts to be painted and sat them in the temporary spray booth so I can mask them up and hang them in the morning ready for painting.



You can really see in the second pic there what the metal ready does to surface rust and galvanised steel. The bracket joining the carbs was basically all surface rust on top, which is now a nicely prepared surface for paint bonding, and the galvanised steel is also nicely prepared.

So, time for paint in the morning and hopefully cutting off excess fibre glass ready for putty too...

 

[Guest]

I also neglected to mention it's really ended up being an up and down week this week. Heaps done that I hoped to get done, awesome presents for my birthday on Monday, and my wife got offered the job today that she interviewed for last week too which is awesome.

Then of course my parents deciding to tell me on my birthday that their getting divorced, and the real kicker is our house mate's mum fell down her back stairs yesterday and we found out today she's broken her hip. She's 93 or 94 (yes our house mate's a bit older than us), so that's not gonna be an easy recovery as she'll be getting a metal joint in there tomorrow I believe. I really hope she'll be ok actually because she's a really nice lady...

 

[Guest]

And these guys aren't too far away from me:

http://www.pineriverselectroplating.com.au/index.html

Minimum charge $93.50, not sure if that's good or bad, but they say no job too small...

I'm thinking of this for getting a heat shield chromed, but no idea where it'd get it bent up nicely if I got it laser cut with "Suzuki" though...

Also, on the colour topic again, my wife commented that my rear mudguard is a nice colour, which it is... it's the front mudguard off a Kawasaki GTR1000 I believe, so no idea what colour it is...

 

[Woodsy]

fibreglass is looking good, is it painted yet?..........

 

[Guest]

:hand::-\\\

 

[mlc216]

Oh, and why do you think you won't get to test it? Is that a bad thing or a good thing?

Sold my daily chopper, and the guy that bought it wants the motor, frame, wheels, etc from the other project as well. Supposed to pick up an ironhead project soon.

 

[john82q]

umm shiny

umm shiny

Pete,

Can't see you making this heat shield out of anything thicker than 1.6mm (1/16) unless its some sort of bash plate too. ;-)

you will be able to work it round a steel pipe or such with clamps and hammers,. No doubt laser cut with chrome would be the ducks guts.

For something cheaper check out a postie, with an eye to trimin to suit...

john

 

[mike-s]

Bash plate, haha, funny bugger i see

How would you be spacing the guard away from the exhaust anyway? get some custom studs tacked onto the muffler/header?