1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Guest]

I know the feeling, just when I think I have made up my mind as to what clothes jennifer is going to wear, I see something else that looks like it may work well, and I like, so still undecided, maybe I should stop reading the appearence section and oogling over Larry's work until I am done.
Good luck with the welding, just keep at it, you will crack it in no time, before you realise it.
Just remember, arc welding is exactly that, you are earthing the base metal and supplying positive current to the rod and then bringing the two close together for the electricity to arc across, and in the process melt the metal, which then fuses together, kind of like a spark jumping the sparkplug gap, for want of a better example.
So keep the 1 or 2 mm gap between the stick and the job so the arc can sustain and do the work of fusing the metal, no contact is the key, then you are just creating a dead short, not an arc, strike to get the juice flowing, then back the rod away 1-2mm from the job and maintain that distance, and if it keeps sticking, turn up the juice a little bit at a time.
A bit of practice and you will hack it in no time.
Oh, and don't forget to wear safety goggles when you chip away the slag, that **** is hot, a piece in your eye, and you will know all about it, it fuses onto your eyeball and they pick it out with a needle, ask me how I know?

Yeah I'm way confused on colour at the moment, but I'm not rushing to decide either... yet anyway

As to welding, well it's done, just getting pic's uploaded now (lots of them). I reckon it's pretty crappy, but it's holding together so I'm happy enough with it as a first attempt.

And ouch on the slag! That sounds like something I'd like to avoid... so come on, how do you know

Choosing a colour,remember that.Ask my wife how many possible colours I thought about.Drove the woman crazy,myself to come to that.The colour I ended up with is just the last one I liked at the time to get paint.

I remember the saga well.... I still think you're lucky it didn't end up purple

 

[Guest]

I managed to get all the welding of the duck tail frame done today as well as getting the tank lining done.

The frame work seems to hold together ok despite the fact that I'm a crap welder, and the tank lining was done per instructions, so fingers crossed it cures ok and solves my rust problems.

I also got onto the Tranzac guy today and he got my message, so reverse megaphone is all good. I also queried him about heat given where the pipe is going, and the ceramic coating will reduce the heat a lot compared to chrome, but he's not sure if it will be tolerable or not. It's possible for him to weld some nuts on so I can make up a heat shield, and he doesn't recommend using exhaust wrap as that could have a negative affect on the ceramic coating. Apparently if you get a titanium exhaust, the exhaust wrap destroys it...

Anyway, onto the important bit... pic's!!

Welding time... and yes you may chuckle at my lack of welding ability...

Back pieces all tacked together:



Next lot of welds I did, I was doing this while doing the tank work, just kept welding as I was waiting for the tank to dry or metal ready to soak or whatever:



Next lot:



That saw most of it tacked together except for the cross piece at the back, and of course grinding the few welds that were just way too big and chunky...

 

[Guest]

And after getting the cross piece on and seeing to a few chunky bits with the grinding wheel on the dremel, here is the finished frame work:



It appears that aside from the crappy welding, I only made two mistakes.

First one is the left hand side doesn't extend down as far as the right side, but I can work around that with the mesh. Compare the first and third pic's above to see what I mean.

The second one is seen clearly in the second pic where the bottom of the left back piece is too far to the right and leaves it on a bit of an angle, but once again that can be worked around with the mesh.

All in all I'm pretty happy with that as my first time ever trying something like that!

And on to the tank lining...

First thing I did was tape up the fuel tap hole, grab some rocks from beside the house to chuck in, then tape up the filler hole:



Gave it a real good shake around with those rocks in there to try and get as much flaky rust off as I could, and this is what was stuck to the duct tape after it came off:



I then discovered that my thoughts on using rocks small enough to get out the filler hole was stupidity in the extreme... I should've aimed for small enough to get out the fuel tap hole! The lip around the inside of the filler hole makes it a nightmare to get them out and you have to keep trying to shake them out while bouncing it up and down to get them over the lip.

So this is how it was in there after that:



And now I got some smaller rocks to chuck in with the marine clean, this time small enough to get out the fuel tap hole:

 

[Guest]

So I gave it all a good shake around with the marine clean and rocks in there, making sure every side and lump and bump got some action. Tip at this point... make sure you do what they say and where gloves!! The marine clean is a 1:1 mix, and as I discovered quite a while ago when doing my crank cases, a 1:1 ratio of marine clean to water stings like buggery if you get it on your skin.

So, drained the marine clean out, and stupid me let it run down the driveway. I initially planned to drain it into my big tub of marine clean solution because it can be reused and my tub is getting a little diluted now. Anyway, result was quite disgusting, and this was just from what was leaking through the duct tape before I drained it:



So after draining that and giving it a few good rinses with water, I noticed a couple of bubbly looking bits in the paint I'd never noticed before:



At that point I was a little concerned I was getting rust bubbles under the paint that the metal ready would cause to burst open, but they didn't really feel crumbly through the paint like I'd expect that to feel. Fortunately it turned out that they just seem to be bad paintwork, maybe I just never looked close enough to notice before...

Anyways, did the metal ready next, gave it a good slosh around for about 30 or 40 minutes. They say a minimum of 20 minutes, but I've used it a few times now and gave it longer than to be sure. The trick with metal ready is to keep every surface wet, and previous experience has shown me that it really does pay to keep it wet.

So, after the metal ready and some more good rinses:



That really makes a difference!

Then drying time... shook as much water out as I could, then used the hair dryer we dry the cats with to force some warm air through it to get it bone dry:



That was too painful, this was much easier:

 

[Guest]

And dried out ready to line, got a very small amount of flash rust as expected:



I remember to put some wire through the breather hole, and for you other 450E/S guys, it's actually in the left side of the neck, not the front like I've seen a lot of other models reported:



I then sealed it up with duct tape and with the liner in, and rolled it around slowly for about 15 minutes. They say you have 20 minutes to do it, so I emptied the excess after 15. I checked about half way through with the mirror they give you in the kit and it appeared to be distributed well from what I could see. It's very hard to see in there even with the little mirror.

I'm not sure if I should be concerned about the amount of excess that came out or not, but it did seem like it was lining well from what I could see:



And it's now just sitting upside down as recommended to cure:



I'm guessing it will be at least a couple of months before I need to put fuel in it, so plenty of time to cure nicely.

So, tomorrow should be getting some mesh on the duck tail frame and maybe prep'ing the parts I need to put caliper paint on.

 

[Woodsy]

Thats alot of difference!

 

[Redneck]

I am steering away from Marine clean because I don't want to screw up my PC job on the tank. rocks seem to be working good. and I did not have a rust problem to begin with.

Looking good. looking forward to mesh pics.

Paul

 

[Guest]

Thats alot of difference!

Sure is! POR 15 stuff is good

I am steering away from Marine clean because I don't want to screw up my PC job on the tank. rocks seem to be working good. and I did not have a rust problem to begin with.

Looking good. looking forward to mesh pics.

Paul

Very safe for your PC Paul, or should be anyway. If you need to you can dilute it more too, my big tub of it is something like 10:1 from memory.

Thanks, and I'm looking forward to mesh pic's too...

 

[Flyboy]

That sounds like something I'd like to avoid... so come on, how do you know

If you must, was welding a pipe and was using a crummy old helmet that had long since lost its clear piece of glass, that lives below the green glass, I just finisher the weld, flipped open the green glass to look at the job, and of course with the clear glass missing = no eye protection, first chip to remove the slag and a little piece jumped off and straight into my eye.
No fun lying on the doctors bed with your eye held open with a clamp, so you can't blink, and them picking it out with a needle.

Nothing wrong with the welding, for a first timer and arc welding to boot, on that material, you did damn well, congratulations, looks a lot better than my first attempts when I learnt to weld.

That tank came out super nice, that inside really did clean up well, I am sure you will have no problems with it.
I agree with the nuts and a heat guard, the only way to do it really, and I think it will fit the look of the bike.

 

[Guest]

If you must, was welding a pipe and was using a crummy old helmet that had long since lost its clear piece of glass, that lives below the green glass, I just finisher the weld, flipped open the green glass to look at the job, and of course with the clear glass missing = no eye protection, first chip to remove the slag and a little piece jumped off and straight into my eye.
No fun lying on the doctors bed with your eye held open with a clamp, so you can't blink, and them picking it out with a needle.

Nothing wrong with the welding, for a first timer and arc welding to boot, on that material, you did damn well, congratulations, looks a lot better than my first attempts when I learnt to weld.

That tank came out super nice, that inside really did clean up well, I am sure you will have no problems with it.
I agree with the nuts and a heat guard, the only way to do it really, and I think it will fit the look of the bike.

Awww man that sounds like a world of hurt... was bad enough when I smashed my front teeth on a railway line when I was 17, anything happening to my eyes really gives me the willies

Cheers for the kudos on the welding, it does seem to all hold together ok and I know it's bonded at least reasonably ok because earthing the welder on one piece of rod allowed me to weld on other pieces if that makes sense.

I was hoping to avoid worrying about a heat shield, but now that I'm looking to have to go down that path, I'm starting to wonder if I can't make something a little nice and get it chromed...

 

[Flyboy]

Man, don't you ever sleep? It has to be 5am there, yep, a nice chrome heat shield will look wicked, I see some more fabrication in your future, can't wait to see it.

 

[Guest]

Man, don't you ever sleep? It has to be 5am there, yep, a nice chrome heat shield will look wicked, I see some more fabrication in your future, can't wait to see it.

Man sleep's over rated... takes away from GS time

My wife's an early riser, so I normally just get up when she gets up, and then I tend to stay up a bit later at night which gives me a little time in the garage or on the forums or whatever... works well enough

And yeah, 5:15am as I'm typing this...

I can't wait to get the pipe back, I wanna see it and touch and hear it... not sure if I can make something to do it justice but we shall see...

 

[landshark]

I think heat shields can look good when done well, i saw previous pics of the triumph.
These old huskies look good too.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, some of the CL350/450 heat shields are a work of art too...

I'm thinking maybe I could stencil on "Suzuki" and cut it out with the dremel... might be overstretching my ability there too

 

[davidduarte]

SNIP
I then discovered that my thoughts on using rocks small enough to get out the filler hole was stupidity in the extreme... I should've aimed for small enough to get out the fuel tap hole! The lip around the inside of the filler hole makes it a nightmare to get them out and you have to keep trying to shake them out while bouncing it up and down to get them over the lip.

So this is how it was in there after that:



And now I got some smaller rocks to chuck in with the marine clean, this time small enough to get out the fuel tap hole:

I tried the same thing with BB's and lead pellets, what a pain in the ass it was getting them out, even though they did fit through the petcock hole. I'm so glad I had my tank coated; now I don't have to worry about it rusting ever again

 

[davidduarte]

And dried out ready to line, got a very small amount of flash rust as expected:



I remember to put some wire through the breather hole, and for you other 450E/S guys, it's actually in the left side of the neck, not the front like I've seen a lot of other models reported:



[/URL]
SNIP

Your tank cleaned up quite nicely. Good thing you sealed it up; you'll be glad you did. Now you don't have to worry about rust getting into your carbs.

 

[landshark]

Yeah, some of the CL350/450 heat shields are a work of art too...

I'm thinking maybe I could stencil on "Suzuki" and cut it out with the dremel... might be overstretching my ability there too

I actually know someone who could probably do that for you on a laser bed, then you could just bend them too bend it too shape.
I dont think it would be too expensive, and the result would be awesome.

 

[Woodsy]

Dooooooo IT

 

[Guest]

I tried the same thing with BB's and lead pellets, what a pain in the ass it was getting them out, even though they did fit through the petcock hole. I'm so glad I had my tank coated; now I don't have to worry about it rusting ever again

Yeah, definitely glad I used the smaller ones the second time 'round! They all came out with ease with the marine clean when I drained it.

Your tank cleaned up quite nicely. Good thing you sealed it up; you'll be glad you did. Now you don't have to worry about rust getting into your carbs.

That metal ready's awesome stuff, has done a fantastic job of prep'ing the metal and converting any basic surface type rust I've put it on so far including the frame and everything, so definitely happy with how it works!

And yeah, definitely a sigh of relief now the lining's done. I also don't want to have to worry about rust in there again...

I actually know someone who could probably do that for you on a laser bed, then you could just bend them too bend it too shape.
I dont think it would be too expensive, and the result would be awesome.

Man now you got me thinkin'!

I'll have to wait and see what the pipe looks like when it gets back, but I was thinking I could probably buy some 2 inch tubing, cut it in about a third and get it chromed, however getting it laser cut would be awesome. Can it cut curved metal or just flat? I know nothin' about that... big question is if I could curve it neatly enough to do it justice... definitely given me something else to think about!

Dooooooo IT

Yeah yeah... read above

But it would be sweet...

 

[Guest]

Rightio... mesh day today! It's done, for better or worse...

I only poked myself with sharp bits of wire a couple of times, so very little blood loss...

Started with one sheet from the top down the back to start with:



The mesh was tied in the roll with some very usable tie wire, so I said thank you very much and used that to tie it to the frame work. Bonus! Especially seeing as I had to buy 10 metres or something stupid and I only used about 3/4 of a metre...

Anyways, back taking shape, and you'll notice I trimmed in the middle of the left and right sides to allow it to curve a bit nicer rather than just keep flexing out of shape:



You'll also see I cut the bit out for the seat lock as well.

Then I got a couple of bits on for the side panels:



And folded around the back:



This saw the essential shape of the tail piece formed, and I must say I was quite surprised at how simple it was to do (but very fiddly) and I was pretty happy with how the mesh was able to bend and curve around but still retain its shape once formed.

Now, you may recall I ended up with the left side a little too short compared with the right side, so I sorted that by tying on an extra piece of rod which brought it down to about the right length:



I also started bending the excess mesh up towards the back there to try to keep in line with the rod on the right side.