gs1000g mild cafe build

[thebrandonbeezy]

Oh definitely, but im being a lazy ass and drinking and riding this crazzt drift kart thing

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Not the most beautiful set up, but it works real good

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Im too impatient for polishing plus coors light.. haha

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

The no.3 primary is about done. I sanded out the rust and its coming back to life. 1 and 2 im going to have to go over again and no.4 is how all four looked before

 

[Jitsufighter]

The no.3 primary is about done. I sanded out the rust and its coming back to life. 1 and 2 im going to have to go over again and no.4 is how all four looked before

Dude this project is so rad!!! So inspiring, and hearing that 4 to 1!! Makes me wanna cut some mufflers off. Thanks for postin pics!

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Thanks bro! Its been a long time coming, regretted selling my 850 a few years back so when i got the opportunity i had to jump on it!

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Flipped the bars back to the stock kat position. Much more comfortable since i wont be installing rear sets for a long while

 

[Sam 78 GS750]

How did you polish the pipes? Looks like they're cleaning up nicely...

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

A cicil pad on a bench grinder to eat through the rust. And just a normal pad when i go to actually polish it

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

so this happened tonight lol

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Decided that the vance muff muff isn't going to stay, so it'll stay uncut. It looked and sounded good on my fzr. So what do you guys think?! Brakes are next and painting the rims when i get new tires

 

[gordinho80]

What would you want for the muffler? I'm seriously debating replacing the megaphone style muffler on mine. Fantastic job with the pipes, but he way!! What's a cicil pad? I'm also kind of over my wrapped pipes. But they've been painted prior... I'd probably have to stick with paint at this point...

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Cicil is the roughest polishing pad you can get, its so rough it'll take skin off.. ask me how i know.. hahhaa but im going to put the muffler back on my fzr 1000 when i rebuild the trans in that.

 

[GS1150Pilot]

Looking good, Brandon!

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Looking good, Brandon!

Thanks pal, im actually kinda shocked at how good its turning out!

 

[Chuck78]

Had a wind storm today and the gate blew down.. the gs is perfect for holding the gate so the pup doesn't get out haha

Brandon, I hate to be the bad guy, but your "Cafe Racer stance" is purely cosmetic and detracts substantially from the handling potential of the bike with the front end dropped so low & yielding a severely compromised racer lean angle when riding aggressively through corners.

You lost a ton of cornering clearance, and you are going to destroy those beautiful pipes that you put a lot of work into the first time you go over a speed bump or a even moderately slightly steep driveway/parking lot approach.

You put a fantastic set of forks on that bike, but they were shorter than stock, and then you lowered them a couple of inches beyond that!!!!
At minimum you need to raise the front back up a lot, & make a weld on or clamp on pipe protector for the lower two head pipes where they are nearest the ground before the collector, for their entire lowest horizontal portion. Sooooo many headers get totally bashed in there on bikes with stock springs that are not even lowered substantially like yours.

The triples you are running on that bike are intended for a bike with a 25 degree or so rake and a 17 inch front wheel. Running a 19 inch ft wheel on a frame that was 28 degrees rake stock will make it steer it like a dump truck due to adding an extreme amount of steering trail to the geometry, even slower than a Harley cruiser. not a track bike whatsoever, more like a drag racer that looks like a "cafe racer"

the best thing to do here is add 1" longer than stock rear shocks or get some extended lower clevis mounts made got those Chinese RFY shocks (will probably cost more than the shocks new, best to run a better damping shock anyway), & bring the front end back up a fair amount. This will make it handle like a semi-sporty racer if you put on an 18" front wheel from an 85-87 GSXR (looks just like a later GS1100/1150 wheel), instead of the typical limited ridability non-raceable "Cafe Racer art bike" that is so commonly found these days - bikes that to an amateur "look" like a "sporty racer" but actually have very little cornering clearance and often steer like a harley/dump truck when modern forks and modern TRIPLES of the wrong offset are swapped on. If you want to have a lot of fun at deep lean angles in corners (half the reason I ride!!!), I'd bring the front back up at least 70% of what you have it dropped, & add 1/2" to 1" longer rear shocks than stock (somewhere around 335mm iirc for the chain drives at least).

Just tryin' to look put for ya while it's still in the build phase. Lookin' out for those pipes and the stator cover especially! And YOUR SAFETY!!!!!

Good luck. Hit me up any time for brake/suspension/geometry/tire size advice. I've done a whole lot of researching throughout the years on these topics in order to unleash the most potent sporty handling potential possible on GS's... I'm not trying to be a pretentious prick, but these are some very fundamental and serious flaws in your garage engineering (i.e. cosmetic stance mods and zero engineering)

 

[Chuck78]

By the way, it TOTALLY sucks when you're on a long road trip riding incredible back roads all day, & you get up to a stop sign in a remote rural area and you are waiting for your friends who you saw in your rearview mirror just a few S-turns back 45 seconds before, & 90 seconds later, they still haven't caught up...

So I u-turned and found my buddy standing over his prized $$$$ '77 KZ1000 which was backwards and leaning towards the upside-down orientation in the ditch on the opposite side of the road in the middle of the S-turns...

I had been telling him for some time now that his fork springs and his 1.5" lowering of the triples on the stanchions was a HORRIBLE and DANGEROUS idea... He liked the "aggressive stance" that actually creates the opposite - very cautious mellow riding limitations...

He scraped hard parts on the pavement while having some fun chasing me through the twisties - BECAUSE HIS FRONT END WAS LOWERED SUBSTANTIALLY FROM STOCK.... This unweighted his front tire a bit and caused him to break traction and lose control and slide out and lay it down across the opposite lane... luckily it was a very remote Appalachian area of Southeast Ohio with no oncoming traffic, or things could have been a real life changer (or ender).
Please take this seriously unless you never plan to ride aggressively through corners and only intend to ride that fast bike fast in a drag racing straight line fashion...
that bike has a lot of potential to be unleashed. Plenty of time for improvement.

How long can you run those RFY's out to if they have adjustable length lower eyes???

 

[Chuck78]

By the way, the 83 GS1100G runs a shafty 17" rear wheel. I'm still hunting for the front wheel solution in a 17" or 18" that is the same width or narrower. The 3rd style of GS mag came in an 18" front, & Dan aka Salty Monk had one of these. I want to say it was off of an 850 or maybe 650. The 18" GSXR is a 2.75" width, likely wider than that 17" rear. Sticking stock rear wheel aND that 18" front wheel, extended length of the shocks, & raising the front end back up a lot will be a great start to rehabbing the front back to practical sport geometry. Some longer offset triples would seriously help cure all. 93+ VMX12 (VMAX 1200) triples are 50mm offset and 43mm fork tubes. Pricey but would make this steer like a dream with an 18" or 19" front wheel and the proper ride height adjustments front and rear. You have to add a large spacer under the lower bearing to make the upper bearing position work, or swap stems. I'm looking at swapping a turned down aluminum Hayabusa / GSXR stem into VMAX lower triples. Rake and trail are very critical and typically very overlooked by people that unintentionally worsen the handling of their bike when trying to do the exact opposite.

A 17" front wheel in conjunction with much taller rear shocks would bring your steering geometry back to sporty feeling parameters, or a triple clamp with more offset to counteract the large amount of trail generated by a 19" front wheel .

Your bike will be incapable of this kind of fun in its current setup:

Basically the point of all of this is that the minimal offset on those triples in conjunction with the 28 degree rake of the stock frame and a very large diameter front wheel ruin the handling (triple offset is very incorrect for this bike setup unless you are only riding in a straight line), as well as the minimal ground clearance ruining your safe cornering ability. Just think if you hit a dip in the road in a turn, or a bump that causes the suspension to compress mid-turn, instant scraping of hard parts, & very likely instant crash. I hope you don't take this as too much of a personal attack on you, I'm just trying to look out for you and help you out, even though you may be offended and call me some objectional names.

 

[thebrandonbeezy]

Brandon, I hate to be the bad guy, but your "Cafe Racer stance" is purely cosmetic and detracts substantially from the handling potential of the bike with the front end dropped so low & yielding a severely compromised racer lean angle when riding aggressively through corners.

'You lost a ton of cornering clearance, and you are going to destroy those beautiful pipes that you put a lot of work into the first time you go over a speed bump or a even moderately slightly steep driveway/parking lot approach.

You put a fantastic set of forks on that bike, but they were shorter than stock, and then you lowered them a couple of inches beyond that!!!!
At minimum you need to raise the front back up a lot, & make a weld on or clamp on pipe protector for the lower two head pipes where they are nearest the ground before the collector, for their entire lowest horizontal portion. Sooooo many headers get totally bashed in there on bikes with stock springs that are not even lowered substantially like yours.

The triples you are running on that bike are intended for a bike with a 25 degree or so rake and a 17 inch front wheel. Running a 19 inch ft wheel on a frame that was 28 degrees rake stock will make it steer it like a dump truck due to adding an extreme amount of steering trail to the geometry, even slower than a Harley cruiser. not a track bike whatsoever, more like a drag racer that looks like a "cafe racer"

the best thing to do here is add 1" longer than stock rear shocks or get some extended lower clevis mounts made got those Chinese RFY shocks (will probably cost more than the shocks new, best to run a better damping shock anyway), & bring the front end back up a fair amount. This will make it handle like a semi-sporty racer if you put on an 18" front wheel from an 85-87 GSXR (looks just like a later GS1100/1150 wheel), instead of the typical limited ridability non-raceable "Cafe Racer art bike" that is so commonly found these days - bikes that to an amateur "look" like a "sporty racer" but actually have very little cornering clearance and often steer like a harley/dump truck when modern forks and modern TRIPLES of the wrong offset are swapped on. If you want to have a lot of fun at deep lean angles in corners (half the reason I ride!!!), I'd bring the front back up at least 70% of what you have it dropped, & add 1/2" to 1" longer rear shocks than stock (somewhere around 335mm iirc for the chain drives at least).

Just tryin' to look put for ya while it's still in the build phase. Lookin' out for those pipes and the stator cover especially! And YOUR SAFETY!!!!!

Good luck. Hit me up any time for brake/suspension/geometry/tire size advice. I've done a whole lot of researching throughout the years on these topics in order to unleash the most potent sporty handling potential possible on GS's... I'm not trying to be a pretentious prick, but these are some very fundamental and serious flaws in your garage engineering (i.e. cosmetic stance mods and zero engineering)

its funny you mention the forks being lowered, I actually raised them back up last night. the rear shocks have about 1 and 1/16 inch of adjustment before the witness mark doesn't show threads on the lower clevis, so I had planned to adjust them, I just wasn't sure how much I needed haha. as for the wheel... I had the 3" wide kat 17 on it for a bit and I loved the look... but on the one curvy road we have in this cookie cuter straight line town, I noticed that the rear felt as if it would lean lower than the front.. lol well being a 2.75 wide I think rim obviously wouldn't handle correctly. though research I have found that the gsx1100g 17 rear is 3.5 wide and with rough measurement it should fit with minimal clearancing.. mostly for the tire, as the rim will bolt right on. if I went that rout I could run the kat 17 front and fix a lot of the messed up geometry (which is something that has been bugging the crap out of me) and run the 4 piston calipers that came on the cat..

 

[Chuck78]

Glad to hear these things are already on your radar.