GS550L to Cafe Build

[Toasty]

It's looking good! I really dig the blue/white paint scheme.


Btw, UPS must be idiots... My bearings land an hour north of here in San Pablo early yesterday morning. Then they send them to freakin Albuquerque NM because of "weather conditions" and they just got back to San Pablo again this afternoon... wtf UPS.

Makes no sense

 

[Bonehead]

It's looking good! I really dig the blue/white paint scheme.


Btw, UPS must be idiots... My bearings land an hour north of here in San Pablo early yesterday morning. Then they send them to freakin Albuquerque NM because of "weather conditions" and they just got back to San Pablo again this afternoon... wtf UPS.

Makes no sense

Woah... And I was kind of mad that the filters were delivered a little after 530. What the the hell are they thinking :-s

 

[Flipr78]

I love this build! subscribed. I am doing a 77 GS750 but the motor is solid and doesnt need any work.
I snatched up a set of Bandit 1200 forks, I need to swap my original steering stem, new races bearings, Bandit axel with new custom bearings on my original spoked wheel. Does that sound like the front end is sorted or is there something I am missing?

Awesome build, nice attention to detail. All the work done in your garage using hand tools. Fantastic.

 

[Toasty]

Thanks! I don't really have any specialized fabricating tools so I'm trying to make do with what I can.

I don't know much about the Bandit swaps, I've heard of people doing them though and I know that the steering stem needs to be machined down because it's too long. Or have the GS stem pressed in if it will fit. Your wheels may just swap in with a bearing swap if the calipers mount to the fork legs if it matches up with the offset from the rotors.

 

[Toasty]

I had some family stuff this weekend on Easter Sunday so I only had Saturday to really get any work done on the bike. Luckily I had enough cash to get my wiring harness stuff from Frys on Friday.

Btw the clean cut nylon sleeving they sell is really high quality for the price. It's much better than the Techflex stuff, you can stuff more wires in it before the colors show though and it's less prone to fraying on the ends (before you heat shrink the ends).

I got a bunch of the sleeving, some larger heat shrink with the glue lining (it's only 2:1, I'd like 3:1 though but no luck). I picked up a little butane torch/soldering iron too, they're pretty handy because you can adjust the heat and you don't need to drag around a cord.

Saturday was a looooong day, I got home at noon and spent 9 hours straight working on the harness.

Starting off working front to back, from the hand controls

I didn't take many pictures as I was working on it, it was mostly just routing, soldering and heat shrinking. Once I'm done with this I shouldn't have any more wiring issues. Btw if you're gonna solder get good rosin solder and flux!

I tried to use the Western Union Splice as much as I could

Apply some melted solder (not too much, not too little) onto the joint with flux, then apply heat with the soldering iron and you'll see the flux start to quickly bubble and solder will get instantly sucked into the fibers. I think they came out pretty good. I had some good Sumitube glue heat shrink I picked up from Eastern Beaver to put over the soldered joints. They should be totally solid.

I got about 75% of the harness done by Saturday night. I still need to run the power to the front and rear brake switches, ignitor, r/r, wire up the battery/RFID stuff and finish up wiring the fuse box.

On Sunday morning I wired up the Acewell/accessory circuit but I need some good crimp connectors for the tail light and turn signals.

 

[Toasty]

Finally! The harness is 90% complete, wiring up the undertail section took foreverrrr.

I need to wire some of the non switched stuff into the fuse box, I have the RFID system and Acewell clock hooked up to the battery and there are too many cables hanging off it . There will be another two once I get the r/r hooked up.

It didn't come out as organized under the seat as I'd hoped, but it works! There was a ton of stuff to cram under there.

 

[nuitdevotremort]

Wiring harness is looking great! Keep up the good work.

 

[Toasty]

This weekend I want to get the motor buttoned up, so today I tackled getting the pistons ready and installed. I was worried about getting the circlips in because when I took them out, they sprung out all over the garage.

I ended up buying a few extra just in case but I ended up not needing them (thankfully).

Getting started

Almost there

Seated

I rotated the clips so that the open ends were either straight up or down. Supposedly it's bad to do it any other way, I dunno how that would make a difference but I didn't want to have a piston come flying off.

 

[Toasty]

New rings

Checking ring gap

There was no minimum spec in the manual but they were well below .7mm. They all came in at around .2mm which is the same as the old rings I pulled off the pistons.

One on

Btw, getting the pistons into the jugs was such a huge PITA. I was trying to raise the pistons into the sleeves but it was just not working. Anyway, here it is complete.

Tomorrow I want to lap the valves and install the new seals, and hopefully get the engine all together and torqued. Maybe even time it if I don't run out of daylight.

 

[cowboyup3371]

Thank you for those pictures, they are going to help me here soon.

 

[boontonmike]

Lookin good. Were'd you get the nice wire sleeving? The was one thing I need to go back and do and I like how pro that stuff looks.

 

[Toasty]

Lookin good. Were'd you get the nice wire sleeving? The was one thing I need to go back and do and I like how pro that stuff looks.

I got it from Fry's Electronics although its all over eBay, search for expandable nylon sleeving (or PET sleeving). I would try and get the clean cut stuff because it doesn't fray as easily and won't show the wire colors through it as easily.

 

[Toasty]

Here are the pics from the last half of the valve job.


This exhaust valve was the worst, the rest were pretty clean with just some normal carbon.

A quick touchup with the wire wheel fixed them up. Even though these are hardened steel I wouldn't use a really coarse wire wheel on them, the bench grinder I have has a pretty soft wire on it.

The nasty looking valve seats

Add lapping compound to the valve seating area and the seats on the heads, apply some pressure and twirl like you're starting a fire. Lift and rotate the valve every 4-5 spins (?) to make sure the compound is evenly distributed.

Lapped valve (I did this one again later) and valve seat

I cleaned out the exhaust port some while I was at it

There is a really sharp and rough casting mark that could be smoothed out, I'm not sure if I should though. I've been reading a bunch of porting threads and the general consensus is to just leave the ports alone unless you know what you're doing.

 

[Toasty]

I have been so busy this last month I didn't get much work done on the bike. But here it is in it's new home

I also had the head resurfaced a couple weeks ago too. Now that I have some fellow riders around and a lot more space I'll have this done before too long

 

[wegs426]

Good to see you are back at it.

 

[Guest]

Awesome. I've been waiting to see this one finished. I have a few questions though Toasty. What year was the donor bike that you go the UPD forks from? Did you use the gsxr stem? What mods did you have to do to make it work? What bearings did you use? It looks so nice. Thanks for the details...

Sci

 

[Toasty]

Awesome. I've been waiting to see this one finished. I have a few questions though Toasty. What year was the donor bike that you go the UPD forks from? Did you use the gsxr stem? What mods did you have to do to make it work? What bearings did you use? It looks so nice. Thanks for the details...

Sci

Hey Sci, the forks are off of a 2002 GSXR-750. The swap is pretty simple, the gsxr stem will fit right into the GS frame with the right bearings. I'll have to make some new steering stops though because they don't line up, and you lose the steering lock (I took mine off anyway).

You can get the bearings from All Balls Racing, it's about $55 plus shipping for the correctly sized tapered bearings. The part numbers are 99-3540-5 and 99-3519-5 , for this frame and particular gsxr front end.

 

[Toasty]

Progress has been slow lately but i'm trying to plug away at it the best I can. This last weekend I torqued down the head to spec and took the time to figure out what bolts go where from my stainless allen head kit.

I have to track down a couple bolts for the head that are in a box somewhere...

One of my roommates has a nice welder and offered to weld up some frame gusseting, so hopefully by the end of the month I'll at least have the steel I need to get started. I have some aircraft stripped too for the other engine covers, maybe next weekend I can get those stripped and hit them with a brillo pad for a machined look.

I ordered the Triumph rotors I needed for the front wheel conversion too. It's getting there.

 

[T8erbug]

Toastyyyyyy! I decided to get my project juices flowing again by checking out the build/project threads and just happened upon your build thread haha. Total coincidence. Glad to see you are busy with things even though you are waiting on me to get your adapters done! Things are looking good. I'm glad you know your way around an engine because I may need to call on you for help when my build gets to that point. Also I really appreciate the credit you have given me for your future parts. If there is enough interest when our bikes are finished (which I'm sure there will be) I will build more and more for folks. Again, I'm glad to see your project moving forward and am also pleasantly surprised to see the caliper and fork differences in our projects. It will make both of our projects originals!

 

[Guest]

Hey Sci, the forks are off of a 2002 GSXR-750. The swap is pretty simple, the gsxr stem will fit right into the GS frame with the right bearings. I'll have to make some new steering stops though because they don't line up, and you lose the steering lock (I took mine off anyway).

You can get the bearings from All Balls Racing, it's about $55 plus shipping for the correctly sized tapered bearings. The part numbers are 99-3540-5 and 99-3519-5 , for this frame and particular gsxr front end.

Awesome. Thanks for the info Toasty. Couple of other quick questions if that's ok. What year is your 550L? I have an 82 550M. I doubt the frames stem changed all that much during the late 70's early 80's 550's. However, just to be sure and for future knowledge, how do you determine the correct bearings when doing this kind of swap?

I saw your brake setup. What parts besides the Honda stuff did you need to finish it off?

Thanks.