C
Catbus
Guest
Meet AnnieHi there, I'm Mason from British Columbia, Canada!
Never owned a bike my self but have ridden on some through the years, my aunt had an ancient 60's honda trailbike, thing probably was run by a hamster in a wheel, but it sported me a grin regardless. I was originally looking for an 80s CB250 or somethin Had a rider friend consult me to a Facebook group where a nice man was selling this baby. The ad said "ride it home" and had a video with a cold start so we drove out and the plan was to drive both of us out, and have a buddy ride it back. It's such a beautful model right so I instantly reaaally liked the way it looked. Body and chrome are in quite good condition and it has 32K KM on it. Of course I ended up getting it. Reasonable price.
15 miles down the highway and she loses power and dies. Fuse had popped out, was loose n the holder pins were loose. 10 or so more miles and it dies again. Started to get low battery so a couple of bump starts and a couple of die-outs every 300 feet and we had to have her towed back to my friends shop. Feeling let down by now. We also had to wait over 3 hours in an emergency turn-out off the side of the highway for the tow truck to come.
New battery, a carb float tune (only 1 carb was off by 2mm), of which neither of us had ever done before, a healthy amount of old grease build up on parts, the sparkplugs were sooty and black as the void due to starter fluid in the airbox (and trying to get it to not bog down after a throttle rev which was VACUUM LINE RELATED) but when we checked them with a gapper they were almost disturbingly off. A new set at the right gap, fuse housing removed, cleaned and a new fuse, and one of the most important parts, the freaking darned to heck vacuum hoses on the carburetors
Don't forget your vacuum hoses kiddies, as well as their position, they are as fickle as something could ever be.
But, after the trial and error and process of elimination (as well as discovering this forum and the copious good reading material) and being blessed with a Clymer manual with bike purchase, the GS550E purrs like a dream, and although I won't sell it, is now worth double what I paid. It only took 2 days; Maybe 16 hours total and I am very much a mechanical layman. After the quick engine work we re-painted the fender/panels and gas tank, looking up the stock Suzuki designs to replicate the Lines.
I've only taken it for a 2 minute test up the alley because I only just got my most basic Learner's for motorcycles but my reasonably experienced rider friend and I are gonna take cones up to a empty area nearby and I am going to do a lot of practice before I feel comfortable enough to respect this machine.
