Steve
GS Whisperer
This is not going to be the story of a long, drawn-out full-restoration project, just a quick report of what has just happened.
Starting with an '82 650L. This is #1 son's second bike (also his second GS), he got it from one of his high school teachers about 10 years ago. About 3 years ago, he sold it to a friend, who used it to learn to ride a motorcycle and get his endorsement. He rode the bike for just over a year, doing reasonably well. Two years ago, he was riding it to Flori-duh to meet up with the carny crew that he and my son worked for, stopped in Jacksonville and called my son to say that the engine was making a lot of noise and he did not think it would make it the rest of the way. My son took a trailer up to get the bike. They carried the bike with them until they got close to home, then brought it over here. He gave it back to us, complete, with title.
Fast forward to last September. While I was in upstate New York for work, I had the opportunity to vist Lurch12_2000 and hjfisk. From Lurch, I got a 650G frame that had a complete lower end engine assembly in it. I knew that FoxyBLankworthy was looking for a frame. Hjfisk had cylinders and a head for sale, I went to meet him and got them.
I got home from New York on a Sunday morning. Within an hour, there was a wrenching party going on in my garage. The first two to show up were Cowboyup and Pano, who were here to attend a class at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for their work. Dogma, TheCafeKid and kparkfan showed up a bit later. Within a couple of hours, we had the old engine out of the L frame and the lower end of the 'new' engine installed. In the process of lowering the cylinders over the pistons, we broke one of the compression rings. Too cheap to buy new rings and too impatient to wait for them, I opened up the 'old' engine to get a ring.
When I opened up the 'old' engine, I was able to determine the source of the noise. One of the circlips that holds the wrist pin in place had disappeared, allowing the wrist pin to hit the cylinder wall. It had been doing it enough to leave a couple good gouges in the cylinder.
Around Christmas time, I did a little bit of work on the bike. Got the carbs on, but couldn't get it running, so I tried to remove the carbs to check them out. The intake boots chose that time to separate. The rubber parts came with the carbs, the metal flanges stayed firmly bolted to the engine.
Unfortunately, that is where the project sat until a week ago. My son wanted something to ride while we are still working on his Yamaha Venture. I had ordered new intake boots, they were waiting for me when I got home a week and a half ago. Put them on, the bike (sort of) started, but did not run well. Opened up the carbs, found a lot of green garbage in there because it had not been winterized properly (my fault
). Yet another of Robert Barr's sets of o-rings was installed into some newly-cleaned carbs.
The bike now ran, but there were some other issues that needed to be addressed. We were out in the back shed, looking for something and my son pointed up into the corner and asked "what are those?" It was a set of saddlebags that one of my Goldwing friends had given me several years ago. Interesting, but no immediate need at the time, so they got tossed into the shed. We kept looking for a set of case savers that I thought I had, but found the mounting brackets for the saddlebags, instead. The project took a new twist.
With a few hours of holding parts up for evaluation, sketching some plans on paper, then rooting for available parts already in the garage, we decided to proceed. It took a couple days of fabrication and only about $50 in hardware and miscellaneous parts, but it is just about done.
Here is the bike as it arrived back here with a bad engine.
After a couple days of work, here is "Rat Bagger".
Still need to add some turn signals to the saddlebags and wire them in. He is not sure if he wants to bother with trying a rattle-can paint job or not, but that part is up to him.
.
Starting with an '82 650L. This is #1 son's second bike (also his second GS), he got it from one of his high school teachers about 10 years ago. About 3 years ago, he sold it to a friend, who used it to learn to ride a motorcycle and get his endorsement. He rode the bike for just over a year, doing reasonably well. Two years ago, he was riding it to Flori-duh to meet up with the carny crew that he and my son worked for, stopped in Jacksonville and called my son to say that the engine was making a lot of noise and he did not think it would make it the rest of the way. My son took a trailer up to get the bike. They carried the bike with them until they got close to home, then brought it over here. He gave it back to us, complete, with title.
Fast forward to last September. While I was in upstate New York for work, I had the opportunity to vist Lurch12_2000 and hjfisk. From Lurch, I got a 650G frame that had a complete lower end engine assembly in it. I knew that FoxyBLankworthy was looking for a frame. Hjfisk had cylinders and a head for sale, I went to meet him and got them.
I got home from New York on a Sunday morning. Within an hour, there was a wrenching party going on in my garage. The first two to show up were Cowboyup and Pano, who were here to attend a class at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for their work. Dogma, TheCafeKid and kparkfan showed up a bit later. Within a couple of hours, we had the old engine out of the L frame and the lower end of the 'new' engine installed. In the process of lowering the cylinders over the pistons, we broke one of the compression rings. Too cheap to buy new rings and too impatient to wait for them, I opened up the 'old' engine to get a ring.
When I opened up the 'old' engine, I was able to determine the source of the noise. One of the circlips that holds the wrist pin in place had disappeared, allowing the wrist pin to hit the cylinder wall. It had been doing it enough to leave a couple good gouges in the cylinder.
Around Christmas time, I did a little bit of work on the bike. Got the carbs on, but couldn't get it running, so I tried to remove the carbs to check them out. The intake boots chose that time to separate. The rubber parts came with the carbs, the metal flanges stayed firmly bolted to the engine.
Unfortunately, that is where the project sat until a week ago. My son wanted something to ride while we are still working on his Yamaha Venture. I had ordered new intake boots, they were waiting for me when I got home a week and a half ago. Put them on, the bike (sort of) started, but did not run well. Opened up the carbs, found a lot of green garbage in there because it had not been winterized properly (my fault
). Yet another of Robert Barr's sets of o-rings was installed into some newly-cleaned carbs. The bike now ran, but there were some other issues that needed to be addressed. We were out in the back shed, looking for something and my son pointed up into the corner and asked "what are those?" It was a set of saddlebags that one of my Goldwing friends had given me several years ago. Interesting, but no immediate need at the time, so they got tossed into the shed. We kept looking for a set of case savers that I thought I had, but found the mounting brackets for the saddlebags, instead. The project took a new twist.
With a few hours of holding parts up for evaluation, sketching some plans on paper, then rooting for available parts already in the garage, we decided to proceed. It took a couple days of fabrication and only about $50 in hardware and miscellaneous parts, but it is just about done.
Here is the bike as it arrived back here with a bad engine.
After a couple days of work, here is "Rat Bagger".
Still need to add some turn signals to the saddlebags and wire them in. He is not sure if he wants to bother with trying a rattle-can paint job or not, but that part is up to him.
.
