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Today at lunch, I gladly brought my GS’s gas tank to the bodyshop. After struggling with trying to do the rust repair myself, as well as extracting the broken bolt that is threaded in the tank… I am happy & relieved to be handing that part of the project off to the professionals. So for my $100 quote, they will be extracting the broken bolt from the tank (re-tapping the threads once removed), repairing the rust damage on the tank & then finally spraying the tank with a quality primer (epoxy I believe). It would be a good idea to have them spray the tank with some paint right away, but since money is tight & I’m undecided on what I’m going to do for a paint scheme, I’m just going to run it in primer for the remainder of this summer. For how much I was struggling & not enjoying the body work, this $100 isn’t too bad of a deal.

I must say though, who would ever want to hand sand bodywork to get the paint off. I had tried that, plus tried using a sander on my Dremel. What a pain in the ass that was. Per the guy at the bodyshop’s request, I bought some paint stripper & removed the paint with that before I brought him the tank to do the work. Using paint stripper was soo easy! Just brush it on, & then like 10 minutes later, I first heard it, then saw it… the paint was bubbling right off of the tank.

Once I got all of the paint off of the tank, it was very obvious to see the areas that I tried to sand the paint. Just like the guy at the bodyshop said, I was making more work for them or myself, whoever would be doing the painting. The areas that were removed only with the paint stripper were totally smooth. The areas that I did, they are all gouged up & need to be smoothed before it can be painted.

Actually, I kind of thought the tank looked tough in it raw-finish state… makes me wonder more about what color to have it painted when the time comes.

From the day that I bought my GS, the fuel tank has been rusty & in need to repairs. It doesn’t leak, but is definitely pitted in appearance from the rust damage. In addition to the rusty sides of the tank, from corrosion, one of the screws that holds the gas cap cover has broken off inside the threads of the tank when I tried to unscrew it.

I first tried to do the bodywork myself with sander on my Dremel, but after I gave up & took it into a bodyshop for a quote, they said that I made it worse because of my scratches & abrasions. They said that I should have & still should just use some quality paint stripper to remove all of the paint chemically. If I brought the tank it totally stripped of paint, they quoted me $100 to; repair rust, extract broken bolt & spray tank with a quality primer.

Since receiving that quote, I had planned on bringing the tank back to the bodyshop, but now money got tight, so over the last couple of days I tried again to do the work myself. It keeps turning out to be a very frustrating experience for me.
First I tried to removed the broken bolt. I found a couple of articles on the Internet, so I bought a screw/bolt extractor. After soaking the bolt in rust penetrate, drilling the hole & engaging the extractor… the extractor broke off inside the jammed bolt… just like the article warned about happening. So now I have a bigger mess in removing the bolt then when I started.
About the tank sides itself, I pondered trying some kind of a rust chemical, but now I’m just thinking of sanding the loose rust off & spraying the tank with Rust-oleum primer. But I know that would only be a temporary fix and that by itself would do nothing to smooth the tank where the rust has pitted it.

This pic is the broken bolt inside of the tank, but now with the busted screw/bolt extractor broken off inside the bust bolt just to make things worse.

I suppose an option would be for me to buy a tank that is not rusted. But when I bought the bike, the tank was rusted inside as well, so I had a local shop put this rubber coating inside the tank. The inside of the tank is totally coated now & will no longer rust inside. That cost me $50. Because of this, I do not want to lose the tank & start over with a different tank.

Right now I see my options as:
1. Just paint the tank as it sits now with the Rust-oleum primer, leave the busted bolt in place & later have it all done right.
2. Try again to remove bolt, try on my own to do the bodywork to repair the rust. Then primer the tank with Rust-oleum.
3. Bit the bullet, get the $100 & have the tank done right, hopefully they will still be able to extract that bolt as well.

#1 This would be a easy temporary solution. This would allow me to get the tank exposed to the environments again, but the tank could possibly rust even further underneath the primer while I wait to have the tank professionally repaired.
#2 I do not see myself trying this option any longer.
#3 This would be the best solution, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the extra $100 this month of July… I know, lame… but that’s the way it goes. I am hoping to ride the bike in the next couple of weeks, so temporarily doing Option #1 might be the way to go, then when I can afford the professional work, then strip the paint myself with the paint stripper & bring the tank in to the pros.

Man, I don’t know how some people enjoy it, but to me, bodywork really sucks!
I suppose part of it is having the correct tools & work place for the job…

Since the 2 remaining tasks that keep me from riding my GS are both at my co-worker house… I have been a little free to work on something else with the bike. I could do some more cleaning, the bike could use that. But what sounded more fun would be to customize my front fender! I have always disliked the front fender because it just has too much coverage of the front tire… this doesn’t seem very sporty to me… and I’m all about the sporty side of things when it comes to motorcycles… so… why not try to trim the fender up some?

Well I’ve never really done body work before or very much metal work, plus if I wreck the fender, well it is my original fender… so I would then have to buy a different one… but how hard can it be?

Here is the original fender… and yes the chrome is rusted through the chrome as it sits now.

I suspected that the metal fender would be a real bitch to cut, but it ended up not being too bad. I estimated where I would like it to be in length, drew 2 lines with my marker, then just used my Dremel & cut the 2 ends off, it wasn’t that hard to cut.

Next, I debated on what kind of an arc each end should have. should it be real blunt, pointy, or what? I would like the bike to look like a Superbike from the late 70’s era… but in the end, I just used the 2 cut-off ends as templates, this wold give me the correct, as in original, curves… so I figured that the customized fender will look OEM, just shorter. I’m sure that there are some “purist’s” out there that think I should have left the fender stock, but I want to make the bike more appealing to me.

After drawing the lines from my templates, I then used my Dremel again to cut closer to the drawn lines. After that, then I used my new bench grinder & ground down the edges up to the lines.

After getting the new edges pretty much up to my drawn lines, then I just took some sand paper & smoothed the edges, trying to round them just a little. I know that it is not up to a professionals level, but I really think that my customized fender suits my interests better. In the future, I think that I’ll have the front fender painted, instead of keeping the chrome, the chrome is rusted through anyways. Actually, I’m slowly removing the chrome on the bike…

So he is my finished results, it was easier then I expected… what do you think?

For the first time since buying the bike last May of 2007 (the bike has only been ridden one day since then), I finally have a working rear brake on the GS. The brake fluid was mostly dried up when I bought the bike, so it didn’t work then. Last week I tried to install the eBay caliper that I rebuilt (partially), but felt dumb when the caliper leaked upon bleeding.

I’m going with the analogy that the eBay caliper did not have the little o-ring in-between the two caliper halves… that is why I missed installing that o-ring when reassembling the caliper

Fortunately I was able to steal the o-ring out of my original bad caliper, & just install that in my new eBay caliper. After that, I re-installed the caliper on the bike, hooked up my new braided stainless-steel brake line again, re-bled the brake line & bam, the caliper didn’t leak anymore… and I now have a working rear brake!!

The remaining tasks to get done before I can take the bike out for it’s test ride are;
1. Fix my electrical problem
2. Get my carbs back & installed

My ‘77 GS750 is finally coming back together. I tore it down to address a number of safety concerns after riding it one day last fall.
Tires front & rear were weather cracked, steering-stem bearings shot, chain rusted, no rear brake installed, front brake barely worked, plus plenty of rust throughout & the fact that the bike wouldn’t idle.

These are my 3 final steps before I can take a test ride on the GS, to see how my improvements perform; as well as reveal what other surprises are still hidden preventing the GS from getting back on the road finally.

1. Install Rear Brake… well technically I could ride it before this is done, but not as safe of course.
2. Resolve new Electrical problem that has arisen.
3. Get Carbs back & installed.

1. Rear caliper frustrations. I had boughten this caliper off of eBay because one of the bleeders from my original caliper was stripped out. While I was rebuilding the eBay caliper, I managed to drop the caliper off of my work bench, onto my concrete floor. Afterwords, my banjo bolt wouldn’t thread back into the caliper because the caliper landed on the part where the banjo bolt threads in. So once again, my co-worker friend helped me out, he tapped the threads to make them round again. His advice was to always leave the banjo-bolt threaded in when the caliper is off the bike, to prevent something like this from happening again.

So last night after getting my caliper back from my co-worker friend, I was excited to install the caliper, braided-steel brake line & then bleed the rear brake. This would get me down to approximately 2 tasks before I can take the bike out for it’s first test ride this year.

After I got the brake & brake-line all installed, I went to bleed the rear brake. I ended up having a leak in my rear caliper while bleeding the inside bleeder! It was dripping onto the ground. This is getting frustrating… I’m anxious to take the bike out for a ride this year. But I know, piece by piece, I’ll get it there, plus it is rewarding working on the bike.

Off hand I’m not sure if when I separated the two halves of the rear caliper, upon reassembly, is there supposed to be some kind of a sealer or o-ring, I do not recall either of them when I dissembled the caliper. I just looked at the fiche on-line… it looks like there is likely an o-ring or something where the bolt threads into the caliper, to attache the 2 sides of the caliper together. Makes me feel a little dumb to not have noticed either way up assembly of the caliper. Well I’ll just separate the two sides of the caliper once again & check it out… hopefully I can get this resolved easily & then get it mounted back onto the bike w/o any leakage of brake fluid.

I will also need to come up with a way to mount the rear master cylinder reservoir… since the stock ‘77 750 reservoir is all one piece with the master cylinder. The master cylinder that I’m using now is from a GS1000 and these have a separate mounted reservoir. The original 750 master cylinder on this bike was junk from sitting so long that the brake fluid dried up inside of it. For now, I can at least bleed the brakes with the reservoir leaning up against the frame, and I can put the side panel back on the bike to pretty much hold the reservoir in place when I take it out for its test ride. In the end though, I should attach the reservoir somehow so it stays sitting flat, instead of leaning like it is now.

2. To install my new steering-stem bearings, I needed to completely pull the front-end of the bike off of it. So this meant that I needed to disconnect a number of the wires from the wiring harness, these wires all connecting inside the headlight bucket. Upon reassembly, the Ignition Switch Connector within the headlight bucket is messed up, when it wasn’t before I took it apart. Now, when I turn the ignition key, there isn’t any power to the bike at all. Electrical work is one of my strongest weaknesses, so this kind of sucks. By feeling around & moving/squeezing wires, I was able to track down where I needed to move/squeeze to get the power to come on, but it would cut out once I let go of the wire. It is the Ignition Switch Connector that seems to be causing my lack of power to the bike. Upon further inspection of this connector, I found that 1 of the 4 wires going into the connector was loose, and that I could actually just pull the wire out of the connector w/o any effort.

So off to my co-worker friend for advice, he told me how I can remove the little metal pin inside of the connector & then just solder the wire back onto that metal pin, and finally just re-install the metal pin & wire back into the connector. Well I haven’t soldered since I was a little kid, so I figured this is a good opportunity to relearn how to do that. I went & bought a basic soldering kit, & hopefully this resolves my electrical issue. One thing that makes me question if there is more then one wiring issue going on… when I squeezed the wires & there was power to the bike, when I turned my ignition key from the first position, to the 2nd (where I can actually start the bike), the power then cuts out again. I wonder if it’s possible that I might need to improve a couple other wires in the headlight bucket, but we’ll see as I progress along.

3. The last issue is still that I don’t have my carbs back from my co-worker friend. He has them because my Idle-Adjuster is broke from corrosion & me reefing on it to try & get it to turn. He says that he has been bidding on some racks of carbs, that he’ll snag me the idle-adjuster from one of them that he wins, plus he wants some additional carbs for his own needs. Once I get my carbs back, I can install them, & fire the bike up, presuming that I have my Electrical problem resolved. I am guessing that my jetting is fat (rich), based off of my plug readings last fall… but I never really did get to ride the bike much last fall, so we’ll see. The big test though is that when I’m able to turn up my idle speed, that I’m hoping the bike will actually idle on its own… it wouldn’t do that last year.

Oh, another form of frustration that I’ve been having when working on the bike is that all of a sudden this last week now, my radio station that I listen to in my garage doesn’t come in, it cuts in & out with mostly static… that has gotten real old.
But on the bright side, I did receive a bench grinder for my birthday from my wife, so that is cool. I’ve casually wanted a bench grinder for a few years now.

Since I bought the GS from my old co-worker, the steering stem bearings have needed some work… there was a “dead” or a sticky spot, right in the middle of the the turning radius… well pretty much when going straight ahead. So I could have just repacked the old ball bearings & hope that does the trick, but I wanted a more permanent fix, so I bought some new roller bearings to replace the old ball bearings. They are just a kit, a direct replacement for the make, model, year. But after reading the instructions, I did find out that there is some minor machining that is needed on the steering stem… something about milling down the diameter for the top bearing to sit correctly.

Lucky for me, one of my neighbors works in a machine shop. I had him do the machining of the stem in the lathe, plus had him press off the old bottom bearing & press on the new bottom bearing. Now with this completed & with much appreciation, I have been able to put the front-end of the bike back on, and the triple-clamps turn smoothly now… another step closer to getting my bike on the road.

Here you can see before & after the machining was done to the steering stem, for the new top bearing to sit…

…and here you can see the old ball bearing & then the new roller bearing on the bottom.

Well I was finally able to get those old crappy weather-cracked OEM tires off of my bike. Originally I was going to try & remove the original tires & mount the new ones myself. But I quickly gave up that thought when I wasn’t able to break the bead on the rear tire. So I brought them to my local shop to have them mount & balance them… let them struggle getting those old tires off.

I ended up going with the Avon AM26 RoadRider’s because they had favorable reviews & weren’t all that expensive. For the sizes, I tried to pretty much keep them the original size, I was afraid that if I went too big with the new tires, that the handling might suffer. I figured one size larger would be good though. In the end, I’m afraid that my rear tire is a little smaller in width then I wanted… but I’ll run it for now, maybe at a later date I’ll replace it with something else.

Here are my old/new tire widths, you can see I gained a little width in the front, but the rear is unfortunately narrower, I had hoped for a touch wider.

Old Front Width: 80mm - 3.25×19
New Front Width: 88mm - 100/90-19

Old Rear Width: 113mm - 4.00×18
New Rear Width: 99mm - 120/80-18

In my previous post, I was talking about how I was kind of bummer out by how rusty my GS is. So since my carbs are away & I’m a little low on cash to get my tires mounted & balanced… I decided this weekend to make myself feel a little better & start cleaning up some of the rust on the bike. Plus, since the pieces are already off of the bike, it only makes sense to do it now, instead of tearing the parts off again later to do it then.

Well for starters, the swingarm looked pretty ugly as I took it off the bike. I know that the ‘81-’83 GS1100 swingarm is almost a direct bolt-on, that it is box-section aluminum & that I do want to put one on my bike. But that is not top priority right now, so for now, I’ll just clean up my original swingarm. Oh, & from my research, the aluminum 1100 swingarm has a larger pivot axle, so the frame either needs to be bored out, or a space made to use the smaller 750 axle in the larger 1100 swingarm. Plus the 1100 swingarm is 2 inches longer, so that means if I use my stock shocks, then my ride-height will be reduced, which I wouldn’t want… so that means I should use longer shocks with the 1100 swingarm. This is all cool & everything, but it’ll have to wait until the time is right financially.

So here is my After picture… I did some sanding, then primed it & finally painted it. I am only using spray paint… so it’s nothing like a professional paint job. But again, I am looking at this swingarm maybe only being used for about 1 year… so as you can see, this should look so much better on the bike then before. I do wonder how the color is going to look… I chose a “semi-gloss” black. I knew that I didn’t want a “full-gloss”… but I did consider a “flat” black, a lot of the current sport bikes use some kind of a flat black on their frames & I think it looks great.

The little cover over the starter-motor was heavily rusted as well. This piece is easily seen when looking at the bike, so that bummed me out as well. Here is the Before pic

And here is the After pic. I know that it is not an exact match in color, but it is close enough for me at this point. At a later date, I’ll be fully cleaning up the motor & can resolve the color then. For this color, I just went to the hardware store & guessed… it’s pretty close. This should be much better when looking at the bike.

The last few pieces that I cleaned up this weekend were my headlight mounting brackets & my top triple-clamp. From day one, my headlight mounting brackets have been bent, so I first put those in the vice & tried to straighten them as best that I could, they seemed to of come out pretty well, they should be basically straight now.

After that, then I sanded, primed & painted these pieces. Here you can see them with a fresh coat of primer. My lower triple-clamp is off at the machine shop being machined as- needed for the new tapered-bearings it will be receiving, to replace the old ball-bearings. So once that’s back, I’ll paint that piece as well.

Tonight I was anxious to dig into the GS a little further. I could see that the swingarm was a little rusty, plus I figured it might be a good idea to grease up the swingarm bearings… actually bearing replacements might be in my best interest… so I pulled the swingarm off since all that was holding it on was the swingarm axle.

Maybe I should just stop tearing the bike apart, because the more that I dig into it, the more rust I find. This bike, the $75 purchase from a co-worker who had the bike sitting in his shed for 15 years, this bike is turning into quite the rust bucket… which is a little discouraging. This reminds me of another co-worker who recommended that I do not get into this project for reasons such as this.

For comparison, you can see in this image the rusty brake-arm that was on the bike, versus the much cleaner brake-arm that I won off of eBay. Notice how little rust & corrosion is on the other piece. This also matches the brake master cylinders… both the front & back master cylinders are full of corrosion. Earlier I was considering to try & rebuild my rear master cylinder… but I have since decided to just buy a nicer piece off of eBay… actually, I’m expecting to win that auction is about 12 minutes from now… I hope.

Something else that I didn’t even notice until I was pulling off the swingarm tonight. Both of my stock silencers on my exhaust have rusted holes near the end of them, on the bottom side. you can kind of see it in a picture on my previous post, the image showing the clearance issue when pulling the rear axle out. Just another example of the GS’s rust problems. Or, another reason to buy that 4-into-1 exhaust 

So yea, as I work my way through my GS Project, I am starting to think that finding an old bike or car that has been sitting in storage behind someones house… that it is not always what it’s cracked up to be…

Wow, it sure has been a long time since I’ve written on the site, but an even longer time since I’ve worked on the GS. Looks like last September since any activity with the bike. Well I am glad to say that I have finally begun working on it again.

Once I have installed the new items that I bought, pretty much all of the safety concerns will be resolved. The items of interest; Tires, Brakes, Chain & Steering Stem Bearings.

Oh, first off, about my carbs… last year when I did ride the bike… I could never get it to idle on it’s own. I believe the problem came down to that the Idle Adjuster is seized up from rust, so I can’t turn up the idle. Well after some reefing & prying, some rust pentrator & a torch… I still haven’t been able to break free the Idle Adjuster. So I brought my carbs to a co-worker of mine, he’s good with the old bikes. I hope that he’ll be able to fix this. He has gotten back to me with an update, letting me know that the actual adjuster is cracked, bent & needing to be replaced. He will likely need to drill it out, re-tap the threads & find or make another adjuster for it. So for the time being, I do not have my carbs, but this is fine since the bike isn’t even ready for the road yet.

Tires
I must say, that I am pretty excited to get my new tires mounted on the rims… they look pretty sweet! I went with Avon RoadRider’s, they have gotten favorable feedback on the GS forums, plus their price wasn’t all that high. the same co-worker who is fixing my carbs, he said that he didn’t really like them when he put one on the rear of his bike… so we’ll have to wait & see…
Oh, the sizes that I went with are; Front 100/90-19 & Rear 120/80-18. The front is pretty much the stock size, but the rear might be slightly wider, but it is also a shorter sidewall, so I’m not sure how the results will be, between looks, handling, bump absorption & etc.

I had planned on removing the old tires & installing the new ones myself, just using tire-irons like when changing dirtbike tires… Then bringing them in only to be balanced. But I gave up after trying to remove the rear tire. I might try again, but I think that I’ll likely just bring them in & have them mounted & balanced at the cycle shop.

There’s been a few things while working on this bike, where I can tell that the engineers back then hadn’t really considered ease of maintenance. For example, to remove the rear wheel, you must remove the rear axle of course… but the exhaust is in the way on both side to actually slide the axle out! What a pain… I really didn’t want to have to remove the exhaust… so after giving it a little thought, it occurred to me to removed the rear shocks, this would allow me to lift the axle & rear swingarm above the exhaust… allowing me to pull the axle out without removing the exhaust. So there’s another reason to get a 4-into-1 exhaust on the bike… they stop before the rear axle, allowing room to remove the axle easily.

Brakes
Well I’m back at working on the brakes again. I plan on removing my Stainless Steel Braided front brake line, and installing that on the rear brake. I feel the length that I used on the front will fit the rear better… I bought a shorter line then to put on the front. Last year, I had rebuilt my front brakes… but never touched the rear. Well yesterday I started looking at the rear master cylinder, it is in almost as rough shape as the front was last year. The brake fluid had mostly dried up & was a brown sludge inside the master cylinder… oh and the piston doesn’t seem to be moving within the rear master cylinder. So that is up in the air, I’m not sure yet if I should try to rebuild this master cylinder, or if I’d just be better off finding a different used master cylinder somewhere?

When I bought the bike, I received a spare rear wheel, the spare had some busted spokes. But the spare did have a brake rotor on it, as well as a sprocket. After comparing the rotors between the two wheels that I have, I found the spare to be in better shape, it has less grooving in it. So I swapped the rotors, giving me the rotor that is in better shape, to be used on the bike when it hits the road again.

Speaking of rotors, I took some emery cloth & sanded my front & rear rotors. I did this hoping to aid in the new pads that I bought in seating better. I’ve never sanded rotors before, but how hard can it be? I just went in different directions then the circular grooves worn in already. Pretty much just made an X pattern in the rotors, kind of like honing as far as I know. The rotors sure cleans up, well brightened up from removing the old crappy surface. I didn’t sand them all that much, the circular grooves are still in the rotors, but you can see my hand “honing” in addition.

So yea, I bought new brake pads, I plan on sanding down the pins that the pads ride on, putting Braided Stainless Steel lines on… hopefully in the end, my brakes will be back working in a safe enough manner. Last fall, I didn’t even have the rear brake mounted on the bike, and the front was barely working… there was good lever pressure, but barely any friction between the old pads & rotor… it was to the point that when I finally slowed down enough, I’d actually put my feet down to stop a couple of feet shorter.

Chain
I had a few options to go with replacing my rusty old 630 chain. I could buy 530 sprockets & convert it down to a 530 chain, or I could just put a 630 chain on it. Well I’m well aware that you are not supposed to put a new chain on old sprockets, but that is what I’ll be doing. I inspected the current sprockets on the bike, they are in pretty decent shape, plus money is tight, and finally, I still see that down the road, I might be installing a different or newer wheel & swingarm on the bike… so that’ll necessitate a different sprocket then. So I’m trying to avoid buying things twice if I can.

Upon removing the old chain, I first hunted out to see if it had a master link, which I did find. But, the pins wouldn’t slide through the links… so I still needed to grind off the heads of the pins to get the master link removed. But in the end, no big deal, the old chain is off & waiting to install the new chain.

Steering Stem
Finally, I need to address the steering stem bearings. There is a very pronounced “catch” when you turn the bars right & left… right in the middle or straight position. Sure, I could possibly just repack the ball beargings & it might be fine. But I preferred to just replace these bearings. With newer technology then 30 years ago, the replacement aftermarket bearings are tapered-roller bearings. But the instructions tell me that I need to have my steering stem machined just a little, so that the top bearing will seat correctly. Fortunately, one of my neighbors works at a machine shop… so my plan is to give him my steering stem & new bearings… I’ll have him do the machining, plus press off the old bottom bearing & then press on the new bottom bearing for me.
In the end, the front end of the bike will be safe, tight, secure & move freely, all on new modern bearings.

Looking at my triple clamps, I see that they are fairly rusty. The lower triple clamp had been covered with this chrome trim piece. I’m pretty sure that when I reassemble the triple clamps, that I will not use the chrome trim piece, I’m not real crazy about chrome. Even though I am anxious to get it back together, I imagine it makes more sense to clean up the triple clamps now & paint them while they are apart, instead of doing it later & then possibly disassembling them again to do it.

Well that’s about it at this point. I still have more work to finish to get the new items mounted on the bike, let alone get my carbs back & installed. After that is all completed, then I should be ready to give the bike another try. There is still a little bit of a question on if the bike will even run reliably, or if there are any still-hidden secrets that will need to be addressed to make the bike reliable enough for daily commuting.