Twist-Throttle.com

So today, I decided to try something a little different… instead of just typing it all up, I thought I’d try something fun & video it. Besides, I needed something fun to work on… my GS’s gas tank is still causing me to struggle.

The basics of the video, in case you don’t want to wait for it to download are; that the tank in primer has primer on all of the threaded holes. I tried to thread the various fasteners back into the tank & have cross-threaded some, plus one little screw that holds on a tank emblem has broke off inside of the tank.

So I am becoming really frustrated with the tank part of my project. I’m going to have to have all of the holes tapped before I can go on… & I hope that the tiny screw hole that holds the tank emblem on is reparable… with it’s very small threads I mean.

About the video, sorry for the sort-of poor quality, it was shot with my digital camera, not a video camera, just a point & shoot digital camera.

This is the first time that I have embed video from other sources on my site, but I thought that these 2 videos from Jay Leno kicked ass. I often forget that he is a legitimate motorhead.

Testing of Phase 1 went successful, for the most part that is. The GS did start up after a little bit of cranking. I am not for sure how long it has been since the bike has actually been started & run… but it sounds like it has been at least 4 years or so. The bike has not been on the road since ‘93, which would be 14 years ago now.

So yea, about the Phase 1 testing; if the bike wouldn’t have started & I ended up figuring out that it would take substantial money or efforts to get running, I would likely just part out the bike to get the money that I have into it back. But yes, the bike did start. Although, it didn’t run all that great. For one thing, it won’t idle. Secondly, it needed the choke on the whole time for it to run better as well. But this is not a major surprise since the bike currently has open carbs w/o an airbox or filters on them… so it is getting more air & causing it to run lean. When I rebuilt the carbs, I had no idea where the air screws should be, so I just turned them out 1 turn. Otherwise, the current jetting should be stock. Plus, the bike might be what you’d call “cold blooded”, and my revving of it in the garage for the 5 minutes might not have woken it up from its hibernation of many years.

I attribute some of this to the jetting being off, plus possibly because it has been sitting for so long, but yes, the 30 year old GS does seem like a slow revver to me, but again, I’m used to modern liquid cooled sport bikes. Hopefully when I get it running better, the motor will get a little snappier. One good thing is that I expected to hear more valve train noise then actually I did.

I did have Brandy take some video of the moment. In the video above, you can see it smoking, as well as hear the exhaust tone and the carbs sucking in air each time I give it gas.