Not So Famous…

I was commenting to a friend the other day that getting my bike back up and running has achieved sort of a mythical, legendary ambiance in my mind.  It seems like every time I try and get it back together, I think of something else to check and find something else to fix.  This past weekend was no exception.

First off, can I comment about the unbelievably weird weather we’re having now?  Sunday was 103 in my area, and here we are two days later with a predicted high of around 74 degrees.  Listen, I’m not complaining…I’m very happy we’re finally seeing something of fall.  It’s just a seriously abrupt change.  30 degrees of difference in 2 days?

So…Saturday, my only plan was to get that cam cover replaced, torqued down, get the carbs back on the bike, and get the bike running.  I didn’t know if I’d actually make it to sync’ing the carbs, but my ultimate goal was to get everything together so I could fire up the bike.  I wasn’t even really hoping to RIDE it.  I just wanted to prove to myself that this legend that was the concept of a working bike was a possibility in more than just my mind.  My thought was, “What else could POSSIBLY go wrong?  I’m not going to be checking anything…just putting it all back together.”  Silly me.

To begin, allow me to say that aluminum is an unbelievably soft metal.  So soft, in fact, that I often wonder if the threads on my cylinder head bolt holes would be a little more sturdy if they were made of BUTTER.

Yes, friends and neighbors…I managed, using a torque wrench set to the proper inch-pound torque specifications, to strip not one, but two bolts when trying to get my cam cover back on.  Discovering the first one was a bad moment in bike repair.  I first slumped my shoulders in disappointment.  Of course, the simplest of procedures must, of necessity, be fraught with problems, right?  This wouldn’t be motorcycle maintenance if that weren’t the case.

Finding the second stripped bolt was INFURIATING.  Only the Spirit of God could possibly have prevented me from kicking the bike over and setting the darn thing on fire.  He must have intervened because I did not do these things.  In fact, I didn’t even physically lash out at anything!  God really is the only explanation.

(Yes, I know how to use a torque wrench, and yes, I was using it properly.  No, I was not at the extreme ends of my torque wrench specifications.  What *I* think happened was these threads were ready to go anyway.  We’ve found other evidences of over-torquing various bolts on this bike, including the oil pan drain plug.)

SO….I managed to helicoil the first set of threads, and got that bolt on there really good.  The second one is going to be near impossible to get to, and at this point, I’d decided I could live with a little oil-oozing for awhile if only I could start the bike up.  Was that too much to ask?  Apparently, yes.

I got the carburetors on my bike surprisingly easily.  I was actually kind of floored.  Here was what caused Gabe and I so many problems when we tried to put them on before, and I did it by myself in a matter of about 10-15 minutes.  In fact, my surprise at how easily they went on was only surpassed by my frustration when I realized that the carbs were on nice and tight, preventing all access to the throttle and choke cables, which turned out to be nearly impossible to get back on.

So Saturday, I was stymied by the little matter of an inability to connect the throttle and choke cables.  However, it wasn’t a total loss, as all that really needed to happen was the connection of those cables, and I could very well be back in business!

Last night, Gabe came over, and our goal was to get the cables connected, and the bike started.  It took a little while, and a lot of fiddling, but Gabe was finally able to get both cables connected!  We got the auxiliary, external gas tank hooked up, and actually STARTED UP THE BIKE!!!  That’s right, folks…the legend became reality as my motorcycle roared to life, and idled…for a minute or two.  :)

Yes, there are a couple of little bugs I need to work out.  The awesome people at http://www.thegsresources.com have yet again pointed me in the direction of what is keeping me from realizing the goal of riding my motorcycle again. Tonight and tomorrow, I will be ensuring that the vacuum hose that normally goes to my petcock is plugged up, and unscrewing the screw cap to my aux tank to vent it, and that very well may take care of my issues with the idle fading and dying.

I am unspeakably excited to see my hard work pay off.  I don’t mind telling you, faithful reader, that there was a large part of me that just KNEW the bike would never run again.  That something I did in cleaning my carbs broke them forever.  That SOMETHING would prevent me from hearing the sound of my bike running ever again, and that had begun to settle around me as a cloak of disappointment and despair.  I’m not a mechanic…I don’t REALLY know what I’m doing. I’m learning as I go.  It would not have surprised me if I’d attempted to start the bike and nothing happened.  But it started, and it ran…for a little bit.

A major high point of  last night is when I realized that I started the bike with the carbs bone dry. Prior to cleaning the carbs, the bike was sort of a hard starter.  It would normally start ok, but if I wasn’t careful to roll on the throttle a little while the bike was warming up, it would die, and would then be a PAIN to start without using carb/choke cleaner sprayed into the air intake.  I figured something was wrong with the choke circuit, but darned if I knew what.  I hoped that the carb clean would take care of it, as I’d read that a lot of times, guys will forget to clean the choke passage, as it’s a little side path in the bottom of the float bowl.  Looks like the clean really helped, as the bike started up and roared pretty well with the choke knob pulled out.  I’m pretty darn excited about it!!!

I’ll keep you all informed as I test out the theories I have about the idle fading and dying problem, but it’s very conceivable I could be up and running before this weekend!  WOOOT!  I’ll be posting pictures on Facebook as soon as things are back up and running!

I didn’t want to steal my own thunder in my title, but that’s what is consuming my thoughts this weekend. Seriously, this bike has somehow taken on an aura of the unattainable.  I wonder if I ever get the thing back together such that it runs, will that herald the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, much the same way we thought if a certain friend of ours ever got a girlfriend, let alone got married, would that signal the end of the world as we know it?  And if it did, would we really feel fine?

This weekend, I’d hoped to get my bike put back together.  I think I’ve said that every weekend for the last month, reminding me that it’s my own fault I keep getting my hopes up.  In most cases, when I start work, I immediately find a problem that needs solving.  I spend the rest of my Saturday trying to solve it.

This weekend was no different.  I had my carburetors all reassembled, but I reasoned (oops on me, I guess) that since I had the gas tank off and the carbs out of the way, I should just pop the valve cover off and check the valve clearances on the bike, since I have no idea when the last time it was done. Most people who own these bikes say you need to do this every 3,000 miles or so.

First off, a friend measured the clearances while I did other things, and determined that out of the 8 valves on my bike, only 1 was in spec.  The others were too close.  This could conceivably cause serious damage, if the valves aren’t closing while the piston is rising. Most likely, however, it’s just causing loss of compression.  In any event, if the tappet shims (what the cams press on to open the valve) aren’t closing because they’re out of spec, then I need newer shims.

Well, I knew of a nifty way to keep the valve open while I removed the shims, so I went to Ace and got some large wire ties, and a tappet feeler gauge, so I could check the clearances myself.  I found that one of them was out of spec, but the others seemed ok.  I don’t know why my friend was unable to get the feeler gauge blade into the space between the shim and the cam lobe, but I didn’t have a problem.

So while this is partially good news, the fact that I needed 1 shim means I can’t get my bike back together…again.  I had to order online, since the local Suzuki dealer wanted to charge $14 PER SHIM!  Little 29.6m x 2.6mm circle of hardened metal, and they wanted $14.  Z1enterprises.com had it for $5.28.  Guess where I got it.

So this week, the part should arrive.  I can get it into the shim bucket, and start getting my bike together.  I have nothing else to take apart, so I can’t come up with any more areas that could have problems.  I think from here on out, it’s just going to be getting the stupid thing back together.

Of course, none of this even remotely guarantees that the bike will start or run properly.  That’s the next fun bit.

I expected this when I bought an older bike, but it’s still been a pain.  :)

So I mentioned in my last post that I’d bought and learned to ride a motorcycle.  This was a $750 motorcycle I bought up in Jamestown.  I reasoned that if I wrecked it, or if it stopped working after a couple months, I was only out $750 plus whatever parts I put into it.  It was solid reasoning, and I don’t regret my decision.

However, this decision has come with a LOT of work.  I expected this, and looked forward to learning something about engines and mechanics. I am definitely learning.

This bike has carburetors rather than fuel injectors, which meant that I’d need to make sure the things were clean and adjusted properly.  I had a high idle problem, which pointed to an air intake problem.  Gabe and I removed the carburetors and removed the intake boots attached to the cylinder, and replaced the o-rings, which were flatter than normal, and it was here that we discovered the first of my problems.

I had a stripped cylinder head bolt hole.  Someone had torqued down the intake boot bolt WAY too hard and had stripped the inside of the soft, aluminum head.  I checked on my favorite motorcycle forum (http://www.thegsresources.com) and found that people had fixed stripped threads with something called a Helicoil kit.  I went down to Ace, picked one up, and Gabe and I installed it.  Problem solved.

Getting the carbs back on the bike proved to be a MAJOR hassle, and I realized that the clamps I had on the airbox side of my carbs were messed up pretty badly.  I made the decision to buy new clamps, and while waiting for those to arrive, I decided that it might be a better plan to leave the carbs off, give them a good and thorough cleaning, and THEN put them back on.  I’m glad I did.

The Suzuki GS series has 4 carburetors; one for each cylinder.  Carb #1 had no problems, but it went very slowly, as I was learning how to take it apart. Carb #2, however, was a serious pain.

A carburetor accepts gas from the gas tank, and fills the bottom portion of the device, called the float bowl.  It knows when to cut off the flow of gas by using a float, which presses on a needle valve when it rises to a certain level.  The needle valve is what shuts off the gas flow.  That float is connected to the carburetor body with a pin that goes through two posts.

This pin, for some absurd reason, is TIGHTLY seated in these posts, and can be a pain to get out.  A previous owner of my bike found that out, as he actually managed to BREAK one of the posts.  He did a bad epoxy job, and when I was getting the pin out, the top of the post fell off.

Now, my bike came with a set of spare carburetors, for some reason. I decided to try and use the spare carb #2’s body instead of trying to JB Weld the float post.  However, when I got everything out of carb #2, I realized there was a plug in the top of the carb body hiding one of the screws.  (It’s the air screw, actually, and the plug was placed there at the bidding of the EPA so we can’t tinker with our carburetors.  However, without removing that screw, we can’t do a thorough cleaning.  A carb dip will destroy the little o-ring in that hole, making the entire thing useless.)  I drilled out the plug, screwed in a wood screw, and pulled that bad boy out.

I then performed the cardinal error of mechanics.  Be prepared to cringe.  Because that little air screw hadn’t been touched since the carbs were manufactured nearly 30 years ago, it was pretty well seized.  So I did what every manual and mechanic will tell you not to do: I grabbed a very well-fitting screwdriver, and attempted to force it out.  That’s right, folks, I mangled the head of that screw.

So, with the second carb body rendered useless by my idiocy, I returned to using JB Weld to get that float tower back on.  The procedure went quite well, and aside from having to drill out the pin hole of some rogue epoxy, it went on perfectly! With carb #2 clean, I began work on #3 and #4, which had no problems at all.  Started and finished them both yesterday.  I then reassembled the carbs, except for the float bowls of all of them.

When I took the float bowls off, the gaskets to all of them were pretty brittle, and I knew they’re be relatively inexpensive.  I ordered new ones, which took a week to SHIP.  They finally shipped out Friday, so I have to wait on them to get my float bowls and idle screw on.

Then I get to bench sync the carbs, getting them ready to vacuum sync them.  In all, the procedure for cleaning and rebuilding carbs isn’t that HARD…it’s just time-consuming, and you really have to be detail-oriented.  As a friend of mine once said, “there’s a lot of little parts, and they’re ALL important.”  He’s definitely right.  You can’t misplace a part, and then just hope for the best.

Getting the carbs back on the bike is going to be a chore, but I shouldn’t need to take them off for a long time!  :)