64Valiants 1985 Gsx1100

[64valiant]

If you were keen with the eyes you would have noticed in the last post i had a rear tire on the rim again.

I had cut the valves out of the rims to make sure they didnt have any air in them while we were up in the plane, so bought some new valves from boyds, spoke to a mate who works there and got a tire that held air for mock up. Shot down the road to NTB and borrowed the tire machine to sort it out.
 

 

boy the rear tire was fun to get on. But managed to do it myself.

back to stripping the bike, front first.
 

the main stem wasn't the exact same so we got a bit tricky, done some math and made some things work.
 

 

cutty cutty

 

head to the scrap bin, machine some stuff up, work out how to cut threads on the lathe and we have this
 

call in your mate @bobby1930 who knows how to weld
 

and hot glue that together, that well you have to stand around for an hour while it cools down
 

after that i headed to @flyingbricks house to use him for his tools. turns out his lathe will do the trick i need.

the top triple clamp has the stem go through it and needed to be made a couple of mm bigger to now accommodate the factory Suzuki bearing and nut that you see in my hand in above images.

he got all ocd and got out these really over kill machines to measure half a strain of hair tolerance. but we got the top triple clamp in his 4 jaw chuck and got playing with it.

  

picture of nathan doing some work
 

said nut now resting in the hole with some snug tolerances.

 

and back to @Kimjons house to play with the bike.

shocks in and the wheel in place.
 

thats right, i made a 22mm spacer for the left hand side of the wheel to center it up as i dont have a speedo drive on it atm. 

had a play with the top tripple clamp and figured out that i was going to mount my bar risers directly off the top of that and drilled some holes and got into mocking up some more things.
 

 

 

Kim had some mates over later that evening so i shot off and done some shopping. Headed back to boyds and this time checking out some bar risers and bars that might do the trick.

i came out of the door with these 
 

after that i headed to miter 10 to check out there bolt selection and see if i could find some stuff to help do some more mock up.

back to kims for another day of fluffing around. started with machining down these bar risers. taking the lump off them and making them flat.
 

 

 

 

these worked really well. we made a bracket off the bottom of the bolts to hold the dash cluster in place as well.

 

chucked the original ignition in the top tripple clamp and i think this is going to work.

[64valiant]

Lets continue.

i had a seat to get a feel of how things were going and if i liked how it was working out. 

photo credit from @Kimjon
 

liked what i felt and nuckled down and continued making things and working things out.

time to make the front brake calipers fit centered to the rotors. i needed some 4mm washers. digged around all the m10 washers kim had and came up with nothing.

We found some alloy plate that was 4mm thick and kim got out a hole saw, cut some round circles with a m10 center in them. smashed all 4 of them on a bolt, chucked them in the lathe and I machined them down to the required size.
 

said bolt was hot.
 

4 washers later and the front calipers are bolted on.

while i was doing that kim made a mk2 version of the dash holder and extended the brackets out to the top 
 

you can see the miss matched bolts making things work while we mocked it all up. these locations of mounting points are factory points for the dash, good to use them and not modify it if i wanted to convert it back one day/probably never but better safe than sorry.

you can see the factory zxr750 ignition hole in there in the top triple clamp. well we made that work with the factory gsx1100 one.
 

Kim made a couple of little stepped spacers. able to drill some holes and counter sunk them and they bolted into the zxr750 part and then drilled and tapped the little spacer. Bolted the factory gsx1100 ignition to that and away laughing we went.

chucked the dash back on
 

 mocked up the position the headlight would be, slapped a rough front guard on and rolled it out side to have a look.
 

 

 

 

 

pretty stoked with how its looking over all so far.

bars fell nice, front looks good, everything is mounted rather well a sturdy.

not sold on the front fender as of yet, but it has been warming up on me. I think ill try get a better condition one which the local wrecker has. i see the later zxr ones are very sporty looking.

came home later that night and started scrolling alliexpress for some extra parts. bought some headlight mounting brackets, indicator lights and a tail light.
 

be interesting to see what they look like once they arrive as they are chinas finest quality of stuff.

anyway im going out now. will update again later

[Willdat?]

Headlight mounts look pretty similar to what I had on my FT500
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOUVBEG

Were actually pretty decent quality. Love your work.

[64valiant]

cheers man, regarding those clamps im sure they wont be that terrible over all. 

just been impatient atm and want them here yesterday haha.

plenty of other small things that will require work so i'll keep waiting.

[64valiant]

back to where i left off.

i had bought a few nuts and bolts between trips and in some of the above images now had correct hardware on them.

when i was cleaning up and putting all the left over gsx parts in the car i saw it had a cooling block for the brake fluid. it meant that id still be able to run one hose off the top leaver and then down to this and split to each side of the calipers. 

quickly robbed that and had a brain storm, realized we could make it bolt onto the bike and be semi tucked away.

que images
 

 

@Kimjon mad another alloy block with some holes drilled in it, bolted to zxr triple clamp holes and then extra ones tapped out so we could bolt the gsx parts to it with some tube spacers.

should hide well once the light is on.
 

i flicked @Roman dave a message after kim thinking he had a 3d scanner to see if he could scan the rear cover of the dash.
 

turns out he doesn't have a scanner but has said he might be able to draw it up for me so i could 3d print another one. 

it requires a bit of trimming to make it fit and id rather not cut this oem one up if i didn't have to.

apart from the headlight a few other smaller things the front is 80% mocked up and im really happy with it.

so onto the rear and trying to figure out what i need and how to make things work.

I wanted to get the rear shock in and get that out of the way so we could then focus on more difficult things like the rear rim.

turns out the shock wasn't an easy quest. 
 

few extra bolts than i expected but it turned out easier to take the rear swing arm off.

while going through removing everything of it i found out my dad was a really good nz bloke and twist and tapped the rear indicator lights on x amount of years ago when he was still around haha

three peace shock bolt
 

and then we started making the 2023 GSX-S1000 shock i bought earlier fit.

we trimmed the bottom mounting tubes 2.2mm each side. out with the masking tape for some guidance
 

Like a glove
 

next was making it fit the top mounting position. 

and this time it was easier to modify the shock than the bracket.
 

out came the bush. again, some quick math was done and while kim spun the bush up in the lathe i played with the mill
 

 

i took a total of 5.9mm over all off this. 3mm one side and 2.9 off the other side giving it some free space and not bind up on the other peace.

a quick rattle can job and chucked it all back together.
 

 

fits well and clears everything just fine.

unlike the rear rim......

that was the next thing to do. try make that fit and do some basic maths.

and it just straight out isnt going to work this time round.

the width between the swing arm measures X wide (i think it was 220mm). which is the exact some width of the rear rim with caliper and sprocket on it. leaving no room for the bracket to hold the rear caliper on.

i done some extra reading and i had mentioned earlier that a bandit 600 rim fits in with out to much modification, also a 5.5inch wide rim. so i might go see my local bike wrecker guy and see if hes got a rim for sale there that i might be able to trade mine with. mines going to be no use to me.

the tire it self fits in nice and snug with room to play, so im happy about that.

here is a comparison to the width difference 
 

ideally i just need to find a rim that is 20/25mm skinnier, tomorrows problem.

we continued pulling things apart to see what else would require work. thought id check the front sprocket and see how much i can move that.

and surprise surprise. look what we found
 

im pretty sure that nut is ment to be up there holding the sprocket on. 

looking closer i can see why it hasn't been holding it on
 

its got no thread in it! 

so another task tomorrow is to head out and buy a new nut for that and i done some reading about a sprocket others have used before. so ill see if a local supplier can get that while im out and about.

till next time.

tell me how silly i am for riding this bike home and doing skids on it with no nut on the front sprocket.

[flyingbrick]

Holy shit! Hah! Fark there was a lot of scope for that to go bad during ya ride 

[GregT]

Seen worse. The chain itself would have kept things aligned.

Looking at the front end, I suspect you're going to wind up with a very stable bike. The head angle plus the offset on the ZX triple clamps have given you a lot of trail. More suitable for drags than circuit use. As stock they steered very well on track but you've dialled in more trail which will make it feel heavy. We'll see.

[64valiant]

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how it handles over all.

 

I'll have nothing to compare too been I hadn't really ridden it long distance or hard.

 

 

Looking at this image of it with the fairing, with out the fairing and then with a zxr front on it.

 

It doesn't look to much different But it definitely look stretched out over all been a naked bike now.

 

Handle bar position is completely different to original and more styled like a gsx1400, bandit or a hornet.

[Mof]

Where's the difference though? Has the triple clamps got an offset?

[GregT]

Kawasaki triples have less offset than the OE suzuki. Add in the larger tyre OD and i'd reckon trail's gone up quite a bit.

[64valiant]

Quick break down on what trail is.

 

 

 

Good little video.

 

I'll measure it and see what it is now.

 

Still got all the other stuff so might be able to work out what I did have before hand.

[GregT]

For a bike this size and weight in my experience with pre82 racebikes you're looking for a trail figure between 88 and 98mm

Less than that is unstable, greater is heavy steering.   That's with modern 17in front on a 3.5in rim.

[64valiant]

Was doing some reading and see even the suzuki GS 1200SS run a trail of 99mm.

 

Interesting small bit of random information.

[64valiant]

so i done some digging and some searching around with the rims. wasn't having any luck with finding one so the next step was to look at different swing arms to either modify or try fit in the rear of the bike.

a Suzuki gs1200ss swing arm popped up for sale in tga. i have a mate local to me that has one, so i shot around to his house with my stock swing arm and got some rough measurements to see if it would work to modify and the common consensus was that its probably going to be the best option to make a swing arm work. so i hit the buy now and had @Mop Head pick it up for me.
 

 

had a few people concerned that it wasn't going to work and that it was going to be a rather large thing to undertake but i didn't really have many other options if i wanted to fit this 5.5 rear wheel in.

and after some comparisons and some measurements the 1200ss swing arm is rather larger and stronger.

  

factory swing arm is 60.2mm tall
 

and 3.2mm thick
 

the suzuki gs1200ss swing arm is 74.9mm
 

and it is 5.2mm thick
 

time to chop it up.

 

gotta trim it down a little bit on the width as well
 

and removed the twin shock mounts off
 

time to get more precise with the measurements 
 

chucked them in the mill and @Kimjon showed me how to do some things

then we needed to cut some space for the rear shock like the stock swing arm.
 

got it looking like this
 

and i took them home to get them welded up and to do some more measurements

cleaned my work bench and got busy again.

worked out where the center of the swing arm is and done some basic math and made some brackets.
 

 

factory mounts
 

trace some out and draw them
 

a bit of grinding and a stepped drill bit later
 

 

and thats one side all sorted.

the bottom side now, kim had already cut these out while i was doing other stuff at his house one day.

i trimmed them to shape and chucked them in the bender (vice) and got to shaping them up and making them fit
 

 

kind of a before
 

and an after
 

well during that time i did go to @flyingbricks house and steel this lathe to re make those peaces that go in the top of the mounts. we some how made the center hole to big.

i reached out to josh to see if he could weld these up for me but some times he replies way to slow and often has stuff going on in his own life. so i also reached out to @Rhyscar to see if he wouldn't mind doing some welding for me. he said to pop over and we could run through it see if it was possible.

next images can tell if you if it was or wasn't
 

 

 

 

 

 

so happy with it.

back out at kims again while i adulted with my daughter at my toes. time to try make this fit in.
 

 

hey thats close enough, lets put the seats and plastics on before i go to see how it looks
 

blue tooth chain but we still got a fair few things to do.
 

daughter loves granddad garys motorcycle so she wanted to sit on her seat.



and we are now up to speed a bit more.

huge thanks to those who have helped out so much so far and kim for letting me keep it in his shed and use all his tools 

[64valiant]

been a min so lets catch up.

we left on mocking up the rear wheel. it was a pretty rough rushed set up to see how things worked. 

i needed some wheel bearings to fit the smaller axle, smashed out the old ones 
 

 

got some new ones that fitted and another visit to @Kimjons we started fitting it up

i also had @flyingbrick come out and we got some spacers made up that centerd the wheel and got working on how to make the caliper fit. took a bit of shaving some material off the hanger part and we were able to use the oem gsx1100 stabilizing bar on the gs1200 swing arm in the same spots. drilled the hole out a couple mm and everything worked so well!
 

nathan also got busy on making a number plate bracket that also held the indicators
 

going off the above image we were also mocking up the chain. i ordered the wrong sprocket as i thought it was a wider chain but the rear sprocket was a bit skinner and a 525. boyds had a sprocket and chain in stock so bought that and headed out to kims another day.

had to space the front sprocket out a bit to line the chain up. put a small sleeve on the shaft and it worked out perfect 
 

 

a bunch of lock tight later and the nut was on!

chucked the chain on and onto making the muffler fit
 

hot metal glue later and lets roll this boy out side
 

 

time to take it home and do some things i can do at home!

got apex here in hamilton to make me some brake lines. they were 70 and 75 plug gst which i felt was good with some pressed ends on them.

i bleed the system up and rode it in the drive way a bit but i wasnt so happy about the front master doing its job 100% here is me and my daughter wearing all the same safety gear doing drive way hoons


 

so i went and paid a visit to my local bike wrecker and showed him what i was after and he had a vtr1000 master in stock that was in working order. slapped that on and i felt alot better about the front brakes 

time to pull the bike apart and get some tires and other jobs done 
 

hang it from the roof in the garage. whipped the tires off and got myself some road 6s
 

while the tires were off it was time to finish up the rear swing arm and get @Rhyscar to weld it up.

made this little pattern with tape
 

cut it down 
 

then cut it out of some plate i got from @Kelvin used my old bike rack to shape it up and get it close enought to where i was happy with it
 

 

trimmed these little peaces of box section up to re enforce the swing arm a bit more 
 

Rhys had a bit of filling to do but as per normal he smashed it out
 

 

while rhys was off doing this i pulled my headers off as i knew they had a leak on them.

turns out they were a but loose and probably leaking from the flange
 

but while they were off i wanted to also clean up a few cracks from where dad had modified the pipes from ages ago. 
 

ground it all back as it looks like it might have been joined with brass or of something similar 

and due to that i had to use filler rod to weld it back together as i was blowing holes in it from been so thin
 

thankfully im a grinder and not a welder.
 

i had also filled up the bottom part for a better transition cause i was going to wrap these headers. if you are asking why, its cause they look like ass! and heat wrap makes them look better.

 

 

see i told you. i put them back on with a bit of maniseal and carried on with putting my muffler on
 

@flyingbrick gave me the hanger part that goes around the muffler cause he wasnt using it on his muffler set up he bought.

i made a little bracket that goes from he oem hanger position
 

shout out to bunnings for the steel

time to put the swing arm back in. that wasnt any issue but i came into a problem with the swing arm shrinking a little bit.....
 

i think the inner triangle peaces i had rhys weld it made it a bit tighter....

but i continued on like a normal person and struggled till i wone
 

and boom! all together.

you might see i have a white front fender as well. i got a mate to drop off some vinyl and i thought id give wrapping a go......

green fender.
 

white fender
 

pretty happy with how well it came out considering it was my very first time.

and today i had to go buy some bolts to chuck fender on properly
 

put those bolts on it the car park and then went to visit a mate to show the bike off. it wasnt long and we put his bike back together and we headed out for my 1st ride after all the mods had been done
 

this is after i push started him at the servo from having a flat battery.

made it over the divy and the bike went really well
 

 

used a bit of the tire for my first outing
 

and over all a stunning day for a ride
 

we done 50kms today at fast and slow speeds. bike felt really good and very easy to throw over in the corners.

over all super stoked with it! ive got a few smaller things to do like speedo and other minor problems, but it is 100% able to be riden now!

ahh i also got the og black plate re instated so i can register it on the og black plates. excited about that!

and to top this post off here are some old photos of dad on it or the bike back in its day while i was searching for photos of it with the black plate
 

 

dads katana with my older brother on it before he got the gsx
 

hope you all enjoyed this post. 

[GregT]

Even with loctite that final drive nut is going to come loose. They're noted for it. I'd machine it narrower so the nylon locking material is actually on the shaft.

Nice job overall. You've kept the essential character of the bike.

[64valiant]

Cheers @GregT I'm really happy with how subtle it looks modified in my eyes and how much modified it actually is. I'll be sure to keep an eye on that drive nut.

 

 

A before and after

 

 

And another one

 

 

 

 

 

[hampie]

I was sitting in my van yesterday at the traffic lights in Nawton, looked over saw a real cool bike, swooned, pointed it out to Guy and we watched it being ridden away majestically at which point Guy says "wonder if that was Greg" photos indicate that it was indeed. Very nice bike.

[BlownCorona]

that looks great. only thing i would do is splash a little blue on the front fender somewhere, currently it looks a little bit like a replacement universal part on an otherwise very thought out machine.

[64valiant]

On 15/05/2024 at 17:23, BlownCorona said:

that looks great. only thing i would do is splash a little blue on the front fender somewhere, currently it looks a little bit like a replacement universal part on an otherwise very thought out machine.

 

Yeah I'd like to put some blue and black on it to match the rest of the bike. Just happy to get some white on it and get it rolling.

 

Went for a ride with a mate on Tues and had my speedo cluster come off/brake. Had been watching one on trademe for the last 4 weeks. Rang him and picked it up and changed it while we were out and about haha.

 

 

 

Squshed my quadlock phone holder onto it and held it in place while we rode to the guys house.

 

Speaking of quadlock, I got that and some wing mirrors off Aliexpress. Happy with the quadlock stuff and how the mirrors look. But they don't hold well at 100kph, the move a lot so I might have to find some none Aliexpress mirrors that look similar