64Valiants 1985 Gsx1100

[64valiant]

Had a bit of a squeak after the ride where I broke the dash cluster. 

 

Had a feeling the front wheel was a bit of center and rubbing on one of the rotors so wanted to visit kim and see if we could work it out.

 

Made a trip out to @Kimjons and fixed that. While i was there we got busy cutting up my 2nd cluster bracket and welding a different set up on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pulled the top triple clamp apart to do the job right, make my life easier.

 

Looks a bit like this from front now.

 

 

 

Got home and glued a little broken part back onto the cluster and chucked the rear cover on the back.

 

 

 

 

Lubed the chain and hit up @flyingbrick to go for a ride

 

 

 

 

 

Marnix came along and we ended up going over to Bethlehem via waihi and back over the kai mais and through scottsmans velly.

 

 

 

 

Bike went flawlessly.

 

 

 

 

Only problem I found it been a little stiff in the rear so time to try adjust the rear shock.

 

 

 

Off course I had to pull it apart to reach the screw to adjust it. It's here at the tip of my finger

 

 

 

And since the bike was going so good I thought I'd take it for a ride by myself.

 

I shot to vtnz and handed in my white plates and got my black original plates re registered back on the bike so that's official and was a pretty easy process over all.

 

Carried on for a ride out to Raglan.

 

 

 

And on my way home it started running like a bag of balls. Infact stopped and wasn't able to start it again. So called @flyingbrick to pick me up and before he got to my house I had another mate offer and was already on the way.

 

 

 

 

Got ot home and thought I better go through these carbs, they are obviously the reason for it not wanting to start.

 

Out to @flyingbricks house to take advantage of his ultrasonic cleaner.

 

 

 

 

 

There was definitely some crap in them that's for sure.

 

Also got the boss on board giving the carbs a blow down after a good hot water wash.

 

 

 

And back together 

 

 

 

Time to clean up some fouled plugs as well.

 

 

 

Smashed it back together and had no luck starting it or getting fuel down to the carbs.

 

And that's cause it had no fucken fuel in it.

 

The fuel guage said ¼ of a tank and it was fucken bone dry. No wonder why it didn't want to start and was running like a bag of balls.

 

 Chucked some gas in it and fired up straight away.

 

Until the carbs were leaking like a siv.

 

 

 

So off they come and stripped down again.

 

 

 

Had a feeling it was the o rings on these little guys which had to do with the float.

 

 

 

Spoke to a mate and he confirmed my thoughts of the o ring.

 

So later today I'll head out and buy some viton o rings that are suitable and chuck it all back together again.

 

Follow for more stupid mistakes later.

[flyingbrick]

Its been a total pleasure being present for parts of this build.

 

[GregT]

FWIW, my experience has been that on current fuels once a plug is fouled you can't bring it back. Solvent, abrasive blast or heat, none work.

Not like the old days where solvent worked 99% of the time.

[64valiant]

Yup, these o rings are toast.

 

 

 

Quick visit to seal imports here in Hamilton and 7 bucks later.

 

 

 

A little amount of grease to help them slide in. Cause they were most definitely a snug fit this time round and they were all together again.

 

 

 

 

Back on

 

 

 

And all running again.

 

 

 

 

Hope the weather does something great and I can head out for a ride double check it's running good on the open road.

 

Mates also said I could use his balancer to balance the carbs. So might take him up on that, probably shoot to his house and do it there as he has a way better set up and plenty of garage space.

 

 

 

[64valiant]

Took the bmw headlight off and checked to see if the full fearing would still fit on.

 

 

 

Safe to say it does.

 

 

 

A few broken parts on it, so I'll probably fix them up and swap it out as I please.

[64valiant]

hello.

while i was trying on the full fearing i noticed the bmw headlight had a rattle. had a closer look at it and found the reflector had broken. so i shot out to @Kimjon house and put some bird shit on it.
 

i mean, no one will ever see it other than you guys reading this post. so you guys can judge me.

quickly slapped that back together and had a couple mates keen on a ride the next day.
 

 

bike went well and i noticed not long before the above image i could hear something rattling. nothing to bad but annoying me.

had a closer look at it was my front fender, two of my bolts had come lose from not been locnuts or having loctite on them. couple of cable ties as on the road again.

 

you can see my new black cable ties above.

took it to the Hamilton motorcycle club for their monthly club night.
 

and done some more running around
 

and while the small rides i had noticed my lights flickering.
 

was thinking it was a voltage issue. so started digging around and found a loose wire.
 

slapped a plug on it
 

and that didnt fix it so i started looking at voltage regulators 

i was talking to @flyingbrick at this stage and he had a manual down loaded and done some reading. said i had low oil pressure that was causing the flickering.

so time to check the oil quantity.

drained it out and realized it was pretty low :/ i only drained it out as i couldn't see the level through the site glass.

so pulled the side cover off to see if i could clean it.

queue my daughter taking photos of me while trying to keep her occupied 
 

 

lets see what i can get in here and clean it
 

thats a bit cleaner
 

back on and some new oil
 

time to take it for a ride. thought id go see @Geophy and he wasn't home so caught up with @Dogwatch, while i was there i realized i lost my oil filler cap 
 

 

tried to trace my ride back and kept an eye on the road to see if i could see it. but i had no luck, just covered my pants in oil. 

hit up @MostlySuzukis to see if his gs1200ss had the same thread as mine. he had a couple other bike engines at home that were also the same as his gs1200ss so shot around there and he gave me a spare.
 

not exactly the same as the old one
 

but it is fixed and gets me riding again.

speaking of riding. got out of work early and hit @MostlySuzukis up to see if he was free. headed over and headed south.
 

headed down the west side of the waikato river. stopping off at a few good spots on the way down
 

 

 

over all a good ride

 

started using riser app to track my rides. is a really good app, tracks some good stuff and can offer different roads for rides that you possible haven't tried before 

on the way home i also booked it in for a wof check, be good to see what it would fail on and get myself a list together.

 

over all 10/10 motoring


keen on some more bigger bikes

[64valiant]

Hello.

 

So the day came for my wof check. Woke up this morning and put my thermals on, sweater on under my jacket and headed out for my wof check.

 

turned up a few mins early and old mate was under a datsun sunny giving the A12 a oil change. Mentioned i had a wof booked in, to which he was surprised cause his darling had booked in the datsun to be worked on. None the less he said and scrubbed his hands clean and passed me the wof sheet to fill out the information for. 

 

Made some small talk and he went over the bike, we made some more small talk and headed inside.

 

During the small talk he said, well you now have a wof, but it runs out at a less than ideal time. So make sure you book in early to make sure you'll have one for summer.

 

I paid the man and went on my way.

 

 

 

A celebratory ride to Raglan.

 

 

 

Then to my daughters daycare for Matariki lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

Fry bread is the best.

 

 

But how cool is that, first wof since 2009 on the old girl.

 

I figured you might ask who done the wof. Well I got a photo of him so you can all use him.

 

 

 

 

[64valiant]

Hi all

my front brake discs had a small warp in them and i was getting pretty sick of them at the same stage of wanting bigger ones on the bike, front and rear. both of them were smaller than i needed but not by much.

done some digging around and checked in with a wrecker locally to see if he had a rear disc for me, turns out he didn't but knew which one i was after. so visited boyds motorcycles and order that and a sprocket two tooth smaller.

photo of the old disc on top of the new one.
 

bit of a difference in the rear, going from a 220mm to a 240mm
 

smaller sprocket to bring down the revs at cruising speed and due to the chain length been a funny length

 

not to much smaller but the smallest i could get for the rear and i have the biggest i can get for the front.

got that sorted and one chain length taken out of the chain, put back together and sorted out the front.

this is how much smaller the discs were and how little were grabbing on the pads
 

i mean it worked and stopped well, but nice to know that its grabbing a bunch more now.

new pads
 

and i have gone from a 290mm to a 320mm front discs
 

same again with the difference in size
 

my mate giving me a hand putting everything back together

 

gave the pins a bit of a birthday while i had them apart
 

 

 

and back together
 

don't ask me why the front fender looks so green, something weird going on with the lighting in this image

anyway. thing stops really well with the new discs and pads in.

a while ago i was riding with @MostlySuzukis and a mate out to raglan, we have coms while we ride for laughs and to catch up while we ride. anyway he was following me out to raglan and i heard a scrape as i was cornering, my pipe obviously scraping on the ground. with in seconds of it scraping i heard mostlysuzukis speak over the coms "JESUS those were some bright sparks!!!!" thus been the 3rd or 4th time id touched the muffler now and not overly happy about it at the same time happy i am leaning the bike over enough im scraping the muffler.

ever since then i never really trusted myself leaning to the right, didn't want the pipe to catch causing damage or worse me falling off from it. i had spoken to @Kimjon about visiting and altering the pipe to be in a better position and i finally got the chance today to head out alter it.

pulled the main headers off and found a small issue as we levered the pipe to remove it
 

que why i used exhaust wrap to hide all the sins that were under it previously.

figured out where we wanted the pipe with a few improve things and made it work from there
 

figuring out angles and how to make it high and still functional 
 

 

few different shapes going on in there
 

 

I had my old exhuast hanger that I got off @flyingbrick which we re used again. This time instead of using 1million washers @Kimjon made a couple of small spacers up on the lathe. Finishes it nicely and makes it look way more professional.

 

 

all one peace and here is a before and after
 

anyway

this is me up to date for now.

next up will be to rebuild the front shocks, i think they might be leaking some oil and the seals are probably toast 

would like to get the headers sand blasted and painted in some kind of heat pant or just cleaned up also

time to go ride and get this bike over a bit more, get the most out of the tire!

 

 

[64valiant]

Have edited it a couple of times now. 

 

Hope you guys have been enjoying my build on the old man's bike though.

 

Feels really good to be riding it.

[GregT]

Those were always short of ground clearance. Rumor had the Wellington M/C bikes using stiffer springs. Learn to hang off a bit. It'll help.

[anglia4]

18 hours ago, 64valiant said:

i mean it worked and stopped well, but nice to know that its grabbing a bunch more now.

 

The thing you gotta watch there is what happens when it wears to the point that the pads touch each other and no longer grab the disc.

I really like this bike. Keep it up!

[64valiant]

Yeah i had that in mind and a reason why i wanted the bigger ones@anglia4, get use of the full pad now that ive got the bigger discs.

 

Old discs yeeted into the bin with those pads.

 

Old girl seems to be burning some oil as well, might need to strip it down and do some oil rings.

 

Or ill just top it up with oil for the mean time.

[63Ragtop]

Excellent work bro, such a cool bike and such a cool story. I grew up on the back of my old man's bike, my brother's both have bikes, one a night-rod Harley, the other a 78' 900SS, and I'm pining for one now! Old man only just stopped riding a couple years ago at 83 years old, so I think I've got a couple years left!

 

[64valiant]

Dad would be laughing at me.

 

 

 

I certainly was laughing at myself.

 

Wife won't be laughing with me.

[GregT]

Your oil consumption could well be valve stem seals. Known to get hard with age. It is possible to change them in place.

[64valiant]

4 hours ago, GregT said:

Your oil consumption could well be valve stem seals. Known to get hard with age. It is possible to change them in place.

Have also been suggested to use mineral oil instead of synthetic in it.

 

I'll try that 1st and see what happens and then valve stem seals are up next.

 

Also will give it a compression test before I go do the valve stem seals to see if it's also rings 

[GregT]

Straight mineral will help rebed the rings.

[64valiant]

Phwoar 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus it looks good!

 

I removed all the extra stickers that didn't need to be on the bike and boy does it look clean with out them.

 

I don't know if I had mentioned, but I thought I had lost a side fairing that said suzuki on it. Well I found it yesterday after cleaning up the shed. It was the only reason why I hadn't put the full fearing on yet.

 

 

 

I also pulled out dad's visor and put that on the bike as well.

 

 

 

The other day I found some polish, so had a go and cleaning up the tank.

 

 

 

 

Bike was looking good

 

 

 

I removed these mikuni stickers too.

 

 

 

Managed to stick them to the tool box for safe keeping.

 

Need to find a left hand mirror as we dropped the bike when we were out at kims in the trailer.

 

Apart from that things haven't changed that much around here.