My New Old Bike - 1982 Gl 1100I Rebuild

[desertrefugee]

You should pull the plugs on that right side. Their condition will give a pretty good indicator as to your issue. If that's oil smoke, one or both should be wet black or sooty. If it's steam, one or both plugs will be nice and clean. If they're wet with gas, your carbs are dumping raw unvaporized fuel into the cylinders.

Also, I wouldn't be running it so casually with those carb leaks. Especially if you've also seen "sparks". That doesn't sound like a good combination. The carbs need attention. I'm glad that's in the immediate plan.

[bigburlybug]

You should pull the plugs on that right side. Their condition will give a pretty good indicator as to your issue. If that's oil smoke, one or both should be wet black or sooty. If it's steam, one or both plugs will be nice and clean. If they're wet with gas, your carbs are dumping raw unvaporized fuel into the cylinders.

Also, I wouldn't be running it so casually with those carb leaks. Especially if you've also seen "sparks". That doesn't sound like a good combination. The carbs need attention. I'm glad that's in the immediate plan.

I live for danger Muwahaha! You're right , especially since its already been burned from me doing almost the same thing. At least this time around I have wet towels and two fire extinguishers handy.
As for the plugs, left side had a tad bit more oil than the right side did. Its been two days since I started it so I'm guessing the plugs would be dry of gas even if that was the issue.

#4 plug on left, #3 plug on right

There's definitely carb issues that need to get fixed.




There is some nasty mystery gunk that may be from when I reused a gas line for the first try without a fuel filter (its was replaced by try 2 with a fuel filter). I don't think I missed cleaning that amount of material in there when i cleaned the carbs. Anybody have a guess what that stuff could be and the possible implications?

The spring on float needle #3 is also completely stuck in the un-compressed position so it got thrown in some carb cleaner. I also have another float needle for replacement if I can't get it to work easily. Float #2 moves not quite as well as the others so its getting cleaned or replaced or well. I know I check all of these for proper operation before putting the carbs back together again.

Basically, all the carbs need a complete clean and redo. Maybe I'll figure out where those two left over guide pins are supposed to go as well. So carbs round 2.

[bigburlybug]

Hello,

So I cleaned all the carbs up. They were full of what looked like wood chips which didn't burn, even after putting a propane torch to them.

There was one float needle completely jammed and another that wasn't moving properly so I stole two needle floats from the other set of carbs. Checked the jets which were clean and all the small tunnels which were also free flowing. I put them all back together, found an o-ring on my chair that I can't find a home for and am missing an o-ring that goes in-between the carb and plenum body. Sadly +1-1 doesn't lead to a zero sum here

So I took the good needle floats from the original carbs and put them back on the bought carbs figuring maybe the purchased set would work properly. Put the bought carbs on the bike and, with a lot of hope but not optimism, I fired up the bike again.

Same issues, to a lesser degree. The #3 carb leaked gas onto the engine around the float bowl, it smoked at around 3,000 RPM and went away around 5,500 RPM. Lowered the throttle and the smoke came back. So two different carbs, one rebuilt by me, one not and they have the same issues. So I'm taking a break and working on brakes. They need some loving too.

slider pin before picture

Also going to rebuild the petcock in hopes that its smaller tube diameter will help lean out the gas flow and magically make everything alright.

Fixed the one bad fuel pump to head bolt with an M6 helicoil set from Autozone which was pretty neat to use (my first time) and seems solid, should stop a small oil leak. Also had the time to replace the upper radiator hose to stop yet another leak. The drive shaft is now correctly connected with the C-clip as well for that wonderful day when I drive off to chase the sun.

Still chugging. Maybe I'll have it running half way decent by next summer.

[bigburlybug]

I didn't rebuild the petcock and the brake cleaning is going slow, there's a lot of rust to strip off. I did take the first set of carbs and mix and match needle float jets until all but the #4 carb seemed to be good and the #4 had a pretty decent float needle that might get better after soaking in some gas. I stuck them back on and tried it right before I went camping. It was a good start to the weekend.



No smoke at low RPMs and lots of popping at high RPMs. Gas consumption was also more reasonable which I'll measure next time I work on it. Also ran it through all the gears which worked as well.

Overall a healthy step forward. I'm going to sync the carbs for the fun of it and see what all that does along with finishing up the gas tank and getting a working set of brakes. If you hear anything and have some suggestions, I'm all ears.

[bigburlybug]

So its been a bit since I've given an update but there's been progress nonetheless. First off is a cleaner gas tank. Before it had about a 1/4" of rust gunky gas. Now there's hardly any rust in the tank

It took about 30 hours of electrolysis using an xbox power supply and a clothes hanger at 12 v and 9.6 amps. That got most of the rust out and another two nights with five gallons of vinegar in the tank got it the rest of the way clean.

Next up was the brakes, which were also pretty dirty.

Lots of aluminum foil to polish everything up, cleaned out all of the holes and new rubber everywhere. I had a convenient breaker bar to help push the pistons back in.

So the front brakes were done and I was itching to take it for a brief ride. I pushed it around a bit to make sure I had stopping power, then took it down the driveway.


Sadly the brakes were able to clamp but didn't un-clamp as well as they should which led to some issues turning around but luckily the goldwing handled the easy off-road easy enough to bring back to its home.

So I took off the front brakes, cleaned them out again and took another ride.

It went much better, though the brakes were a bit squishy; probably a bit of air in the lines. As such, I took some time to bleed the fronts and do the rear brakes. The rear master cylinder needed the grease gun trick to push out the piston.

New gear in the master cylinder as well. Luckily, my breaker bar fit the pistons and made it relatively easy to push the pistons back in.

All that odious cleaning being done , I was able to move on to different work. The work of making it road legal. This post being long enough, I'll post some pictures of that later.

[Old Fogey]

An exercise in persistence! That's the way it has to be sometimes with these old bikes. But you are getting there.

[bigburlybug]

An exercise in persistence! That's the way it has to be sometimes with these old bikes. But you are getting there.

I am indeed. Still have half of the riding season left so I'm hoping to get it on the road soon.
But for that, I need lights (camera, action)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/tc6ePw98ty9FpmSL9

But before I could put lights on the bike, I needed some lights. I hem hawed around a little figuring out how I wanted to go about the whole thing and decided to go all original and see what I could on a budget. So I tore apart the fairing to get at the lights and pull all the good parts off for future resale or gifting. The fairing itself was pretty well smashed from the wreck 30 years back so its going in the trash. It made stuff way easier to get out since I could grip it and rip it whenever needed or bring out the hammer.
Got a lot of stuff out of it though.


I put all the lights back on and tested them out. If they weren't going to work, they were going to get an immediate upgrade to LED. As it was, they worked out fine, I'm going to do the LED conversion later when I have a better idea on what I want. And I'm gonna go look at Toolbox's post for research since he has done a lot of work with lights.

The horns seemed the easiest place to start, so pulled out the 3d printer and printed me out some brackets.

3d printed bracket with horns

I made two of them to clamp onto the frame around the radiator. It fit surprisingly well for the first fit and it didn't need another. A little electrical tape to make a vibration absorber and to snug it up a bit and it was good to go.



The next easiest was going to be the front headlight. In the removed parts bin, I found two nice brackets that fit around the fork tubes perfectly. Clamped them down nice and tight, cut and bent some flat iron stock, and threaded a bolt through the mounting holes on the headlight where it used to fit into the Vetter fairing. There's only two points of contact for the lights so it will probably bounce around a little bit. Good enough to add its part to be road legal and that's all I'm going for at this point.

To finish off the front, I drilled a hole in the front blinker plastic casing, and threaded a bolt onto the same bracket used for the headlight.


I like the look of the front pretty well but all those lights are pretty deep so it doesn't look all that great from the side. Road legal though, so I'm happy.

And bringing up the rear was the rear. Since it was super easy, I left the rear/brake light right where it was. I tried 3d printing another bracket for the rear blinkers and it turned out how I was expecting this time, that is to say, not at all. Instead, I put my dubious welding skills to work and made one out of flat stock.

Good thing this doesn't need to be structural
Yeah, still need lots more practice welding. I'm thinking it'll hold up though.
The vertical piece touches the rear/brake light and the horizontal is threaded inbetween the nut and the rear/brake light mount so the blinkers will stay relatively straight when going down the road.

Its a big booty, but it doesn't look half bad; and its road legal.

i did all of this two weeks ago and just realized today I forgot about mirrors so I'm going to figure out something there. Probably another 3d printed clamp around the handle bar frame - it should be pretty easy.

[Track T 2411]

Making good progress! Concerning the mirrors, the stock handlebar perches are tapped for mounting standard mirrors. Honda just put in a plastic plug to fill the hole on the Interstate and Aspy... lots of aftermarket mirrors available for cheap!