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Nice work .... useful tips.

Gord

Gave the carbs a balance last night after getting it up to full temp.

When I fired up the bike, I found my front left (#2) cylinder was running low on the gauge. I brought it up to match the left rear (#4), at which point I saw the left side cylinders were matched but low compared to the right side cylinders.

When I brought the left pair into balance with the right side by adjusting the #4 adjuster screw, my clutch rattle diminished substantially. You could hear it smooth right out with maybe 1/16" of a turn. Pulling the lever it does make it slightly smoother, but at a certain point you gotta stop chasing perfection.

The bike runs much smoother off-idle. Combined with the clutch job, it's way easier to control the bike in turn corners where you have to feather the clutch and throttle.

I think it's time to stop tinkering on the bike and start putting on some miles before the snow falls. Next post will be a post-camping trip report, 2-up this time.

Camping trip a success!

Put on 350km over the weekend. We had some cool temperatures and some mighty headwinds, yet the 'wing clocked up it's best gas mileage of all time oddly enough. I hit 36mpg (US) riding 2-up into the wind, with bags, averaging around 65mph. I'm happy with that.

Before we left I had an hour to spare so I figured what the heck, gonna swap out my drive shaft with my good spare. The original shaft had just a slight bit of play with an audible click when I had it out last, so it was starting to wear.

I cleaned all the splines with solvent and followed up with an application of Loctite moly paste. All splines look 100% to my eyes.
With the rear end back together, it was time to load up and head out.
Getting to the camp site required a bit of gravel road riding, which degraded into sand washouts and granite. Would be excellent on my dual sport bike, not so much on the 'wing! But we got it through.
Our camping spot was beautiful and we heard a pack of wolves a few hundred yards away at most, howling at the stars. Truly memorable weekend.

And thanks for the info on the lift table, although it seems any version of that style is unavailable. It has inspired me to heavily modify a side lift into a table. I also quickly browsed through your thread on your garage. I'll be revisiting that site again, for sure!

Hi again all, been a while since I've checked in. Winter will do that to a guy.

I've made one nice upgrade to the GL1000 since last posting. I frequent ADVRider as well and was following a man restoring a '76 GL1000. I commented on his nice factory mufflers. He sent me a DM and mentioned he knew someone with a set hung up in his garage rafters somewhere. A bit of emailing and negotiations later, and I've got a really nice factory set of pipes on the wing again. These mufflers are MUCH nicer than the ones I got with my bike. There are no repairs anywhere. It didn't come with the chrome trim, but that's ok as my rotted pipes had pretty decent trim I could pull off.

I had to pay a small fortune for the gaskets between the header and mufflers from mother Honda, and also had to fight with getting them installed as I discovered my left-side headers have been welded at some point, resulting in them effectively being 1/8" longer than the right side. Anyway, it's all sorted now.

Last night was the maiden voyage. The bike has much better off-idle and low throttle response than with the Sportster pipes. And I'm not sure if I am imagining it, but it feels like it accelerates a lot harder as well. It really goes now!

Next steps are re-doing the seat so it's a proper '75 flat style, and polishing the covers. I bought a cheap 8" polishing unit last week and some buffing wheels. Just waiting on nicer weather outside as it makes such a mess. The seat will be outsourced to a friend who is a professional at power sports upholstery.

I’m debating putting my stock 77 exhaust back on. You still hear your motor pretty well through the intake, just everyone else doesn’t.

Partsnmore has the exhaust gaskets for $8 each.

You didn’t ask.

Looking good. I like my sportster pipes on my 78 but would have preferred oem exhaust. Just never found any that I could afford! Still look from time to time.

The Sportster exhaust is nice, but I'm kind of a fan of the bipolar nature the OEM exhaust gives these bikes. Very understated under 2.5-3k RPM, but once you run it up above 5k, the motor just SCREAMS.

ericheath wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:09 pm I’m debating putting my stock 77 exhaust back on. You still hear your motor pretty well through the intake, just everyone else doesn’t.

Partsnmore has the exhaust gaskets for $8 each.

You didn’t ask.

I see Partsnmore have them for later years, but not 75-77. I think they're different sizes? I would love to be wrong about that though. $8 would be fantastic