1978 GL1000 Resto-mod

[mwallette]

It was kinda nice outside after work, so I pulled the 'Wing out of the garage to snap a couple of photos of the current state of progress:


I took a look at the brakes to see if I could find any evidence of leakage, and sure enough, there's a trail of brake fluid at the bleeder valve. Grrrrr!!!! Is there a trick to getting the bleeders to seal? I've had two calipers have the same problem, so I don't think it's a faulty caliper. It seems there's something I'm doing wrong. However, I didn't have nearly this much trouble on my Yamaha calipers...well...once I bought a second pair of calipers, anyway (the bleeders were corroded into the originals, and I wasted a lot of time and effort trying to repair them before simply replacing them).

[robin1731]

snip........................Is there a trick to getting the bleeders to seal? .

Only thing I can think of is if the screw itself or the taper in the caliper is corroded petty bad.

[rcmatt007]

lloks like what I brought home from the dealer in 1978... good work

[mwallette]

robin1731, pretty much what I was thinking. I found some speed bleeders on bike bandit -- they're on the way.

rcmatt, thanks, but honestly very little of the work I've done is visible, at the moment -- fork springs, belts, cleaned the brakes, installed braided brake lines. About the only thing you can see is the Renthal handlebars...oh, and installing the headlight bucket. She was pretty clean when I brought her home

[mwallette]

The day started out well:



w00t!!!

I removed the old shocks...:


...and started to reinstall the new ones. The shocks had been sitting in the mailbox, causing the rubber bushings to be a little cold and stiff. Consequently, it took a little more effort than expected to get the bushing over the upper shock stud, so I put a couple of washers on the stud and tightened up the acorn nut to press the bushing and shock fully onto the stud. So far, so good. But then, while trying to remove the acorn nut on the RH shock...:




I think I've got an idea how to fix it, though. The stud itself is still firmly attached to the frame, and it's only the threaded portion of the stud that busted off. The shock is still fully seated on the smooth portion of the stud. The part that broke only exists to mount the passenger grab rail, and to keep the shock from sliding off of the stud. In other words, the threaded part of the stud isn't really load-bearing. So...I should be able to drill and tap the stud, then install a smaller bolt (possibly with a small steel bushing so the grab rail isn't loose on the bolt) without affecting the structural integrity of the shock mount. If it works, I'll post photos.

The left side came out okay, though:


I'm still waiting for the new brake bleeder valves to arrive (USPS says the ETA is Monday), and the shocks just arrived this afternoon. While waiting for them to get here, I pulled the crash bars and grab rails, sanded them down, and started apply a couple of coats of Dupli-Color "Roll Bar and Chassis" paint:



It's not easy painting outside in the dark, lol, so I found a couple of runs, and a couple of areas of insufficient coverage when looking over the parts today, but that's okay. I'll let the paint set for a week or so, then sand it lightly with some fine grit sandpaper, and apply a few more coats of paint. Especially on the crash bars, I want a good, thick coating of paint to protect the bars. The right way to do it would be to bead-blast and powder coat these parts, but I'm far more concerned with having a sturdy suspension on the bike than in cosmetics, so that's where I've invested the most money in the rebuild. I've also been working on the side covers, starting with the extra one that was missing the "GL1000" logo badges:


I've got the paint stripped off, and have been trying to fill the holes from the badges with ABS cement, but there's one stubborn spot where I left an air bubble. Filling it with cement is proving to be slightly more difficult than I expected(!), but I'll get there. Patience

[rcmatt007]

wiered the plastic under the side covers.... not sure what honda made them out of

[mwallette]

wiered the plastic under the side covers.... not sure what honda made them out of

I think I read somewhere that they were ABS...at least, ABS cement seems to work reasonably well to fill the holes from the badges. After the ABS cement dried, I sanded the excess off and put a first coat of rattle-can satin black on one of the side covers:


I obviously need to go back over that with some finer grit sandpaper and remove the deeper scratches from sanding off the excess ABS cement.

I was pretty happy in the garage tonight, despite the rough finish on the side cover. however. After shearing off the threaded portion of the shock stud the other day, I finally managed to drill and tap the stud...:


...then thread a piece of 3/8 inch threaded rod into the stud:


Being kind of...ahem...I dug out my MIG welder and tacked the threaded rod in place, since it felt a little loose in the stud, then cleaned up the splatter (I'm not a terribly good welder, and my welder isn't a terribly high-end unit...but mostly, I'm not a good welder, lol) and installed the RH shock...:


...and the newly painted passenger grab rail:


Finally, I looked over the front brakes, and they don't seem to be leaking anymore (w00t!); I just need to get them bled properly. :crosses_fingers:

[rcmatt007]

good fix

[mwallette]

good fix

I can't take credit for the idea. A google search turned up this post:
http://goldwingdocs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10449

...which I stole Looks like it will work okay. If anyone finding this post in the future needs to try this repair, be forewarned: the steel in the stud is very, VERY hard. I snapped three drill bits trying to drill the pilot hole, then rounded off the end of two more drill bits as I progressively enlarged the hole. I finally bought the most expensive ("drills through stainless steel 2X as fast!") drill bit I could find, which did the trick. Also, even after using a center punch to try to mark the center(-ish) of the stud, I'm still noticeably off-center.

[rcmatt007]

sounds like trying to drill out a broken "easy out"

[mwallette]

Work continues, but progress is...slow.

I picked up a new battery the other day, so the last major hurdle before it's functionally "good enough" is to finish bleeding the brakes. The speed bleeders I bought from bike bandit have really helped. I've at least consistently got some pressure at the brake lever now, but I'm still finding air bubbles when I let the brakes sit for a day or two between attempts at bleeding. I don't see any evidence of leaks, and since I'm starting to maintain a little pressure at the lever, I think it's just a matter of dislodging the air bubbles and getting them to the bleeder.

On the cosmetic side, I pulled the crashbars, cleaned up the corrosion and deeper scuffs, then took some VHT "Chassis and Roll Bar" rattle-can paint to them. One side turned out surprisingly well, but there was a patch on the other crash bar that had crackled, for some reason. I removed the paint in that area with fine (220 and 600) grit sandpaper, scuffed up the rest of the existing paint with the 600 grit, and put another coat on the bars, only to find even more of the paint had crackled. Repeat, and now I've got about half the paint crackled I'm thinking that the paint perhaps adheres better to chrome than the underlying steel, so I guess I'll remove all the paint from both bars, and try a different primer/paint combination. I'd love to just powder-coat them, but it's not in the budget, so I'll just resign myself to spending twice as much on rattle can paint, lol. On the plus side, I'm making progress with the side covers, but not nearly as quickly as I'd like.

[mwallette]

I finally have working brakes!!!

It only took replacing every component in the front brake system except the splitter that connects the line from the master cylinder to the two lines to the caliper.

Now...paint, and it's rideable (woohoo!)

[mwallette]

Stage 1 is now complete: the bike runs (w00t!!!)



I finished painting the plastic pieces at about a quarter to eight Saturday night, and 2 1/2 hours later, I started installing the plastics on the bike. "10 minutes to dry, safe to handle after 1 hour," the instructions said, but...not so much. I left a handprint on the top side of the RH shelter cover while reinstalling it on the bike, so I'll have to sand it out and touch it up

First impressions: holy that bike is fast! The extra 250-350 cc's over what I'm used to having on tap make a lot more difference than I expected. The additional hundred pounds of weight is pretty much not an issue, which is a nice surprise. At low speeds, it wants to fall into turns, which is pretty annoying, but at speed, it handles nicely -- not "flickable" but not at all what I expected from 600 lb. bike. The only negative is the brakes. They're okay, but they're not stellar. My XS750 has much better feel, IMHO, and it's a year older.

Questions for the gurus: there's a bit of shudder in the clutch or transmission when starting from a dead stop. Is that normal? Also, it bogs down just a bit off idle, but recovers almost immediately. Maybe just a bit rich on the idle circuit?

[mwallette]

I've got about 1400 miles on the 'Wing since my last post, including a 2-up, 350 mile group ride this past weekend:




The more I ride this bike, the more I appreciate it. It's just...solid.

There's still more work to be done, however. I've blown two fuses and at least one (possibly two) solid-state flasher relays for the turn signals, so I'll need to dig into the wiring to find the short. I still need to fix the handprint in the paint on the RH side shelter cover (doh!), I'm not happy with the Plasti-Dip on the back rest and luggage (it's peeling ), I want to get some leather or canvas saddle bags, and...there are a couple of things I want to do with the exhaust.

For now, however, I'm just enjoying the ride!

[rcmatt007]

is the exhaust noisy (wore out) or you just want something that looks different? There are nice smooth machines