Thirsty WrencherNo, I don’t mean the squat little beer bottles your grandpa used to drink pilsner from. I mean turn signals.
This is what they used to look like;
Much better in my opinion.
Its been a few months now with not much resolution to the non-running/ non idling classic standard. With another weekend proving to be a non riding weekend I went shopping. 750 cc shopping to be more specific.
I have found a new home other than the Ducati shop, it’s the Aprilia dealer. Here’s my new-found hope (not the women-I have a beauty already);
Its pretty hard not to like this bike. 2 year warranty, 4000 less than a Ducati monster and 6000 less than a Ducati GT 1000 here in Edmonton. Swinging my leg over I found the ergos perfect for my 6’2″ frame and the overall weight difference compared to the classic is significant. Like riding a bicycle really. I could push this for many blocks if I had to but the great thing is I likely wouldn’t need to.
They have a 2009 black one for 9300. I have a feeling we’re going to be good friends by next spring.
after
The carbs weren’t the problem. After removing them and cleaning them I had the same problem.
Next was a check for spark since I checked for fuel at the plugs at they were wet. I should have done this first but somehow I was convinced it was the sediment issue. Start with the simple things, the obvious. I wasted 3 hours pulling, cleaning and replacing the carbs when I could have just checked the plugs.
No spark on 2 & 3 plugs. Not wanting to waste any more time I checked the manual for the coil test. 1 & 4 read the proper 15000 – 23000 ohms. Seems my 2 & 3 ohms resistance read zero.
coil off right side
23000 ohms resistance
I read recently in Classic Motorcyclist a comment that those who want to ride buy new and those who want to polish (read wrench & repair), buy classics. That got me thinking why I bought this bike. Okay, I’m trying to save for a house so buying a brand Ducati Monster or Triumph Speed Triple doesn’t seem an option right now but that’s what I would have done had I the money. I still want to ride and I can’t see waiting five years to do that so my back up plan was an old standard. Finding a nice standard for under a grand is a more viable option and painting it a color I like makes that proposition even more appealing so here I am.
I’ve been logging my repairs time so far and I’ve spent 62 hours on it. I’ve ridden it about 6 hours. If this pattern holds true I indeed will be spending my time Polishing. My hope is I spend about 4 more hours and then I get a year out of it before something else puts it on the stand for a month again. That’s the plan anyway. The more I read, the more I’m wondering it that will happen. Ultimately, what I wanted to do with the bike is commute, coffee-house crawl with my wife on the back, visit my daughter on it. Take day trips and picnics with it. Unless almost all the electrical and carburation is replaced or overhauled, I’m nervous about doing anything other than a coffee-house crawl. Even a breakdown during this would mean a 150 towing bill. That stated, I don’t have much left to fix now. The next big thing would be a major mechanical breakdown at which point I’d need counseling.
What’s the solution? Finance a new one? Spend more money on this one until there’s nothing left to fix? Not sure yet, but I do know I’m learning heaps about diagnosing and fixing them and that has to be worth something right? As my wife always says “it’s either your time or your money” so I guess I’m exercising my patience with time for now.
Some people can’t leave well enough alone eh? And, I’m one of them.
Who would take a perfectly fine paint job on a 30 something old classic motorbike and change it?
Me. You know that old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’? Well, I’ve had problems with leaving well enough alone. Since I can remember, I’ve always messed with what I’ve had. Hot wheels, lunch boxes, tool boxes, guitars, cars, trucks and clothing. If only I had a picture of the perfectly fine Levi’s jean jacket, that was sewn to black leather sleeves from a michael jackson thriller jacket. You know the one, with the big red V on it. Don’t ask me how I got it in the first place and why I chose it since I was just off the gas refinery payroll and I would have been pummeled for even the mention of that to my work buddies. Never the less, I found a very nice East Indian seamstress in Vancouver that either really admired my creativity, or was an aspiring fashion designer and saw this as a challenge, or saw ”easy money’ written on my forehead, probably the latter.
So that was a memorable misplacement of effort and money and there have been others, though I decline to share those right now. It’s a classic, that’s what they say in my bike forum, and in my magazines. It was a ‘nice blue’ some said. Blue smue- I want a little cool funk, subtle style, hints of sexy italian so, I chose school bus yellow.
Screams sexy doesn’t it? Oh yeah. I could have went with deep and sultry red, with hues of Ducati, Aprilia, Ferarri, Alfa Romeo and Fiat, but somehow I’m going with a color from my youth and not the part associated with sexy. More like the youth of smelly socks and squished peanut butter sandwiches in the last week of June. I need counseling.
So the plan is to take this mundane blue to snappy with my new color scheme. Now, I’m not completely driven by a singular motive here, I am considering the better visibility of school bus yellow and my safety. Sure, I could have strapped a traffic cone to the front and rear of the bike or laced a flourescent orange flag on a 10 foot tall stick to the back fender for a better chance of being seen, though nobody would be caught dead near me with that setup. I might as well add a hockey helmet to that picture and ride over to the guys with the Harleys and ask if we can be friends. It won’t be pretty, I’m certain.
Point is, everybody judges everything, even the small stuff, and in the blink of an eye I’ve read. So, if my bike is blue and boring, somebody at an intersection is going to ignore me, dismiss me or miss seeing me completely. Then they’ll send me out over the pavement like a 24 oz purple slushy slipping from the mitts of a 5 year old in a parking lot. Hence the safe color. Red is bright you say. Yes…., but automobile insurance reports have also identified red as the color most often involved in accidents and those reports don’t mention yellow, so let’s go with that for now.
It remains to be seen if this will give me the end result I want, but if it doesn’t work out, there is always that ducati red or even silver.
Read an interesting bit about these GS bikes that made me start an upgrade. It’s instructions by GS dude for supplying more voltage to the coils. Why would I want to do this? First of all, there are poor starting issues with this bike because of its age. Replacing the wiring harness to eliminate that is expensive and more time-consuming than I want right now. We are getting very close to bike season here so that task may have to wait until next winter if I can heat the garage. Secondly, I like the idea of things working properly and or better if the solution is simple, and I want to minimize potential break downs before I put it on the road.
To start, I cleaned and made new connections for all wires down at the battery area. Then I opened up the wiring harness removing tape that was surprisingly sticky after 30+ years. This simple little switch will direct full voltage to the coils upon starting providing a strong spark and better burn at all times upon start-up. Next step was to drill a hole in the cross-section of the frame to mount the relay.
Something I didn’t consider when doing this step is that the screw that holds the relay in place is in a cramped space above the head and holding the tiny nut on while threading the screw was a lesson on patience. If it ever needs to come off for any future maintenance, I’ll use a zip tie next time. Patience tested, the relay is in place and looks fine. Referring to the wiring diagram to verify routing I also tested the continuity from the kill switch to the relay.
So, here it sits and by next weekend I should be able to light it up. If I made a mistake I’ll be drinkin so don’t expect any new bits for a while.
Since this head work all started because of a broken bolt, I took the opportunity to measure my valve shim clearances, remove and check the valves and clean out any carbon build up.
Taking the valves out was pretty easy actually. The valve spring compressor works great. The only trick part was putting the valve keeper clips back on. They’re very tiny and my mitts are not.
As you can see from photos below , the center one is the before photo, I didn’t have to clean too much. The exhaust ports had a varsol soak and with very little scrubbing they came clean. The intake valves were spotless and needed no attention.
Everything looked pretty good for an engine with 84k. A little carbon buildup on the valves that was easily cleaned off. Since I had the time and opportunity, I inspected the cam journals as well and they looked fantastic. Somebody took care of this before I bought it- I’m thankful.
You can see the valve guide sticking up in the center with the journal to the right. Scratched or worn journals would likely have meant a trip to the machine shop, that is if I could find anybody who knew how to work on this bike. Actually, it probably would have meant shipping it to a shop in the UK or USA for machining or worse, trying to find a replacement head that wasn’t junk.
Anyway, here’s a cyclinder head shot before assembly and one with those nice pipes back on. Only thing that leaves me worried now is I didn’t use assembly lube putting it all back together, I just filled the head with oil. I might be taking a few miles off the engine in the initial start-up for this and in hindsight I should have got some, but I was on a roll and didn’t want to stop. That was the wrong time to be cheap and impatient. If it starts fine after this, I’ll definitely pull a finger or two of scotch to celebrate that.
This has happened to me more than it should have in my life time, so you’d think I’d be well prepared to deal with this- not really. No lefty drill bits, no tap and no cutting oil. A bolt, one tiny little part of the whole machine sheared off in my head.
In my experience, this really never goes well. Drilling a pilot hole and trying to use a bolt extractor inevitably shears the extractor in the hole. Then, re-drilling is no longer an option as the extractor, made of tool hardened steel, is too hard to drill out. Welding a nut on to the teeny stub of bolt sticking out, is not an option either, as this bolt and every bolt I’ve ever broken, its been many, seem to shear right at the surface. Drilling, then using a torch to heat the bolt, pouring on liberal amounts of oil in hopes that some is draw in, to break the bond between bolt and head is risky. Open flame, fume filled garage, open containers, oily rags, see where I’m going with this? Call me crazy but I’m still considering a propane heater to take the chill off. Ever see ‘Fire Marshall Bob’ from ‘In Living Color’ ? Seen my picture?
I risked it, not the torch, the drilling. The bolt is now gone and the head has been tapped. Time for a beer.
It had to be done- peeling back the years of neglect to see if it was road worthy. Last thing I’d want to do is get on the hwy and find out there’s a shimmy from knackered bearings, as my English brother in-law would say.
So, down to the bones we go, exposing the bits and having a solid once over and while at it- a cleaning. Good thing about looking under the covers is you realize just how much dirt finds it way into places you wouldn’t expect, thereby making me appreciate a well-maintained unit, yet at the same time compelling me to clean and investigate the remaining dirty bits.
I bought this 78gs 750 for some well thought out reasons; easy to work on, cheap parts for the most part, a classic standard design with room for two up riding, easy ergonomics while cheap enough to modify and personalize without taking any loans. I’ve seen many pictures of these machines modified into cafe racers. You know, lowered shorter bars, foot pegs moved back, dual lights up front, triumph like racing stripes with , all glittery factory parts stripped off and more. I’m sort of going in the same direction but with more of a distant cousin feel. I’m thinking more of muscle cars, modified old pickups and ducati type naked sport riding. See picture of what I mean.
Naked sport riding you say? No, I don’t mean baring all while riding. Who’d want to see that from my skinny arse? I mean a bike pure in its purpose without non-essential functions or decorations on it. I don’t need nor want a clock, gps, cell phone holder, radio, plastic body panels, extra chrome that requires relentless polishing or anything else as such. I think Ducati and Triumph have that mastered with their monster/ gt1000 series and the bonneville/ street triple series but I can afford neither of these at about 12000 each.
So here I start with my simple frame, simple carbs and nothing but my time and wallet to rein me in. First on the list a check of all the electrics.
Batteries are expensive at 90-160 and I don’t want to ruin one with a poor electrical system, shorts and ground or improper charging. After these check out, I’ll move on to wheels and bearing as I’d hate to lose one of those in motion.
28 years. That’s how long its taken to become an owner of a motorbike again.
Last time I was wearing motocross boots and wearing a mullet, Simple Minds ruled my cassette player and my riding was primarily hooliganism and terrorizing the apple and peach growers everytime I crossed through to that exceptionally fine hill country.
That was also the time I punctured an ankle with a wheel spoke in an unfortunate head on with another bike while riding in an unregulated bit of hills. I see sound reasoning now for leaving the racing to a regulated track with a well defined set of rules and for never wearing a mullet.
Hopefully you’ll never see the photo of me in a mullet but here is one of the bike.
As you may have gathered, I’ll be posting bits related to my attempts at beer brewing (with mash, no mash, mini mash), bread and the inevitable upgrades to the bike.
Thirsty Wrencher 