johnr

youve tried swapping the plugs round? i know it sounds daft, but when it was apart, you didnt stuff a rag down the inlet to keep dirt ouut then forget to remove it?

could be complicated if you have slide carbs on the gs, cos the gs/gsx ones for cv carb bikes only have one throttle cable mount, if you have slide carbs on your engine the switchgear on the right bar will have a push/pull throttle cable setup. have you tried gs550 switches or gs 650 kat, they seem pretty generic across that era..

could very well be, makes more sense than the swingarm, but ive slept since then.

on the bigger gs motors the swingarm spindle could be doubled up as a flywheel remover, get a suitable weight, screw the spindle into the end of the flywheel and whack it off. dont know if the smaller motors are the same.

same engine as the 400 katana, carbs are a bit of a nightmare. you need to replace every o ring in there and make sure the needles in the slides arent worn, (they get ridges in them and never fuel properly again. its also worth pulling the ht leads out of the coils, cut a half inch off the ends and refit, they vibrate loose and loose contact making them run a bit rough.

chuck in clocks, seat, tailpiece and you might as well have bought a kat!

not wired the clocks up yet. ive been trying to put it off doing other bits but ive kind of run out of stuff to do now!

as part of my plan to get rid of the shiny bling, i thought about painting over the gold annodized r1 yam usd forks, but then had the idea of simply shoving some black heat shrink wrap over the uppers from the seals to the bottom yoke, and then heating it with the hot air gun to shrink it on. sounded a great plan, but the shrink wrap shrunk to resemble a veiny black dildo! ffs. anyhow, i let them cool off then heated them again and eventually the wrap smoothed out and they lost their resemblance to the stock of ann summers ! et voila, le dildofork! fitted em anyway...

theyre polished stainless so should be ok.

barnett kevlar clutch and barnet diaphragm spring fitted too.

oh, and new exhaust studs, stainless studs, copper nuts, pipes wrapped in the darkest wrap i could get. battery is lighter cos the undertray was moving round with the batterys weight causing it to bounce off the seat bottom. wiring is a bit of a rats nest.

ive now got and fitted a toyota mr2 crystal light to it, alongside some other small mods to the undertrays and wiring, switchgear, clocks, exhausts, and a few other small items. i will post pictures when i can get them off my phone. so, new fairing bracket fitted, old one was fucked, and new crystal headlight, exhausts all wrapped, mostly to cover up the shiney stainless but also cos i repeatedly burned my leg when i put my feet down. new clocks fitterd which should be readable unlike the old ones which tbh werent. slightly wider renthals fitted, better switchgear and new loom in the process of being fitted, undertrays fixed properly as well as a splash guard to stop water from the back wheel going straight up the rs38's, oil cooler pipes replaced with ones not held together with zip ties! satin black with rust effect is the last job to be done. tbh this is just a long and seemingly endless list of tiny fiddly jobs, most of the donkey work was done by the builder and ive no issues with that. ive a set of konis from the 1990s that havent done much miles and are actually compliant when i sit on the bike, gonna save the ohlins for the yoshi replica.... anyhow, im gonna shove it into thee sunlight tomorrow and take some pics of it and then list what else it needs to complete it.

its a possibility but tbh a remote one. i reuse copper washers but always anneal them first.

sorry, my minds a little slow these days!

october stafford?

did you remember to use the dome headed nuts inside the cam cover and the plain nuts outside? and did you use new copper washers or anneal the old ones?

oh, and the crimps on the oe oil cooler pipes split....

ok, so, update, ish, this bike has sat in the shed and other stuff came and went, i put about 250 miles on it last year, its just, near but not near enough. good things, i love that engine, i like the look and the stance. the brakes are so powerful they make the insides of my eyes hurt. its a kat, but on the downside, the rear suspension is so firm that on anything but the smoothest motorway every straight is a bucking bronco ride of wheelspin and bouncy near hardtail suspension. the wiring is, err, interesting, headlight is probably a whole candlepower, perhaps even two, oh, and the clutch ate itself at 100mph on the m55.... soooooo......

yeah, dont know what happened there, some slight delay.......

i suppose i should probably update this as its been nearly 2 years.......

custom variants usually used the same formula cos they were cheap to make, stock frame same as the standard model, huge king and queen style seat, taller pullback bars, small fuel tank and single disk on the front. so its possible that theres a nice normal looking gs550 under all that horrible chrome tat, just screaming to be set free.

didnt the japanese use the pink wire for speed limiters or speed warning lights on bikes sold into markets that required such things, i know a lot of small jap mopeds with electronic controls use a pink wire from the speedo into the ignition to cut power at over 30mph and all the chinky scoots are the same (which are all pretty much based on old japanese designs) and some of the jap home market bikes that came with speed limiters for the 112mph cutout used pink wires from the speedo back to the cdi to kill the ignition at that speed. my kat 400 had such a wire (which had been cut and insulated by its previous owner).

gsxr adventure bike, long forks knobbly tyres, wide bars and a tall seat. who doesnt want to ride something with 9 inches of suspension travel, knobbly tyres and 100+bhp?

is that the revere swingarm? looks fucking awesome. id love to fit one of theem into a 650 shafty kat.

Klr600 carb makes them fly!