Doing It The Old Fashioned Way. Because my brand new, fitted two years ago, gasket broke when removing the clutch cover, I needed a new one. No longer available from Suzuki, you can find quite a few New-Old-Stock ones for sale on eBay - for the price of an aftermarket gasket set! Seriously, are they gold impregnated? Being careful with my funds, I shot down to Repco for a sheet of the old oil resistant stuff. Just under twenty bucks, plus a further 30% discount that weekend for being an RACQ member, and I was the proud owner of a roll of Flexoid gasket paper. Made in England! That's refreshing, should be good then.
Copying the original gasket, and with a little help from Stanley's knife, and Snap-On's hole punch set, I soon had something that resembled the first one. Even the bloody holes lined up!
With all that done, I had to hear it running again. It's been a while, and I want to be able to run a flush through the engine. So loom was laid on the bike and bits connected where they should be. This loom is a mess! I need to have a big clean up and remove the rubbish repairs from previous bodges. With battery connected, I checked for spark - all good. I filled the syringe with fuel until the float bowls were all full and gave it a whirl on the starter. The odd firing occurred and then she was away!
An O-ring makes. I should be writing lyrics, not playing with bikes. Oh well. The various seals I ordered all turned up quick smart from Blue City Motorcycles, in South Australia, with free postage too! Cheers guys. I also found their prices to be cheaper than most so happy with that. I'd left the oil pump in a container of oil all week, pumping it every now and again to make sure there were no nasties inside. It looks perfect. With new O-ring held in place with some grease, it was ready to be refitted.
Three M6 bolts hold it in place, then a thrust washer is fitted before the drive pin is inserted and then the gear can be pushed onto the shaft. Finally, a circlip holds it in place.
But it does pour a lot! The Easter break gave me a chance to not only procrastinate some more, but actually get a bit done on the GSX. I decided to fill the front brake lines with a beautiful blue DOT3 fluid, just so I could check for leaks and feel at the lever. The Chinese reservoir was duly fitted, and ten seconds later developed a leak from the sight glass. Tossers! It came off pretty bloody quickly as my freshly painted headlight switch sat underneath it. So a plastic reservoir was put on loosely while I bled them. The anti-dive units haven't held fluid for years so I was expecting problems, but the only issue was a slight leak around the banjo bolts. With a bit more tension applied to the bolts, all seems good. The lever is a bit on the soft side, but should improve once the pads have bedded in. Oil be fooked! Next job was to put a new oil filter in, fill with oil and crank it on the starter to see if the oil light would go out. As previously mentioned, the wire to the oil pressure switch was 'missing' - which could spell trouble. The 'oil light' for today being my test-light mounted between the switch and the live terminal on the battery. It lit up nicely, but refused to go out once cranking. Bugger! Could the oil pump have gone dry after all the months of sitting around with no oil? Had somebody removed the wire because the engine is fuckered? Was there more to this conspiracy? Oh joy. I wasn't taking any chances, the sump was taken off to check the pick-up gauze. The sump itself was full of thick, treacle-like oil and in desperate need of a clean out. Degreaser and brake clean soon had it spotless, but it's a worry that all that was running round the engine. The oil pick-up was holding a tiny amount of carbon, but not enough to stop the oil pump sucking and pumping the brown stuff around. So, with all that cleaned up and blown out, the sump was refitted with a new gasket.
