DANGER! Scared Of Using Engine Flush?

Skeptical, or concerned?

You will find different opinions on using engine flush from every mechanic out there. Some say never use it no matter what. Others put it in at every oil change.

So why the difference in opinion? What are the pros and cons?

Valvoline detergent-based engine flush.

Bloody Exhausted! (I'm so funny...Suzuki GSX Humour).

Link Pipes Done.
With the merge collector done, I needed to make the links to the reverse cone mega's. I decided to cut up loads of little sections of stainless pipe to get the correct angles for the link pipes. I could have done it with fewer, longer sections but decided the "loads of welds look" was the way forward. Maybe, when you know how to get the pretty colouring of welds to work for you, but it looks like a jumbled mess now. 

Still, it's on and the bike sounds bloody great! And it was a good experience too, giving me plenty of ideas for the next go, and that's how we learn. I've been wondering how the bike would sound for ages, and I'm not disappointed. You can hear it in a video at the end...

Greasing The Suzuki Speedo Drive.

Funnily enough... grease dries out and goes hard after thirty years of getting mashed in a worm drive, but how do you get the speedo drive apart without ruining the seal? Once they're put together, it's nigh on impossible to remove it — and you can't buy the drive complete now, let alone get the right seal! 

So, after a lot of messing around with a spare one I have, I decided to have a stab at getting it apart with minimal damage. I came to the conclusion that a 2.5mm hole drilled through the body of the drive itself would allow access for a small punch to tap out the seal. If all goes to plan, a small dab of silicone in the hole will seal it up once finished. Job jobbed.

Symptoms.
Just turning the tabbed washer will tell you how bad it is. If it stops, gets stuck and generally feels tight, it needs to be stripped, cleaned and greased. Leave it and the tabbed washer will fail, maybe even the worm drive and gear itself. The drive in my ESD has had the tabs brazed back on at some stage. And this spare drive has quite a bit of wear on the inner tabs where it fits into the gear.

Whatever happens, it would be good to take a look inside and see what can be fixed. With a centre pop first, and then very slowly with the drill I had enough room for a small punch to tap on the back of the seal.

GSX750 Cafe Racer Progress - Battery Box.

Back in the garage.
Finally got some time to crack on with the wiring and battery box. It's been bugging me for a while because I wanted the loom to look perfect, but sometimes you just need to make a start and fix any issues later. 

I'm still unsure on what sort of speedo/tacho combination I'm going to use too. I'd like two separate units to mimic the typical sixties/seventies bikes, but I have a certain budget too. The modern digital versions get very expensive when you go for quality versions. And although there's plenty of Chinese versions on eBay, do they actually work for more than ten minutes? Decisions...

Gasket Paper.

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!

It Never Rains...

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.

Playtime with a GSXR750 L2.

Thank F... goodness For Seven-Fifties!
They were all the rage in the '90's. World Superbikes kept them firmly in the minds of any pub road-racer. I was just starting out on the road, but wanted a blue ZXR750 with those Hoover tubes looking so bloody cool coming out of the tank. Ooh yeah. And let's not forget the rare RC30...
Local fast boys had GSXR750's and wheelied from the lights constantly, telling me about the gearbox rebuilds from continual wheelie abuse. It was music to my ears at that age! Yeah, there were 1100's, and the all new Fireblade, but it was the 750's that were racing round the track against 916 Ducatis. 

And then...
Everything changed. 600's got quicker, the R1 came along and annihilated the ageing 'blade. A few years later, Suzuki had a thou too and suddenly WSBK was destined for 1000cc fours as well as the V-twins. The midrange 750's started to die out - after all, they weren't wanted in terms of sales. The ZX7R hung in there for a while, but the only true sports bike to maintain that displacement was the GSXR, all those years after it's formidable launch in '85.

And what a good move by Suzuki. 
Yeah, thou's are great fun 'cause they're quick. But how much power can you actually make use of on the road? There was a time when a big bike was limited by its poor chassis. You might have horsepower, but you're going to die if you try to exploit it. Not so much nowadays. They let you get away with a lot, but also make you very lazy. Someone faster than you in a corner? Just open up on the straight and reel him back in. You end up riding around on quarter throttle thinking you're Troy Bayliss, while there's a 600 stuck up your chuffer trying to hurry you along in the corners!
Looking at the latest thou's now, I can't help thinking that all the electronic aids designed to make them faster/safer are dulling the basic virtues of riding. Launch control, traction control, wheelie control... strewth, what about my control?
Sure, gadgets are great, but go out there and get on a real bike for a bit. Give the brain something to do, you might actually enjoy it...

Untidy Wiring? Recovering Could Be The Answer.

You can put the insulation tape away too!
It maybe considered pedantic, considering the rest of the bike at the moment, but I didn't like the white, heat resistant (?) sheathing on the wiring from the signal generator. It was torn in places, fraying and looked scruffy - not really the look I was going for (for the wiring at least).
So, with a little bit of looking around on the dock of the eBay, I found some Techflex. A plastic braided sleeve which expands when you push it together so that you can get it over various looms, hoses or cables etc. When it goes back to its original length, it tightens back up and looks great. Worth a shot of anyone's money I thought.

Here's the old covering looking a bit dilapidated. I'd cleaned it up as best I could, but some things have their limits.

The Mighty GSX250... Runs!

Considering the state of it, that's pretty impressive. 
With water ingress obvious - the carb tops have almost rusted through, the exhaust pipes have rotted out, and the engine is severely corroded, I wasn't expecting too much from the little twin. The inlet rubbers had come away from the alloy plates that mount to the head, which made it a little hard to get it running.
But today I decided to check the compression to get some idea on the internals, it wasn't pretty. 50psi was about as good as it got. That's why, in my opinion, it's better to get an engine running before strip down, but each to their own.  Once it's running, it'll clear out a lot of the crap hanging round inside (and there was a lot of rubbish in the ports!). It puts pressure on the prison rings, which start to scrape the bores properly. Fuel/air mixture going through helps to clean valve stems and seats. All of this should help the low compression and, if it runs, gives you some idea on the bottom end. If you pull apart an engine without having heard it, you'll probably end up replacing every component inside for peace of mind.

New Bits, Missing Bits And Dodgy Bits!

New parts are rolling in fast.
But some of the old bits seem to have done a bunk! I cleaned, painted (then scratched) a LH handlebar switch last week. Convinced it wasn't the one off this bike, and that it came in a box of Katana bits, I did it anyway. Why didn't I think it was off this GSX? The choke lever is snapped off on the Katana one.
I just went through all the pics I took of the bike and, sure enough, the choke lever is intact on the original switch - but where the f#*k is it?

I had a massive clear-out and general tidy in the garage this weekend and went through all the boxes. The switch and clutch lever have definitely gone AWOL. Oh well, hopefully they'll turn up soon.

In the meantime, new acquisitions have been turning up while I had some spare cash. Needing new master cylinder reservoirs, I went looking on good old eBay. A nice, anodised black, aluminium cylindrical reservoir was found for the princely sum of $7.55 delivered. How could you possibly go wrong?