81 GS750L - The Ba-Zook-A

danejurrous

Been Around the Block
Well I guess I have been posting around far too long and becoming a nuisance. Well sorry to say I am not going anywhere so y'all are going to have to put up with me for a bit longer. I have had my 750 for about 6 years now bought it from my father and went through the carbs got it up and running after sitting for 20 years. Now that I had ridden it for 5 years it has been time to update it. I always liked the looks of the vintage racers so I figured why the hell not I can always add another project to the list. It initially looked like this: (Sorry I don't have any original photos of my bike)
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After digging into it a little bit last year I was able to get it to look more along the lines of this:
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I had to move out of the place I was renting I ended up in my sisters basement where I didn't have any room to work on the bike so there it sat, for a while, until this weekend. Damn I am happy to have it out of there. I started breaking down the bike as there are quite a few things that need to be done. Sorry for the cell phone pics I didn't have my good camera. I will have better pictures for upcoming posts.

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This is how it sits currently after about an hour or two:
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A while ago I saved a rear swinger from Bradj so I had to mock it up and make sure it was on the up and up. I am going to cut off the rear peg mounts and supports as it is going to be a single seater and I have my Bandit to take others on a ride.
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During tear down I put on the tail section that I picked up from Airtech to check to make sure I like the look, I think it works out great with the tank so far but it will end up sitting closer to the tank and I also have the bracket for the rear of the tank to lift it up a little higher and have cleaner lines.
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So that is where I am for now, up and coming sub projects will be:
- Detabbing the frame
- Rear hoop
- Welding new rearset mounts on the frame
- Trimming front fender
- Rewiring the harness
- Placing electronics under the seat
- Powder coat the frame
- Paint the tank, tail, fender, rims
- Update rear wheel to a 18" rear
- Clean and paint the engine
- New brake lines and cables
- Dyna ignition system - possiby

Any input is appreciated.
 
Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

Alright I started doing a little detabbing on the frame and going to get rid of the passenger foot peg supports this weekend and weld in some bracing for the frame since I am going to cut the tail section. I also was able to get some races made up for my aluminum swing arm swap. The issue I was running into on it is the swing arm bolt is a 14mm on the 750 swingarm and on the 1100 swing arm it is a 16mm. So what I did was make some with the same OD as the 1100 swinger races but with a 14mm inner diameter for the original swinger bolt, this way I don't have to worry about drilling out the frame for the 16mm bolt.

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I was also able to find a 18" rear wheel so I can swap out the regular 16" rear wheel. The 16 just looks a little too bulky for what I want.
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Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

Dug into the frame last night to get rid of the excess pieces that I will not be needing. I also pulled the motor as well which was a little interesting since the thing weighs a metric ton so I ended up laying it on its side and pulling the frame off the motor. I will throw the motor up on my engine stand this week hopefully so I can get to cleaning it and do a valve adjustment.
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Still have a little more frame work to do and clean up on the frame including cutting the tail but should have that squared away before I head to Portland on Thursday.
 
Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

My suggestion would be to change the suspension. That swinger deserves better than MDI's.
 
Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

shamus said:
My suggestion would be to change the suspension. That swinger deserves better than MDI's.

Yeah you are right Shamus I would like to get some Hagons or something like them here in the future but that will be a little while out. Need to get some roommates in my house so I can get some subsidized mortgage payments or just have them pay it for me entirely so I can put more money into the bike. In the meantime anyone have a sugar momma they would be willing to lend?
 
Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

Yes sir, consider me signed up.

You'll have to pardon my lack of help though Dane - I don't know much about the I4's. I'm here for the pretty pictures! :)
 
Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

danejurrous said:
Yeah you are right Shamus I would like to get some Hagons or something like them here in the future but that will be a little while out. Need to get some roommates in my house so I can get some subsidized mortgage payments or just have them pay it for me entirely so I can put more money into the bike. In the meantime anyone have a sugar momma they would be willing to lend?

I hear you man, I had the same shocks on my bike until I stole some hagons off ebay.
 
Big Rich said:
Yes sir, consider me signed up.

You'll have to pardon my lack of help though Dane - I don't know much about the I4's. I'm here for the pretty pictures! :)

Happy to have ya Big Rich and any input you have would be appreciated! I will also try not to disappoint with the pictures so I am going to try and keep my ugly mug out of them ;)

Had a bit of an interesting night tonight while working on the bike. I was out grinding in the garage and since I am working on it over at my parents place, since I don't have a garage, my dad walked out and sat there with a beer in hand watching me hack up and grind on his old bike. Being he purchased an L series I almost felt bad about it, almost. I stopped and we chatted about my plans for it and he helped me find a possible solution for my tank/seat problem I was encountering, we will get to that later, and we talked about the times he had on the bike when him and my mom were first married cruising around the city. At one point he mentioned while he was out riding it he always felt like when he would dump the clutch and take off from a light it was like a rocket. Got me thinking about it so I am gunna name this the Ba-Zook-A build for my pops. Crazy as he is its fun to hear that old shit.

Now that I have that out of my system on with the bike stuff, here are some more pics Rich.

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Passenger peg mounts all cut and cleaned up
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Side profile where I need to lower the back of the tank a little to bring it closer to the seat
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My dilemma with the seat, and this is going to be difficult to explain so I will have to show via pictures in later posts, is I didn't know how to have the seat flow with the bottom of the tank since the mount for the rear of the tank was basically in the way so what my dad and I decide is to have a piece of tubing welded between the frame with a post where it is directly below the tank mount rather than trying to have a mount from the old plate. This will require me to hack up the seat pan a little but I think in the long run it will look better plus will flow better. This was the old support system I had tried but was still not happy with it. I think the new idea will work better. If you are confused I am not surprised you will see in the coming posts what I mean.
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As always any input is appreciated.
 
Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

Yep. Lost me.

Are you lowering the tank? I am curious about this now.......I forget where I saw it (probably the GSR), but somebody made a battery box or something at the front edge of their seat. Looked a little bulky but not bad, and helped tie the angles of everything together.
 
Big Rich said:
Yep. Lost me.

Are you lowering the tank? I am curious about this now.......I forget where I saw it (probably the GSR), but somebody made a battery box or something at the front edge of their seat. Looked a little bulky but not bad, and helped tie the angles of everything together.

I would like to lower the overall tank but I have limited tools and well my fabrication skills need some work as too. Unless I can figure out how to do that, I plan on lowering the tail of the tank a little to flow more with the frame and also make the gap between the seat and the tank not as large. As for trying to explain what I am going to do to mount it all up and hide it I will have to explain by putting it together hard for me to verbalize what I am picturing.

I will have to dig around the GSR see if I can find that build Rich so I can see how they did it. I am probably going to mount the battery up under the tail section since I am going to hide all the electronics as well.

I guess you could say the build from pnwriders that I found a while back is the inspiration I have for this

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Re: Streamlining a 81 GS750L - Yeah its a Zook

Looking nice so far.
I'm mothballing a project on the very same bike for a couple of years while I move overseas, so I'll be living vicariously through your build for a while.
Keep it coming.
 
buzznichols said:
Looking nice so far.
I'm mothballing a project on the very same bike for a couple of years while I move overseas, so I'll be living vicariously through your build for a while.
Keep it coming.

That sucks man, hopefully I can keep myself from screwing this up, I think I will have to quote you on this build from your post to sell your bike, "it was my intention to "beat the 'L' out of it" seems to fit this pretty well.
 
I need some help guys, well more so need your input on something. I ended up tearing the front forks apart last night because they need to be rebuilt due to the dust covers cracking and the seals were going bad as well so I had a upgrade in mind that is fairly simple and have done it before on other bikes ;D

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Here is where I need some help. While pulling the forks apart got everything out and apart and found that the dampener rod was scored up

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Obviously I am not happy about this but not the end of the world. Someone at the factory missed their training on if you let this shit slide it causes problems. What was causing it is the dampener spring has a burr which should have been easily seen and could have been filed down at the factory.

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After a few seconds with a file the spring it should be fine. On the dampener rod are those scratches bad enough I should replace it, they don't feel excessively deep, or could I take some emery cloth to it and clean it up?

I don't really know enough about front forks yet to make an informed decision.
 
I think I am just going to clean up the dampner rod I have and run with it. Spent some time in the garage last night with some sand paper cleaning up the fork lowers, they are going to get powder coated but I am not sure if I will do the same color I want for the frame or just go black, don't know how it will look yet.

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Before & After: Almost ready for powder after cleaning up casting marks
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Sorry for the absence Dane....

I can't help personally with the damping rod, but you could try sending a pm to Beatnic - that guy knows his suspension stuff inside and out.

And won't powder coating cover up all those surface imperfections?
 
Big Rich said:
Sorry for the absence Dane....

I can't help personally with the damping rod, but you could try sending a pm to Beatnic - that guy knows his suspension stuff inside and out.

And won't powder coating cover up all those surface imperfections?

Ha ha no worries Rich, I threw a post up on the GSR about the dampening rod and one of the guys said it should be fine. I cleaned up the issue on the spring and also the rod with some emery cloth and should be alright, might still shoot a PM over to beatnic just in case to make sure I don't foul something up. Never hurts to get a second opinion.

as for the Powder Coat yeah it would cover up the imperfections but it had a clear coat over the lowers and I was unsure about how it would work when they heat up the powder coat. Plus I cleaned up a bunch of the casting marks as well to make it look cleaner.

Hoosier Daddy said:
Subscribed!
Being an L owner myself and all.

Happy to have ya around HD!

Had to help a girl with her POS car over the weekend, so that means I didn't get to work on the bike. She had bad gas mileage due to a crapped O2 sensor and her lights in the cluster are out because she let a previous BF install a new stereo deck which he completely hacked the wiring leaving exposed ends sitting on the dash support frame. Some peoples children.

This week I am going to get all the supports for the seat and the tank done so I can get the tail section supported and cut, cannot decide if I want to do a rear hoop or not. I am also going to try and weld in a plate under the seat for an electrics tray so they can stay all nice and hidden.
 
gk45011 said:
Looking good Dane! I'll be following along to support the "L" cause.

Gary

Shit with all the Suzuki guys around I better step up my game! ;)

Lame update today haven't had much time to spend in the garage lately been really busy with work and a few side jobs lately (pitfalls of owning a couple businesses) and the bike has been sitting. Going to dig into it hopefully this weekend do some sand blasting and also finish up the seat mount/tank mount.
 
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