First build, 1977 GS550

kevinj0101

New Member
Hello everyone, I found this bike on Craigslist early this year for 200.00! Never taken on a café racer type build, always wanted one, so here we go...
 

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The bike was a basket case, the engine turned free and the title was clean with current registration. This was how it pieced together when I got it home.
 
Frame was stripped of all the tabs and all that nonsense....
 

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Found these controls online, was not sure at this point how much fabrication I wanted to get into, but what the hell
 

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Welcome in to madness mate pretty safe bike to start with and for no money, cant go wrong lots of tricks to do too ime just on with one gone for twin discs on front one off exhausts , seat, tank, etc been slow but ready to get on it . Would have been good for you to get it running first but we gotta do things our own way keep the pictures coming and updates mate always here for Q&A's
 
I'm an electrician/ instrument tech by trade, meaning I pound nails with a ball peen hammer... My dad had a great rule for me as I was a young kid waiting for my trade schooling to start, take a welding class at my local junior collage, Walla Walla JC. Anyways, this tail section looks much better
 

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Now I know what everyone is thinking at this point, nice work genius, the rear tire is only going to have an inch of clearance. More on that in a bit. I want the bike to look clean, all the electrical components hidden away. At this point, I had no idea how the cowl would end up, but I had a plan!
 

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yorkie350 said:
Welcome in to madness mate pretty safe bike to start with and for no money, cant go wrong lots of tricks to do too ime just on with one gone for twin discs on front one off exhausts , seat, tank, etc been slow but ready to get on it . Would have been good for you to get it running first but we gotta do things our own way keep the pictures coming and updates mate always here for Q&A's

Its going to be an all day endeavor to get all my progress up to date, I've been inspired by you guys on this site for so much, todays one of the first days of the year I get all day to do something like this.
 
I wish more pictures were taken at this point, if I was a better fabricator it would have been a heck of a lot less grinding and sanding. Was about a two day process to get this how I wanted. But its done now and good enough for me!
 

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There were about 4 different versions of the battery/ electrical component mounts made, I'd dream one up over a week, build it, then have a better idea a week later. Repeat...

But as a bonus, some of the parts were showing up, originally I wanted to do an electronic speedo, with tack and make it more modern, but there is something about analog gauges that are so much cooler, and really its a 40 year old bike.
 

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At this point, believe it or not, it still had not run! Not even tried too, figured that would be the easy part, since it had compression, but that was getting to be the focus.

The foot controls were not really turning out how I wanted, the bushings were not a tight fit, they had too much wobble in them, so they were changed a bit, no sense sending them back and paying more for something else.
 

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McMasters is an awesome company! I needed a .001 type clearance from bushing to pivot point, the controls I bought were around .006 ish, a little cutting and welding later... Plus they needed to be spaced out from the frame an inch or so. Much better now, the rear brake was more of a pain.
 

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Now, I'm sure with enough time and patience, a guy could make sense of the stock wiring... The copy of the diagram that was in the manual was more than difficult to read, plus the stock connectors were giving readings anywhere from .1 to 100 ohms. Not good. And to top it off, the goofy, in my opinion, way that one leg of the generator was routed through the high beam, then back to the voltage regulator = I'm an electrician, modern electronics are relatively cheap = complete rewire takes about 2 hours, done.
 

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Once the wiring was completed, sorry, didn't take any final pictures of that yet. I was able to fire it up. It ran, rather poorly, the carburetors were leaking gas like crazy, they needed to be cleaned and rebuilt, but on with the project. Watched a youtube video from Dimecity cycles on how to make a rear cowl. Figured, how hard can it be... My dad and I did a fair amount of fiberglass work when I was a teenager, first restoring a pontoon boat, then restoring his old dune buggy that suffered some damage from a heavy snow storm collapsing the building the car was stored in.
 

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Now its starting to take shape, I'm no artist so making things from scratch like this usually results in several attempts to get the final product to look like the idea in my head, but this one I got lucky. Still at this point not figured out how its going to be mounted, but hey, full speed ahead!
 

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Soaking the carburetors in Pine sole and water over night works like magic, still blown away at how well it works.
 

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