My vision of a 1982 Suzuki GS750e

Hello All,
I have been follower of DTT for quite some time but have never had anything that I thought was worthy of a post until now. Let me start by saying that I have greatly appreciated the information and advice that this forum provides. Now down to business, several years ago I purchased a 1982 Suzuki GS750e. My goal was to transform the bike into something of a mild cafe racer. Something that looked like it came from the factory that way.

My previous experience in this area was rebuilding a 1981 Honda XR500R. I completed this project about a year before purchasing the Suzuki. Here is the finished product of that previous venture...







After successfully completing the Honda I wanted to set my sights on something a little more complex. A quick search on CL turned up the 1982 GS750e. I paid $280 for it and the PO stated that it did run however had electrical and carb issues. Overall I felt good about the transaction and I think the PO just didn't have the commitment level required for the project. Here it sits as purchased...





With the obvious electrical and carb issues...





Now please keep in mind that I still very much consider myself a novice in this arena. My simple plan was to restore this bike and turn it into a cafe style bike with minimal frame modifications. I wanted to create something safe, dependable, and stylish. I was actually torn as to which forum to put this in, cafe or restore?? Ultimately the cafe racer forum is just so much cooler overall, so here it is. I started by tearing down the bike and as I learned here, cataloging and documenting where things go was key. I also relied heavily on the Clymer shop manual.







The removal of the engine and replacement of the seals, gaskets, piston rings and cleaning up of the cylinders was next. This is basically what I felt comfortable with, I did not feel with my experience I could crack open the lower end and have a satisfactory outcome.





As always, a clean shop and a meticulous attention to details helped when rebuilding the engine.





Soda blasting was a great tool that I picked up from DTT and that helped to clean up the engine. After everything was cleaned and reassembled paint, primer, and clearcoat on the engine began. I used Dupli-Color spray can products specifically for engine blocks. As I learned, preparation could not be overdone. The DTT article on 'Rattle Can Bling' was quite helpful.

Prep...





Primer....



Paint...



Clear...



After the engine was ready to go it was time to tackle the Mikuni BS32SS carbs. Four carb rebuild kits and a lot of help from the manual as well as some great online resources including BikeCliffs website (http://members.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/) and I felt confident that these carbs were squared away. I also added the pod style filters however I am not set on these. I think they look good but if performance suffers I will try different styles. The original air box was in pretty bad shape.

The before image....




So after about three solid minutes of polishing (yeah right) when you put the whole package together with the engine, the carbs, the pod filters..... this is what I got.







Overall, I hope it performs as good as it looks. This bike is currently near completion so everything outlined hear has happened well in the past. I will try and update this again before the end of the week to bring it up to the current point in time. Anyway, hope you enjoy and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone whose knowledge helped bring this together.

Well after completing the engine I trimmed a few things off the frame. I then had the frame along with several components powder coated. The color was called Miami Teal... I fell in love with it instantly. The frame was this teal color and I plan to have the tank and components on the body painted black with a teal pin stripe going down the side. I bolted the engine back into the frame and this was the result...







I thought clubman handle bars would look good so I added those. I wanted to raise the rear of the bike so I purchased longer shocks. In the end the front of the bike will ride approximately 1.5" lower than stock and the rear will ride about 2-3" higher than stock. I thought overall this would give a more aggressive look. Please let me know if this will significantly affect handling!! I replaced the bearing in the steering stem and rebuilt the front forks. I put all these components together and this was the look...







You can check out my gallery for some more pics, but as I stated earlier I am trying to catch this up to where I am currently with this build. I will be adding another update shortly.

Nice work so far four4, she's coming along swell! Teal frame, who knew? You're doing a fine job so far, keep it up!

As to your pods with the CV style carbs, you'll want to consider finding a proper air box for it; CVs really don't like pods. Clean up the original one or if it's that far gone, eBay or CL.

I'm no engineer, but I think a 2 or 3 inch lift in the baking you be a bit much when combined with dropping your front end. You may wind up with something too twitchy and excitable. Keep the factory rear shocks on hand; you may need them.

Nice work on the XR, BTW.

Nice work so far. Great bike too. You may be able to get away without the airbox if you change out the jetting but you really really should at least get real K&N pods. I may be mistaken but in the pics, those look like the super cheap Emgo pods, they really suck.

Thank you for the feedback!!

These were the two areas I had concern with and as always cheap and cool rarely, if ever, equals safe and reliable. I do believe the brand on the pods was Emgo... it's been awhile but I do recall they were cheap. I will look into reviving the old airbox as I still have all the old components and if that is not an option I will pursue a higher quality pod or an ebay option.

As far as the ride height, this was another area that I felt was possibly a hiccup. I want responsive and not twitchy. The current aftermarket shocks are adjustable and at the lowest setting is comparable to the stock shocks. My calculations took into account raising them to the highest setting (again the cool factor). I think what I will do is compare them at the lowest setting to the original and see what kind of variation we are talking. The front can be raised ever slightly if necessary to level out the bike.

This is exactly what I was looking to get out of this forum....Thank you.

for every inch you move an end, you change the steering head angle by around 1 degree. so if your front is down 1.5 and the back up 3 you'll be about 4.5 degrees steeper. that's quite a bit, and the trail will also reduce by quite a bit, which is the main influence on the twitchy. it's a long, heavy, slow 80's bike. the main handling aide for them was really wide handlebars for leverage.

it also increases the swingarm angle, and there are issues there of varying chain tension and the chain rubbing on the top of the swingarm, which as well as the possible wear issue can affect the way it responds to power application (doesn't have much i guess) as the chain tries to pull the arm straighter (ie, lower the pivot, raise the axle).

chuck the crap pods to the shithouse. get real filters or go the box. pity the frame's in the way, you could run some long velocity stacks and put the filters back in the triangle. maybe curl them out the side. how about stacks into a perspex box so you can see them with one large panel filter?

not sure how tall or old you are, but the clubmans upside down will probably make it hellishy uncomfortable. you'll need rearsets to put you at the right angle (or approaching), which will just vary the areas of discomfort. they may also hit the tank. i'd see if i could throw them further than the pods.

finish it to the level of being able to be ridden, get the bikeexif / pipeburn photos done, them piss all the cliche shit off and make it rideable.

or not. it is yours.

Hi coyotefour4
If you look in the suspension section of the forum, i posted a link to a .exe file that calculates the changes to caster angle and trail from the original measurements and how far each end was moved.

Go check it out if your interested.
Or tony foale has some good software for that sort of stuff also.

Thank you Farmer and Black..... Yup, definately trashing the pods and going with either K&N or an airbox. I am also working on leveling out the bike. I never would have thought that, what I considered such minor changes, would result in such a drastic change to the head angle. As far as the clubmans go, I did try them out with the tank and during mock up, I thought they felt fine... good even. I am 6'1" and 250 lbs. so maybe that had something to do with it? I also do plan on running rearsets. Of course, I have ridden this bike exactly zero miles so this could change based on practical application.

Now on with the build....

After having assembled the front forks, swing arm and shocks, I moved on to the wheels. I was actually torn between powder coat and polishing on the wheels but the thought of keeping up with the polish and the amount of polishing involved made me lean towards a black powder coat.



I put some Dunlop rubber on them and started cleaning up the axles and wheel components. I ordered a new pair of brake discs that apparently had to be CNC machined in China. I could not find a new front set anywhere else that wasn't outrageously expensive. They looked exactly like the originals and I am happy with the result...

Cleaning up the components.....



My new Chinese brake discs....



A new chain and some miscellaneous parts and I was able to assemble the front and rear wheels.





It was also around this time I received my new Mac 4-1 exhaust system from DCC. You can see it along side the bike in the above picture. Also, please note that the front forks were reversed in the above picture (basically backwards). This was not a final assembly picture and this was corrected prior to actually torquing any bolts down.

I did however slap on the exhaust and had a eye brow raising moment....





As you can see the exhaust flanges sit pretty far away from the engine.... this was something I hadn't seen before and had me questioning the fitment. A quick call and discussion with customer support confirmed that in fact this was quite common with Mac exhaust systems and would not impact performance. With all the pieces coming together here is were we are sitting...





I am still not quite caught up to were this sits today. I will post again shortly to bring this project to were it is now. Again, thank you all for the feedback. I have already dumped the pods.

COYOTEfour4 said:

As you can see the exhaust flanges sit pretty far away from the engine.... this was something I hadn't seen before and had me questioning the fitment. A quick call and discussion with customer support confirmed that in fact this was quite common with Mac exhaust systems and would not impact performance.

Click to expand...

Ha!

There is a good reason you haven't seen it before …

Crazy

This stuff is fun eh?

I felt the same way you did Crazy. I actually emailed them the picture that you see with dimensions and was told that it was totally normal.... I think it looks odd as hell too but the bolts torqued just fine and the seal would not come from the actual exhaust flange but from the metal gaskets, right????

The gaskets seal, but without the flanges providing stability I can't imagine them lasting for long …

Crazy

an inch on a bike is a major change. the problem with these older bikes is they're long and bits are heavy - wheels, etc, so it takes a bit of moving. hence the wide bars. tilting it forward doesn't make it stop and drop like a late model bike, it just makes it "unstable" and requires stuff do things it doesn't want to. think of it as flowing through corners instead of attacking them. they can be ridden fast with good suspension, but it's a different style.

the way you have it now is the fun part. all the clean bits looking a lot like a motorcycle. finishing it off - running wiring through it all, making it all fit - can be a real pita.

Love the build and that teal frame! She's going to be fun to ride.

I second changing the pods. I have those emgo pods on my XS500. They are horrible. Clog jet ports and fall off. For my KZ650 I got Unilter Pods. They are amazing, can't stress that enough.

Thanks for the feedback Bear and funny you should mention wiring Black....

Wiring was the next task that I wanted to accomplish and then I wanted to test fire the engine. It was at this point that a lot of the prep work early on really paid off. I had tagged every connection even if it was blank. The pictures I took early on also helped to determine the best routing. I also knew that somewhere there was a wiring issue that the PO could not apparently fix.

This was the wiring harness....



I cleaned up the harness and began making connections....



I eventually had a satisfactory layout and something that wasn't a complete rats nest. This approach also allowed me to track down the wiring 'issue' that the previous owner had eluded to. The rectifier that was on the bike actually belonged to a Honda. After searching for the right model number I was able to find a used one off of eBay. After new fuses, some shrink wrapping, and a new battery things started to take shape...







I still have some minor components to add such as a headlight, turn signals, and horn but everything is accounted for and there shouldn't be any issue with these.

After getting the wiring squared away, I thought it would be a good time to test fire the engine to make sure everything was communicating correctly. I ran hoses, added oil, and gave the carb some gas. It was around this time I realized I had only finger tightened the oil drain plug, as was indicated by the leaking oil. The carb also had some minor tightening on the hoses to seal it up. I rotated the crankshaft manually just to spread some oil and it turned smoothly, I checked for spark and was rewarded. After about 6-8 seconds of cranking it over...... it started!! Finally!!!

The idle was set and after feeding it some more gas the engine came to temperature. I stopped the engine and allowed it to cool. I then removed the valve cover and re-torqued the head bolts. This was based on a recommendation I found on DTT.

So, this is now were we stand.... Don't worry, the pods have been trashed. I will be getting Uni or K&N. I will also not be raising the rear end so as to keep the bike in a more level stance.



Up next is the braking system. I think I will also have the seat refurbished and then on to paint. More to come.....

Very nice work. Your electrics are very tidy. Let's hear it run!

Hi All, just wanted to post a quick update with the new developments. As was recommended, I dumped the cheapo pod filters and upgraded to the K&N filters. A change to slightly larger jetting will also occur.





I am continuing to work on the wiring of the various small items. Below is a shot at the rear turn signals which I just wrapped up. I am also working to get the seat refurbished and will be finding a shop to complete the paint job on the tank and other components. I have also been putting off the brake system but that also has to occur.



More to come as time and budget allows. Thanks for feedback all. Carver, I do have a video of the bike running but depending on the file type, I either have the video or I have the sound.... not both. I am working on it and will try to post.

One question I have for the group is regarding the tank, it has some minor surface rust on the interior of the tank. I will be using Evapo-rust to remove the rust but at what point is it recommended to re-seal your tank? I was planning on completing this before paint but am not sure if re-sealing is warranted or not.

Thanks all,

Very clean. Nice job.

This project is awesome! What are your plans for the gauges?