Hokey dokey sportsfans - it’s time for a little update on Big Sue. I spent last evening out in the barn just looking her over and messing around with the battery that was in the bike. Here are my observations:
So, the saga continues with slow, but measurable progress.
Cheers,
Pete
- The entire bike is coated in oily goo. The P/O had it stored in a corner of his home machine shop and I’d guess that he used a lot of cutting oil in his milling machine and lathe - and much of it landed on the bike. However, underneath the goo, she is pretty shiny - so a blessing in disguise perhaps.
- The paint on the tins is simply a mess - but the inside of the tank looks OK. I will remove the tank later this week and have a gander at the underside. My guess is that everything is OK and can be nicely restored.
- The instruments seem OK no cracks or bad looking stuff and both clocks seem to work OK
- The wheels looks ok - under a lot of grime goo. The tires look pretty new but they are very old and will be replaced along with the inner tubes and rim tapes.
- The brakes don’t work well - but they do seem to function a little indicating that restoring them is feasible.
- The clutch pulls and the external actuator moves OK but it does feel as though the discs are stuck - so we’ll see. Lucille had the same issue and I got her freed by just rocking back and forth while in gear.
- The engine is definitely free and there are no funny noises when slowly actuating the kicker.
- I looked inside the points cover and everything looks clean - so they should work alright with a little Emory board action.
- There was a decent looking battery in the bike that read about 2.6 volts. I pulled it out and connected it to my charger - which has a desulfating mode. It worked away on that old battery for hours and then started flashing an error code so the battery is scrap (no great surprise there as it is at least 20 years old).
- There is a reasonably complete toolkit in the plastic tray under the seat but the nifty little Suzuki air pressure guage for the air-assisted forks is missing. Fortunately, I still have the gauge from my original GS850G and I even have the special syringe with a Shraeder valve for adding air to the forks. This is important as you really don’t need a great deal of air - but too much will blow the fork seals.
- The owners manual that came with the bike is in fairly rough shape as it was stored under the seat in the P/Os unheated barn-shop for many years and so some of the pages have stuck together. I managed to salvage most of them but some pages are torn a little.
- The P/O gave me a Clymers shop manual for the GS850G and so now I have two - which will be handy.
- The bike came with one key and the P/O is looking for the second one which he thinks he still has - so that would be good too.
- The valve clearance checking and shim removal tool. It slides under the camshaft and pushes the bucket down so that you can remove the shim with tweezers.
- Three oil filters complete with o-rings for the cover cap
- A neat little Oxford air chuck adapter for filling tires on bikes that have cast wheels on which the air valve is hard to access. I’m hoping this neat little rig will help adjusting air pressure on the BMW wheels too.
So, the saga continues with slow, but measurable progress.
Cheers,
Pete
Last edited:
