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Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:06 pm
by Jonesz
She is looking like someone cares. Keep up the good work.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 1:51 am
by JamesPal
Looking great! Love to see another old wing being saved. I started restoring my '81 back in '09 but stopped about a year later and it sat. Then I did the '72 450 and then a '85 interstate. This year I'm back on the 1100. Funny how I'm looking back on some of the decisions I made then. You learn so much from doing this. When I did the 1200 my wife asked me to keep a ledger of the costs. I counted everything, purchase price, rent the trailer to bring it home, tax to xfer the title. When it was back on the road I had over $3400 in it. It was worth it and I will do it again.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 6:34 am
by OldRider2
10-4 on keeping a record of the costs. I've kept most of it written in an Excel sheet, fortunately my wife hasn't seen it that I know of! I've tried to pay for it selling a few thing on Craigs List or eBay. As you all know the $$$ can add up fast if you have to buy new from Honda or even aftermarket items. It would be nice to be Jay Leno!

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 7:47 pm
by OldRider2
It became clear after putting the bike back together and starting it that the muffler was in bad shape, so I decided to try to use some Triumph T-100 mufflers. I used my 77 GL headers but after that I read that the 78 or 79 I think had a slightly different angle on their outlet that may have made it easier. I struggled with how to mount them, first trying some chrome adapters I found but that didn’t work out. I discovered that a 2” OD PVC pipe would fit over the header end and the T100 muffler would fit into it so I decided to try heating the PVC so it was flexible, and before it cooled manipulated the left muffler into an approximate position. I don’t have any way to bend a piece of tailpipe or a light welder so I figured this would give a muffler shop a swag at an approximate length and angle to bend a pipe, then weld it to the headers. One muffler shop wasn’t too busy and wanted to help me out and easily bent up a sample piece of pipe but when their boss came back from lunch he said it was going to be about $300 to do the job! I then found another place that did it for $60, more in line with what I was looking to pay.

The next problem was coming up with a bracket to mount the mufflers and it took several temporary mounts, fitting, cutting, drilling, etc. to come up with a design. I’m not fabricator so there was a lot of hand cutting and fitting to come up with my final mount. I wanted the T100s to look as close as possible to the original angle on the side and spacing from the rear. The first brackets I made weren’t stiff enough and finally went to about 1/8” steel plate I cut roughly with a sabre saw and then finished it off with a file and grinder.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 7:49 pm
by OldRider2
Muffler fab continued.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 8:23 pm
by Track T 2411
That's a nice piece of work!

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 11:31 pm
by flyin900
Clearly you have some fabrication skills and a good idea of where your going with the project so action1 " You have learned well young Jedi"

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 8:45 am
by rcmatt007
I have had a few rear tires that looked like that

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 9:04 am
by OldRider2
Good roll-around tire for the yard. :-D I think that is the same wheel and tire I got from Sunnbobb after I started this project. I think the air in it is still Washington State air! lolol

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 10:58 am
by Jonesz
Those pipes look great on your bike (side and rear view) Nice work.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 12:00 pm
by OldRider2
Thanks, they're not perfect but once things are bent and welded, you live with that, they are fairly close to where I wanted them.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:29 pm
by OldRider2
I thought initially the rear fenders on the early wings were all the same but on closer examination I found a replacement I bought on eBay was for a 78 or 79 so that meant it had different taillight bracket holes than a 1977. The chrome was in good shape so I hunted down a tail light bracket that fit the replacement fender. I got the rear fender on and cleaned up and polish/painted the taillight assembly. Sometime after mounting my fender and taillight, I went down to see Toehead in Mass and he gave me a much better looking taillight. So I removed the old one and used his. Putting a part on and then having to remove it later seemed to be typical for me because some things I just wanted to get it put back on and didn’t always think of the integration of that part in the big picture.

I digress, back to the fender area. I also picked up a used grab bar locally for $60 and thought it was a good deal until I found aftermarket ones on line about the same price. :( Mounting the grab bar and identifying the right directionals for the bar was interesting. The bolts I had for the directionals had a hole down through the middle for the wires to go through but the bolts were a little too short to mount the lights. Looking back I think the mounts were wrong maybe even the lights and they probably came off the old fairing that came with the bike. The short bolts I discovered were not metric bolts but 7/16” x 13 SAE bolts. I then went to a local farm store, found 7/16 x 2 ½” Grade 5 bolts and proceeded to drill holes down through the centers. So the directional light mounting on the grab bar isn’t original but only one of you experts would probably know that. It took some wire identification and rewiring here but it was easy enough. Remember the bike had no working lights when I got it and the harness was in poor shape so I spent a lot of time identifying wires and talking to myself to make sure I wired it up correctly. Fortunately the few wires in the rear were much easier to repair/replace than the front of the bike. During the earlier years of this project I got a decent wiring harness and original real wheel from Sunnbobb. That wiring harness was in pretty good shape except for some cut wires in the headlight section so that helped hooking thinks up.

I decided to leave the rear wheel off for awhile longer at this point because I had to rebuild all of the brakes, install a new clutch cable, and adjust the clutch. Put on a Motion Pro Clutch Cable......make sure you lube them before putting them on, they aren't lubed from the factory very well. I finally got oil down through it after a few days!

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:36 pm
by Graham Cracker
Patience is a virtue.....looking good!!

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 6:13 pm
by OldRider2
The brakes were all toast on the bike so I cleaned and rebuilt the front calipers, rear caliper, and both master cylinders. I also replaced all of the original rubber brake lines with new aftermarket ones and front pads, new front reservoir. No real surprises with the brakes other than having to replace one front caliper that had a bleeder snapped off.

Another thing I tackled which wasn’t on my list of favorite things was to get into the fork to see why they were so stiff and ratchety. I put it off long enough and finally tackled it to replace the stem bearings. It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be but best thing about it was my bike had tapered roller bearing and it wasn’t necessary to replace the bearings. You all have probably experienced the old, calcified grease that you find in these bikes and that is all that was causing a problem. I took the triple tree area apart and cleaned it all up, getting all of the old grease out and then repacked them. I didn’t see any damage to the bearings. Now the handlebars move freely, not dragging, or ratcheting.

At some point during the rebuild process I realized the old coils had a real high resistance when I checked them. I opted for two electronic 3 Ohm coils and kept the original point set up. Someday it might be nice to have fully electronic coils and points but for now these worked out fine. The coils looked identical to the Dynatek Dyna Coils except they were red color and the center steel post was rotated 90 degrees to the Dynas center post. It took a bit of fabricating a mount but mounted them in place of the old Honda coils. I also replaced the plug wires with new copper core wires from Tractor Supply.

Re: 1977 GL1000 Restoration that started in 2009!

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 6:48 pm
by desertrefugee
Really nice work. And immense patience. I sometimes take shortcuts down the home stretch and have to retrace steps after the fact. I don't think you're doing that.

Looking forward to seeing it done!