It runs!

After a little over 4 months, I got it all together except for the speedo and floor strips. It’s running pretty well and the list of things to do/fix is short.
-Fix the fuel valve – it’s too tight.
-Fix the speedo right. - I couldn’t get it to look good enough and I let the needle end up on the wrong side of the limit pin.
-Install the floor strips
-Find out where the rattle is coming from in the mid rpm range
-Tweak the carb so it’ll start easier when warm.
I also have some polishing to do. Some parts of the body have a little too much orange peel in the clear coat. I polished some before putting it together, but I’m not satisfied so I need to polish more. Also, I repainted the left cowl again after getting too much dust in the color coat and finding another dent. When repainting I got the clear perfectly smooth … until it ran. I need to sand/polish out the runs.

I’m pleasantly surprised that rebuilding the front end including the shock made for a well behaved fork/front brake. It’s smooth, progressive, and powerful.

The engine runs better but has a little less power than before the rebuild. I haven’t messed with carburetion or timing much so hopefully a little tuning will help. I was able to take the GS out to the Spring Scoot and ride out to Estacada with the group. It did well on the 70 mile round trip thrashing.

Floor Strips

I was able to have a friend weld up the broken floor strips so I can use the originals. The alloy welds but doesn’t want to fill so they’re a little finicky to weld up. I cleaned them all up by filing the welds, bead blasting, then brushing them. I manually bent them back into shape.

I borrowed a rivet squeezer that should make it easy to install solid aluminum rivets quickly and easily without messing up the paint. It’s a TATCO rivet squeezer with a 5” yoke from Brown Tool

The next step is to actually install the strips and see how it works out.