The "what the hell are you thinking?" build

I was going to wait a little while until I had some more progress on this build, but I'm sitting here bored with not much else to do but drink my beer and surf advrider, so I figured I'd start my build thread now.

I'll let you know what I'm doing so you can get your laughing out of the way first: I'm stripping down a GL1500 in an attempt to make an oversized version of the naked GL1000 I already own and love. Yes, that's right, a GL1500:


(as you can see, approximately the same size as a light pickup)

Yep, I'm going to try to turn a half-ton road barge into a fun, relatively nimble naked standard-style bike. Why? Well, why not? The actual answer is I got a basketcase '94 GL1500 for free. I was initially going to try to restore it to full-dress glory and spend days on end burning up the interstate, but it turns out that all that plastic is really expensive. So. Here's what I started with:



Two wrecked GL1500s, and a good frame (not pictured). My dad bought them, along with half a garage full of assorted (and, as we'd find out, mostly worthless) parts to repair the damaged GL1500 he'd bought for himself on the cheap. The deal was he'd take the parts he needed to fix his bike, and I'd eBay the unneeded parts. In return, I got the pieces I wanted to try and put together a functioning bike.

After a lot of stripping, sorting, scrapping, selling, and swearing, I had the good frame cleaned up, repainted, and the other two bikes torn down, with a pile of parts ready to be assembled, to form a motorcycle. Luckily, out of the 3 front ends we had, I was able to pull them apart and match a pair of straight fork tubes with a pair of undamaged lowers and get the front wheel on:



You can see that engine in the foreground. Let me tell you, that sucker is HEAVY. Don't try to move one of these on your own. I'm a big guy, and I can get it off the ground slightly and shift it a bit, but it is not worth the subsequent back pain. The Harbor Freight ATV jack works great as a lift for the engine and really helps when trying to line up the 47 motor mounts. Like magic, the engine is in:



Amazing! So now it has a front end and an engine of dubious integrity. That wasn't so hard, right? Well, no, not really, but it's not much of a start. A motorcycle just ain't a motorcycle without an engine and TWO wheels. Ah, but first, the gas tank. Under-seat tanks are fun to install because they just slide right into place so easily. Well, they do if you don't have a swingarm installed yet. So here's the tank in:



OK, that's squared away. Now, we can get the swingarm on and the rear wheel mounted Oh, and don't forget the ape-hangers:



She is one loooooooong beast. So that's where she stands as of now. I have been temporarily interrupted by a fried stator in my GL1000, but that will be back together pretty soon. Please don't expect rapid progress on this build, as I currently have very little free time and even less disposable income. But I figured that since this is an asylum, some of you might want to watch this insanity.

My wildly optimistic goal is to have it running by the end of July. I'm not saying for sure that I mean July 2013, though. I'm ditching the carbs and going with Megasquirt for fuel delivery as the carb rack I have is trashed and there are so many vacuum hoses running everywhere from the carbs that I'm not entirely sure it would run with all that crap stripped off even if they were good. So that will raise its own set of problems.

Finally, I'd like to make it look halfway decent, too. I think that's going to be the biggest challenge of all. :eek1

Righteous, I'm subbed.

I'm in.

First the title " What the hell ... , now squirt me ,baby ! Subbed !

sign me up!

Cool.
I thought a DIY version of the new F6B would be a good commuter sled.

Then I saw this:

No thread-jack intended. Cool Build. Carry on.

Yeah, I've seen that before, it's very nicely done. Not exactly the style I'm going for but I hope mine ends up looking half so well finished.

There's also a "dirt" conversion of the GL1500 out there:



:eek1


First thing I'm going to do is go over the basics - I've already installed new steering bearings, new swingarm bearings, new fork seals and wipers. I'll check the wheel bearings, flush the brakes/clutch and possibly rebuild the M/Cs if needed. Then, I will focus on getting it running. The nice thing about the GL series is that it doesn't really need anything else on it other than what you see in the pic. It'll be ugly, sure, but it'll go down the road.

I think I am going to go with the Microsquirt unit, but I haven't really made up my mind yet. I have to do a lot more reading through the Megamanual. I'm thinking for now to just have the MS run fuel and let the GL's factory system run the ignition, but we'll see how it works out. There already is a trigger wheel on the GL's crank, but it's not a standard size, I think it's a 12-1 or something like that. There are two hall sensors that it triggers, and I'm not sure how that all would integrate with the MS system, if at all. I may just have to mount a more standard size trigger wheel.

Very cool GL for some inspiration.

http://www.bikeexif.com/gl1100

Holy hell!

Got some "new" parts for the 1500 - a set of GL1800 fuel rails with injectors:




I had a hunch from past experience with Goldwings and a good bit of research online that the GL1800 intake port spacing would be the same or very similar to that of the GL1500, and it turns out I was right:





So that's one big part taken care of. The plan is to drill into the stock GL1500 manifolds and braze in injector bungs. This will be the tricky part for me, since I am far from a machinist and all I have for the job is a WWII-era drill press. Any tips for making reasonably accurate holes in a not-flat surface?

Make sure to use a center punch to pop a nice size divot in the aluminium, then start with a small bit that is small enough to not jump out of your punch mark, then work your way up from there until your at the size you need.

Looking forward to following this thread.

Looking forward to this one

What about fitting the 1800 mani to your bike?

I considered that, but I don't think it would work as well as fitting the 1800 injectors to the 1500 manifold. I'm not entirely sure that it would work at all, actually. The 1800 has the injectors mounted basically at the ends of the runners, and the GL1800 heads have clearance in the intake ports to allow the injectors to spray into the port. The 1500 does not have this clearance, just a round port. You can see the problem in this picture I pulled off Google:



That's an 1800 manifold with a 1500 gasket laid over it. You can see, at the top of the gasket, the 1800 injector port. This would be more or less completely blocked when bolted to a 1500 head, meaning that the injectors would not be spraying fuel into the intake stream.

The 1500 intake ports could possibly be opened up to allow the injectors to spray into the port, but that is a bit outside the scope of my abilities, and potentially much more expensive than just adding injectors to the 1500 manifolds. Also, I'm not sure they'd even bolt on. It looks like the bolt pattern is different.

O.K. I can't resist a project like this. Best of luck. Take lots of pics. Drink lots of beer.

Cheers

Kevan

I'm in. Just thought it was my opinion but the older GWs before they covered them in plastic were far better looking. Never got into them once the engine disappeared and they were sized like a small car except with more amenities. Keep us posted. Call me crazy but I'm liking where I think you're going with this.
Ride safe there man...
Ken

Totally agree. I had a '78 GL1000 for years and thought it was a great-looking bike. I'm hoping I can achieve the same general type of look with the 1500.

The 1500 has been at my dad's garage for a while for storage but it's going to be moved back to my place soon, so there should start to be a bit of progress on this thread.

If you want to drill a hole in something that is not flat, don't use a drill it will just wander off even if you smack the devil out of it with a centre punch, use an end mill bit of the size you need, the cutting part of the tool is on the edge and not the point so will cut as soon as it touches the metal. Also you will need to TIG weld the boss for the injector into the manifold, brazing doesn't really work on aluminium unless you use those lumiweld rods.
Cool project by the way, can't beat a "why not" bike in my book.

I can't wait to see where this goes. Subscribed.