Potential 1190 Purchase - Overheated Looking for info

[ACM]

OK then :)

My brother back in the UK has a somewhat disturbing fetish for early Goldwings. His goal has always been a first-year release in Red, which he has been unable to find over there. We hatched a plan decades ago to do R66 together, but with one thing or another, never managed to make it happen. Now he's retired the plan is to make both of these happen, so we went on a hunt and managed to find a good condition low mileage Red '75 that had spent the last decade+ standing in a dealer showroom on a plinth. That was delivered to a friend's shop a few months ago and we've been nibbling away at it ever since. The plan is to do a functional restoration over here so it can be ridden reliably, and then ship it back to Blighty for my brother to a more detailed, complete restoration.

Frozen brakes front & rear, decade-old petrol & oil, it had been wheeled into the dealeraship and never started since. It would start by using starter fluid but wouldn't run. We evicted the mice from their homes in the airbox and exhaust system and replaced their primary source of food with a new air cleaner. The fuel was revolting, it stunk up the shop so badly we were forced to leave for a few hours. The petcock didn't work so we thought we needed a new one - except that didn't work either...Turns out there are 2 steel tubes inside the tank that connect to the petcock and these were completely blocked; through a combination of wire brushes, pipe cleaners and compressed air they were finally cleared out and now both petcocks work just fine :) The corrosion in the fuel tank was horrible, so that's been soaking for a while in various nasty chemicals, but it is slowly coming clean. The carbs are completely gummed up and clogged - the only fuel flow was coming out all the wrong places - so they have been sent out to Goldwing specialist to be rebuilt - we blagged a 2nd set of '75 carbs from ebay in case these turn out to be unsalvageable.

When we removed the carbs we could see that the intake valve stems were covered in rust, so the next step is to remove the heads and give them to Rick@Harry's Machined Parts to have them babied. Once they're off we'll pull the cam belt tensioners and replace the pulleys with ones that are less than 45 years old ! The tensioners are NLA, but a trip to NAPA or Eastern Bearings will identify something dimensionally suitable - they actually look very close to 4G63T cam belt idler pulleys, so that will be my first stop since I've got a box full of them.

Suspension is in surprisingly good shape - the chrome on both the forks and the shocks is in perfect condition, the fork bottoms do not have the level of corrosion one would expect at this age, and the shock shafts are perfect. The shocks work smoothly and quietly and exhibit the same complete absence of anything vaguely resembling damping that I remember well from back when the Goldwing was launched - hard to lose damping if you had none to start with. The forks will be getting new bushings, seals, oil etc, but again, remarkably good condition for the age. The tyres are OEM size/brand/fitment - based on the mileage (and the amount of cracking) they could be the original tyres.

Originally my friend was going to do most of the work and I would liaise between the 2, however finding myself suddenly retired I will be getting more closely involved - of course perfect timing, right when gas jumps to $4.50/g and he's 60 miles away...

So that's where we are so far. Quite lucky there isn't the usual hodge-podge of seized/broken/cross-threaded fasteners. Not often you get that lucky with a 45 year old machine ! The paint job is in excellent condition with sufficient patina to give it character. There's a specialist in detailing vintage cars nearby, he wants to detail the bike so it should look pretty good after that.

In the mean time I have oil changes, tyre changes and a fork rebuild to do on my bikes, so my brother will have to take a back seat for the moment :)

Actually this probably should be a different thread seeing it has nothing to do with buying an 1190...

[Cooter]

I'm in 100%!
I live a couple miles from the R66 end point at the SM pier. Come on down and get a free beer!

[StrangeTrip]

Free Beer at the SM pier?
I don't remember that when I lived there?

[Cooter]

It's only available there after riding the length of Route 66


Or at the Redondo Beach pier after you finish a Cannonball Run (Allegedly)

[ACM]

I'm in 100%!
I live a couple miles from the R66 end point at the SM pier. Come on down and get a free beer!

I like the way you think Sir :)

[LeesEBR]

No FB for me either, I check here every couple days or so. I'd post something but I got nothing going on - well, unless you want to hear about the '75 Goldwing restoration :)

I'm working on a 2003 HD Electra Glide Classic (100th Anniversary) that I got for free. ~$100 in misc bs and I'm firing it up this weekend.

[ACM]

Since nobody's posting anything I may as well prattle on about the GL1000 ? I rebuilt the cam belt tensioners, the replacement pulleys used are indeed 4G63T idlers, though these days they're listed as Hyundai/Kia parts. I drilled through the back of the pulleys where they are swaged onto the mounting plate and then levered the pulleys off the plates with a small pry bar; that left a chamfered hole perfect for an M10 countersunk bolt with a Nylock on the other side. Done. I completely forgot that when measuring the length of a bolt, a chamfered head fastener length is the entire fastener including head, not just the shank & threaded section as with a 'normal' bolt. Fortunately I ended up with a couple of threads proud of the Nylock, so they should be OK.

On our 3rd bucket of rust remover in the tank and it's still not 100% clean - not a country mile close and we've been at it for what seems like weeks...I'm half expecting that when it does finally clean up it will be closer to a metal sieve than a fuel tank :(

Carbs are back from Bears - quite literally better than new, I don't envy the efforts that will be needed to keep them looking that good...Heads are back from HMP, perfect work as always, new intake valves, exhausts checked out fine, new seals and recut seats all around. Several other small tasks completed, the next head-scratcher is how to remove brake pistons that are resisting all attempts. Not worried about destroying the pistons, but the caliper bodies need to come through unscathed. That's what we're working on now.

[Cooter]

Awesome! Thanks for taking us along for the resurrection.

[ACM]

Update on the GW - after a couple of weeks in a bucket of penetrating fluid the pistons finally released their hold on the caliper bodies. 3 rebuild kits later along with new hoses and the brakes work better than original - which in the case of a 1975 GL1000 equates to "barely functional". I haven't used more than a single digit on a brake lever since the 80's so I was not at all prepared for that experience. Images of Fred Flintstone dragging his feet to slow down - it definitely would have helped !

The carbs turned out not so good, looked great on the outside but when the float bowls were removed, oh boy...My friend's son insisted he could smell varnish in the carbs, and he was right. With the float bowls off it became clear the carbs had not been dismantled, everything was filthy and to top it off two float posts were broken. Uncomfortable conversation with Bear ensued, the carbs were sent back, the damaged bodies replaced, and this time they were cleaned properly.

Dyna ignition and new Dyna coils deliver quite the spark, when we were troubleshooting the spark jumped 2 or 3 inches from the cap to engine block. That's as strong a spark as I've ever seen. Lots of minor electrical issues, we replaced several broken/damaged/melted connector blocks, and I ended up spending a day popping every connector pin out of every block and cleaning them individually. Ugh. Also found that the Reserve Lighting Unit was melted and stopped the lights from working. Found one on ebay, fitted that, still problems. Made up jumpers to bypass the RLU - that got the brake light working but the headlight still refused to grace us with its presence. Turns out Gold Wings feed headlight power through the RH switch unit - probably due to RoW bikes having an On/Off light switch on that side iirc - there's a little circuit board inside the switch unit, this had cracked. Replacement RH switch sourced from ebay from a guy who rebuilds them. I love electrical problems...

My brother arrived in the middle of the carb nightmare and so ended up riding a different bike for the first week. The GW finally got running, but it wasn't happy. Spark checked out fine, compression good, so most likely fuel. Quick check with the IR temp gun showed LF and RR headers at around 350*F, RF header oscillating between 100 and 200*F, and LR header at 100*F - in 90* weather. Popped the RF & LR carb drain plugs, small amount of fuel out of the RF and no fuel at all from the LR bowl. Also noticed the linkage operating the LR carb didn't look right - pulled the LR intake manifold tube and found the throttle valve was open 20-30* when fully shut, and maybe 60* at full throttle, so I guess it wouldn't really matter whether that carb was getting any fuel. All of this is supposedly verified at Bears during the post-rebuild wet testing.

Ultimately we managed to get about 70 miles on the bike over the course of 2 weeks, so not exactly a successful shakedown session.

A couple of weeks ago the bike dumped around a gallon of fuel, half into the crankcases the other half settled in the mufflers - so the new petcock isn't sealing, the fuel pump isn't sealing and one or more carb float valves aren't sealing. Magic...

[MrSix]

For the record... I'm still here... sometimes. :D