I had posted before about the ‘87 LS650 that I had bought, which needed a lot of work. Here are a couple of pics to remind y’all how it looked when I got it.
Well, the rebuild has begun! So far I have gotten the bike stripped down to the frame, and have been working on fixing the engine (old starter gear had torn out the aluminum mounting point in the crankcase).
I was able to get my hands on a 1987 LS650 engine lower half (and a lot of other parts) that is in good shape, much thanks to Ohiomoto! I just need to swap the clutch from the old crankcase to the new, then put the old top half on it and the engine is mechanically finished. While doing this rebuild I purchased a torque limiter starter gear and a stator cover from the same year, so the broken crankcase should not happen again. Engine should be painted and back together by next weekend, assuming I can remove the stupid baked on fiber gasket material from the bottom of the cylinder jug. That stuff is stupid tough, and using plastic and wood to scrape it is taking a while, but I cannot use other materials to do the job, as I don’t want to risk damaging the jug.
I have painted the new stator cover, and a couple parts of the belt guard. They look good to go!
Finally, I decided that while I am going this in-depth on the rebuild, I will do a rim swap while I am at it. Picked up a GS550 front and rear rim, just waiting for them to be delivered. They are not the standard star shaped wheels, and they are from a 1985 so they are tubeless.
I will keep y’all posted and add more photos as I go.
Cheers!