Free* Honda Project: GL500 Interstate

In reply to Parker with too many Projects :

berkeley that's hot

Of course while I'm on the home stretch I hit a major roadblock: my attempt to seal the pinholes in the tank was not successful, showing itself after I sprayed clear coat. The real issue is that the inside of the tank is now covered in POR15 tank sealer, which nothing will stick to, can't be removed, and can't be welded to. 

My hopeful solution is that I'm filling the offending areas with JB weld to hopefully just eliminate this area from the fuel tank and use the geometry to physically hold the epoxy in place. No fuel pickup happens from here since it's below the petcock outlet, and it's a pretty common rust area in the stock fuel tank once any water separates out from fuel. You can thin JB Weld pretty easily with Acetone, and then inject it with a turkey baster in the now-expanded pinholes.

Update on using thinned JB weld. It flowed very well through the turkey baster! What wasn't expected was the length of time required to cure the acetone-thinned epoxy at 40°-60°F  -a solid week, half of that with a space heater pointed at the epoxy sections.  Checked last night, and it's water-tight so I'll be figuring out a way to ruin another turkey baster to apply more POR15 tank sealer over the JB, and hoping that it sticks well enough to the cured POR15 to keep the E15 fuel from eating the JB.

Hopefully successful!   If nothing else, you should be able to weld it up.   Maybe braze. 

Back from the cold...  Not a lot got done over the winter except that I'm starting a company, so the bike got put on the back burner. 

The bike, however, decided to make itself a problem and the mechanical seal on the water pump decided to weep blue Honda coolant all over the garage floor, so I decided to tackle that.  I also had all the parts for the thermostat, so that happened as well but because it was such a PITA to remove and reinstall, no photos were taken.

Pulled the carbs and impeller cover.

The polo mint fell right out, and the sprung graphite seal wasn't much harder to remove

I threw the impeller in a bit of vinegar for a couple hours, and it wasn't badly corroded at all!  Had a variety of Honda parts to reinstall. The Yamaha part is the mechanical seal, which if you heat it up you can pull the sprung graphite seal and replace everything on the bike without removing the engine and rear casing in order to access the seal cup. Installation reverse of removal haha.

I also decided to shine up the coolant tube that had some surface rust.  I used a ball of aluminum foil and some WD40 and it shined up pretty dang good for a quick job.

After searching for a usable tank replacement all summer, I finally have one! Needs a little touching up, but it didn't even have flash rust inside. My original black/silver/brown accent color scheme has just been up-ended with this beautiful Candy Wineberry Metallic. Figure I'll keep the brown grips and leather plans though...

Did a little foam shaping this weekend, still a little bit more to come on the area meeting the tank. I originally had a vision of maintaining a small gap between the rear of the hoop and the rear of the seat, but it looks like I might have added a design clash with the angled rear not matching up with the round bar...

Thanks for posting up all the info.  I'm doing exactly the same build with the same bike, forks, and rear shock.  I did t foresee all the electrical issues you've run into.  I'm planning on installing a Moto gadget system in mine...hopefully to avoid some of the issues you have.  

In reply to Zxniner :

That's awesome! Is yours a runner?  The Motogadget is pretty nice, and the extra functions it has are certainly worth the extra cost over the X21. The unit itself is also pretty robust, and I'd likely go that route myself on another build.

Well, forgot to update this but the seat upholstery took quite a while to get finished. In the meantime I've done some rewiring, added some (shockingly expensive) bar-end signals, and welded in a new underseat tray. 

glamour shots!