1972 Suzuki T500 - Winter Rebuild

Its never to late, when I did mine last year there was a guy doing his test who was 67 it was a present to him self for retiring.

Bought himself a lovely Triumph.

duncanmartin do it! Bikes are awesome! Admittedly December isn't a great time to learn.... but if nothing else, if you can hack winter riding, then it only gets more fun as the weather improves!

swampy442 those 250 2 strokes are really pretty small bikes aren't they! I had an RGV250 VJ21, which I really enjoyed riding, ended up selling my 748 because I would always choose to take the little 250 out instead! Those reverse cylinder TRZs are seriously cool, rather like hens teeth to find nowadays though, wth a price to match My CBR is noticeably roomier to ride than my RGV was, but yeah still wouldn't be very roomy for someone 6ft5! I'm only 5ft7 so it being on the small side isn't an issue for me!

So yeah, I should have done an update ages ago really, I'm out of practice with this build thread lark, haha.

First up, starting where we left off the last post, having checked that all appeared well in the engine, it was time to put in back in the bike. With the help of a friend, it was light work and it was soon safely back in place. Cause for a small celebration!



The new carb rubbers arrived, though they appear to be slightly shorter than the once coming off the bike. They fit nicely on the carbs and on the intake manifold though, so I'm hoping it wont be a problem.



It did cross my mind that the ones on the bike might not be original, as the little locating points to stop the clips spinning while you try and do them up, didn't line up with the clips. I guess it's equally likely that the clips could be non original also. As it happens, the carbs and airbox seemed to fit just fine, so original or not, the new carb rubbers are a success

Also arriving in the post were a set of shiny new NGK spark plugs in Honda's recommended 8 heat range, rather than the 9s I found in the bike, and some silicone hose and hose caps.



As the vacuum ports for balancing the carbs are so hideously awkward to get to on these engines, while the carbs were off I ran a short length of vacuum hose to each port and then labeled the hoses, capped then and grouped them together.




This means I've now got a really easy way to get a vacuum reading for each port, making balancing the carbs a doddle. I appreciate it probably doesn't need doing very often, but it's only a little mod and when that time comes it just makes life so much easier!

Before I could get on a start the bike up there was the matter of the plug leads. Having spoken to David Silvers, who politely informed me that yes they could get me some NC29 plug leads for £40.... per plug lead Eeek! I decided to buy a cheap second hand coil pack off eBay for £25 and nick the plug caps off it. This way I also get some spare coils



I used my original coil packs as they seemed in visually better condition and my plug leads too as they appear to be some fancy aftermarket silicone ones.

Getting the bike to start turned into a bit of a game. Firstly I presumed that the fuel pump would prime the carbs while the key was in the start position, so I decided the easiest thing was to just turn the key and keep cranking it till it got fuel and fired up... but it didn't. It took me a minute to realise that it wasn't pumping fuel while I was cranking it over. So I did a bit of online research, got worried about failed points in the pump ,or damaged fuel pump relays etc, before finding a wiring diagram and directly feeding 12v to the pump... it primed the carbs in a matter of seconds. So turns out the fuel pump doesn't prime while cranking, mental note to self for the future there!

So now we had plenty of fuel but not a hint of starting. More head scratching and then it dawned on me.... a couple of weeks earlier, my friend who helped me fit the engine and turned off the kill switch and said 'I wonder if you'll remember this when coming to start the bike, hahaha'. Guess what.... One sarcastic text message later and a flick of the kill switch, turn the key and she fired into life beautifully. Woo!

Next up, balancing the carbs. With a quick extended fuel line whipped up, I could run the bike with the tank off for as long as I needed.



Balancing the carbs was nice and easy, not just because of my easy access vacuum ports but also just that these carbs seemed to come easily and more consistently into balance than any others I've done before This is probably a good sign that they're not too worn and hopefully will stay in balance better than on other bikes/cars I've had.



Some work to do there you'll see! I'm fairly sure there had been some air leaks previously, or that I disturbed something when removing the carbs as the bike seemed more out of balance now than it had before I took it all apart. Either way it's all sorted now and nice and smooth

With that sorted it was time to get out and do some riding! Shame the weathers not really on our side at the moment, the roads are pretty dirty, still it wasn't raining and it was really nice just to get out and do some miles on the old girl. To celebrate heres some quick post ride pictures from this morning

It's not happening. My wife would kill me (and the only reason why I'm allowed my 924 is so I don't think about motorbikes)! Besides, I'm in the middle of building a recumbent tricycle (and working out gear ratios - it'll hopefully be capable of 30mph on the flat if the engine can produce enough Watts !).
Your CBR is super cool though - glad you've got it running properly, and I love the little mod that allows you to balance the carbs. Simple mods that allow you to maintain it properly are really neat.
Cheers
Duncan

Cheers guys

shhhh Clement, we can't talk about how awesome the 3.0 busso v6 is, or how much I love my 166, or how it's made me enjoy driving again in a way I haven't since I sold my Lancia.... because it's too new for retrorides.

125s can be plenty of fun, but yeah it's nice to have some more power for the higher speed stuff. Power is far from everything on a bike, in my opinion, thats why most of my bikes have been between 40-60hp, that's plenty to have fun with, and to get up to go speeds without much effort, but equally it's little enough power than you can enjoy working the bike relatively hard on public roads without needing to do horrendous speeds.

Were none of the early 90s 400/250s imported officially to France? The CBR400 was never officially brought to the UK but my VFR400 was a proper UK bike, as was my RGV250.

We can probably talk 166s if we talk quietly and no-one notices.... They started production before 200, even if mine is an 2002, shhhhh! 166s are very thin on the ground here in the UK, it took me 6 weeks to find one with the engine/gearbox combo I wanted that hadn't just been run into the ground. I think they suffer from being cheap to buy, but not cheap to run.... When this one turned up, I jumped on it, and once the DVLA had dealt with removing the private plate, a friend and I did the 400 mile run trip to collect it from the east coast.

Despite being a big old car, it hides it's size well, I think because it's lines are quite elegant, it doesn't feel 'chunky' or blobby. It's only really when I go to park it in a carpark that i remember just how long it actually is! The handling and driving feel is very definitely Alfa, it has a certain quality that my 147, 155 and GTV all had, it's hard to put a finger on exactly what it is, but it's just something about the way the controls feel and the driving position. Yet at the same time it's definitely more a luxury cruiser than the other Alfas I've had which have always had a nod to sporty-ness. The miles just fly by, the 200 min drive home seemed effortless. She handles well for a car of her size, but again due to the size and nature of the car it's more about it being enjoyable to drive briskly at sortta 3/4 speed on a nice wide A road, rather than really thrashing it. If you really push on hard, the limits of 220hp through the front tyres of a 1500kg car star to show up! As does the relatively soft suspension, thought I'd say it's not as softly sprung as many big cars like this.

I wanted the auto, because I think for a car of this size, especially with a nice big capacity petrol engine, it suits the style, effortless power! This is the first auto I've owned, though I've driven a few on hire. A few years ago I would have probably been quite rude to anyone who said they wanted an auto, haha, but I'm really liking it. I haven't missed having a manual at all, and the tip-tronic type sports mode on the box still means I can feel like I'm 'driving' if I want to be. Overall it just adds to how relaxing a car it is to drive. If this was a small light car, and I wanted to go out and drive it hard I'm sure I'd want a manual, but for this big cruiser I feel auto is definitely the right choice.

What it does have is a 'special' feeling, that unexplainable something about it that make's every journey, even just a pop to the corner shop, feel like an occasion. The Lancia was the same, and to a lesser extent my Rx7, all for different reasons but it's still that same sensation of just making the most mundane driving interesting.

On the downside, the electrics are very Italian. Theres a lot of wires in there, and lots of opportunity for the 13 year old connectors to have got damp at some stage and corroded causing lovely intermittent faults. I've so far fixed the seat memory controls and the remote central locking just by cleaning the fluff out of switches and getting a bit of electrical contact cleaner on the connectors. Oh and the fuel economy.... it's on a par/slightly worse than my rotaries. Commuting through central Birmingham the other day the trip read 13 mpg. :/ Meh, I just try not to look at the trip and just fill it when it says empty! haha.

I've been lurking here, but awesome bike

Also nice 166

You've got a Grom? no fair. Honda Australia didn't deem them viable, so there's a company importing them instead. Too bad the price they're asking is getting into 500cc territory.

That's interesting muffy, what bike have the coil on plug set-up to get the coil packs from? My worry would be that the plugs in the 400 would be a different depth into the head than the 600 or 1000s, especially as the 400s use a different cam arrangement (with the gear driven cams)

I have a set off a 2012 fireblade. The depths of the spark plug tubes are generally similar. Not a bad thing if they stick out the top a bit more.

Ben