I've been away from the forum for a couple of years--mainly to build my shop. I'm back now with a nice shop (instead of a room in the basement) and have a few Suzuki's in the queue for restoration. I live in Northern British Columbia. Up here some trade specialties are a little thin on the ground-specifically crankshaft rebuilders. So I send my cranks to Vancouver by Canada Post and then a few months later, drive down pick them up during a family and friends visit.
I picked up this T500 from a local rural property where it was mouldering away in a chicken coop. It's a 106700-series serial number so one of the last GT500s to be built in Hamamatsu. I'm new to T500's but have done a few GT750s. Hopefully my learning curve will be measured.
Bike in the shop and ready for engine removal
Engine out and on the bench. Exhaust bolts were not seized! A few case screws were missing but none of the remaining JIS screws were badly mashed.
Aside from some 'inch' bolts holding the back of the exhausts, everything looks good so far. I built the stand so that the engine can be tilted forward to access all the case bolts on the bottom. When I tilted the engine forward to build the stand, about 1/2 cup of water ran out of the left cylinder exhaust port. We'll see shortly damage has resulted. Over the next few days & weeks I'll post photos
Ridden the 500s but never had one - had several 550s instead!
Plenty of spares around anyway, although like everything 2 stroke nowadays, prices are silly.
Think of how stupid the average person is, then realise that half of them are more stupid than that.
The cylinder heads came off easily with no seized bolts but the barrels were another matter. They didn't budge even with some attempts at persuasion from my mallet. So, not wanting to break any of the cooling fins I decided to make a draw plate similar to what I use for my GT750's. For the GT500 of course, the draw plate is much more simple because just one barrel at a time needs to be pulled.
I jumped into my truck and drove around a couple of local fab shops armed with a 6-pack of beer (standard 'shop' currency) and a sob story that I was stuck on this old motorbike resto save for a chunk of 6"x6"x3/4" plate. I timed my visit for mid afternoon coffee break, and bingo--the first place I visited cut me a piece off of some 6" flat bar that was in their 'scrap' rack. A few holes drilled and tapped and I was in business.
Barrels off, wrist pins out and onto the generator / ignition side of the engine. The timing rotor came off easily with my little steering wheel puller. The insides looked pretty good. (I'll include a full report on my inspections once the engine is completely stripped)
In the bike's past life some muppet didn't have the impact driver that's often needed to remove the seal plate screws on the countershaft output side.
I'm guessing that he wrecked all the JIS screw heads with a worn out Phillips screwdriver. Two of the screws had been removed and replaced with slot head screws (fortunately the replacements had correct 6mm ISO threads and not 1/4" SAE threads). The other two screws had been subjected to an amateurish and unsuccessful attack with a dull drill bit.
I carefully cut some slots on what was left of the screw heads and managed to loosen them with my impact driver.
Clutch off necessary retainers and case bolts removed and then the 'reveal'.
Left side crank bearing is extremely rough and will be replaced when the crank is rebuilt
Two of the countershaft gears (3rd and 4th I think), are mullered. I hope to make a good gearbox with the other two T500's that I have in the shop.
Mr Muller indeed. I'm happy mr vise grips did not manage to get into the gearbox itself--it's clearly never been opened. The 4th & 5th gear damage is pretty standard T500 fare--especially if a previous owner did not use the correct 1400cc oil amount. On earlier T500 models, 4th and 5th gear wear was a problem. Suzuki upped the oil amount to 1400 (from 1200) for 1974 model year and 1400cc is printed on the engine casting. But, they never changed the location of the high point oil drain.
On the bright side, the transmission shifted through all the gears very nicely, the bearings are all nice and smooth, there is no shift fork wear to speak of, and the gear dogs were all nice and square. The thrust washer was missing on the bottom of the oil pump drive gear--maybe an assembly line oops when numpty-san came in to work hung over.
Olaf
Have a 69 T500 project bike. Looks some some PO used sealant for the cylinder base gasket. Have been wondering how I was going to get the cylinders off. The plate you made looks like the easiest way.
Good luck with the build.
BAS (Bike Acquisition Syndrome) - too many bikes but have room for more
I used one of the aluminum head gaskets as a template. The large screws that are threaded into the draw plate and bear on the 4 engine studs are 12mm threaded rod (known around here as 'redi-rod') with nuts welded onto the top. I countersunk the bottoms of the 12mm redi-rod so that they stay centered on the head studs. The small screws that thread into cylinder heads are 8mm redi-rod.
I've started cleaning up and detailing the engine case and cylinders. Now that some of the accumulated road grunge has been cleared away the picture is emerging that sometime in it's past life, this bike was serviced by a weapons grade idiot. At one point he broke the bottom right front cooling fins when he tried to lever up the barrel. This will be weld repaired.
Furthermore, the idiot seems to have used a cold chisel to lever apart the cases. Fortunately he did not crack the case and there is still a little machined surface left over to make a seal. The damage is on the bottom case, underneath the engine mount tube so is not easily visible. I'll dress up the sharp bits a little with my pencil grinder and maybe fill in the biggest divots with a little JB weld.
