Fully custom 72 T500

[desmocat]

Slider,

Nicely done, love the color, but I'm partial to orange!

[CJF]

Here is a pic of mine. Looks like a different design...wondering if it is a one off design change or that is how he is building them now?
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welc ... XDFuxcM3Kg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[desmocat]

Here is a pic of mine. Looks like a different design...wondering if it is a one off design change or that is how he is building them now?

Chris your Jemco's are the same design as the one's on my race bike, they have a bolted flange connection to the silencer.

[CJF]

Hey Ralph...ya I have the same design as yours. Looks like sliderNH's pipes have s different design where the silencer attaches to the pipe and also has a bracket welded on where he attached the aluminum support.

[SliderNH]

Thanks for the comments guys. Ralph. Love your bike man. So my silencers slip on over the pipe, and are retained with springs. The silencer hangers sure do serve their purpose. Those things gotta weigh close to 4 lbs each. I'd like to make some lighter silencers once this thing is up and going down the road....

Anyway I need some advice, guys. CJF, saw your write up on your oil line build. Pretty cool stuff, sorry it didn't work. What did you end up doing for oil lines? Your write up helped me track down a oil leak I had coming from the pump, air bubbles in the RH cylinder lines. Turned out to be bad washers on the banjo fitting coming from the pump. So I fixed it up nice on saturday and started it once sunday (still breaking in the motor). Went down to work on it today and my entire oil tank emptied itself into the crank. Thankfully it was only up to the bottom of the window, but still... So much oil in there I can barely get the motor to turn over. Its dripped into the pipes and is leaking out of the drain holes in the bottom of the chambers.
I think the check valve in the oil lines are bad, and somethings wrong with the pump. From what I've learned about the pump is oil should not be flowing through it if the pump drive gear isn't spinning. How do I go about diagnosing the oil pump internals since suzuki doesn't want us taking these apart? I don't even know if it is the oil pump... Should I see if the oil line check valves work first? Where are the check valves? Are they in the banjo fittings that attach to to pump or the banjo fittings that attach to the case? Take the lines off the bike, fill them with oil, and hang them crank-side down? am I going to get the oil out of the crank? No drain on my bottom case. I tried the bolt in front of the bottom engine mount. Nothing came out. As you can probably tell I'm pretty disappointed. Starting to see why the RD enthusiasts mostly run pre-mix...Thanks.

Brad

[CJF]

Slider, that is a lot of oil to dump into your cylinder...not good. I'm pretty sure there is a drain bolt that is at the bottom of the engine case underneath the crank and you can loosen it to drain the oil from underneath the crank. It is located directly under the crank...pretty sure it is on the left hand side of the crank, but not totally sure. I do know there is one because I just took a T500 case apart about a month ago and saw it.

The check valve is on the cylinder side of the line. You most likely have a stuck check valve. You can try taking them off, flushing with rubbing alcohol (I used a small squeeze bottle from Harbor Freight). Then fill with oil and let stand on end with cylinder side down. I tried this with my old line, but flushing didn't free the stuck valve. I ended up pulling one off my non running project bike, so now I'm an oil line short for that build. I've been looking on ebay for months with no luck..even used these are hard to find.

The one I pulled off my project bike also had air bubbles in the line when I attached to my bike and started running it. It turned out that there was a leak where the lines attach to the plastic splitter from one line to 2. I used 5 minute epoxy and the bubbles are now gone .

[SliderNH]

Man, what a nightmare this has been. had to take the topend off to get the oil out. When I rebuilt the bottom of the motor I should have had someone fab up some drain bolts for the cranks. Since I had none, i siphoned the oil out of the crank put it back together. then worked on rebuilding the oil lines and the pump. Bought another oil pump cause it was the spring/piston thing inside the pump that stuck open. it didn't open and close smoothly. oil lines are good to go for the most part. They are a little leaky but when they are connected to the pump and the motor they don't drip.
So after all that was rebuilt and set to go I tried to start it and got nothing. Took me three days to learn that I put the pistons on the wrong side. left piston in the right cyl and the right in the left. Anyway now I have a extra oil pump, extra set of carbs, a bike that runs, and a whole bunch of experience and learned knowledge...
Onto breaking in the motor and carb jetting...After synchronizing the carbs, and running the bike at idle for 5 minutes, 5 times (step one of the break-in) I did the initial two break-in rides as per Bill Bune's instructions (step 2). I ran it on 35 pilots and 170 mains in 95 degrees and 85% humidity at sea level. I haven't read the plugs but after the 5 mins of riding under 3500 rpm I got some black oily dripping from the exhaust manifold port so I'm assuming thats rich. In those 5 mins I did reach temps of 185. Bear in mind I averaged 25 mph and had 3 stop signs. I was a little worried about the temp climbing so quickly...Also what temperature is considered "overheating" of the T500 motor? How do you know when it is over heated?
Tomorrow is checking the cyl head nuts for torque, and 3 rides limited to 3/4 throttle and 3/4 rpm for 7 mins each run with a full cool down between. For a quick video and more pics check the photobucket library in one of my first posts.

[CJF]

Tough lesson learned on the pistons. If nothing else, working on these old bikes teaches you to have a ton of patients.

Hey, what color orange is that? I really like the color...did you paint it yourself?

[SliderNH]

Thanks, the color is Candy Topaz Orange, its a honda color from the 70's. I had it done by Austin Paintworks in Austin, TX. They do some real high quality work and are willing to paint anything. They even reverse chromed the side cover panels in order to paint them the right way. Great guys too.