Buying a neglected GPz1100 B1

[OldDog]

Gday Everyone, I'm a newbie here, names Bill but most just call me OD. I'm a long term Kwaka nut, have a ZX14R in the shed, and have had quite a few from z1000's to GPz900s and ZX12's over the years. And have modified them pretty seriously at times too. I live out in the Cobar region where we have plenty of straight flat roads ...

I also do a bit of charity ride stuff as well, I do the Scrapheap Adventure ride most years, which is for Downs Syndrome NSW, the idea is to pick up a bike for under a grand, get sponsored to ride it to where ever the meeting is, usually a difficult and remote spot. This year is at Tilpa. I've found a GPz1100B1 in fairly ordinary condition, they guy wants a grand for it, i'll post up pics when I figure that out. Its still got the injection and looks complete. Trouble is its been outside for the last few years and had the sparkplug out of #4 cylinder. The engine feels seized but I'm hoping that's just from a little water getting in that open plug hole. From memory the GPz doesn't have any fancy bore linings etc to go wrong so a quick hone might be all that's needed.

Before I put down the dough though I thought I'd ask if anyone can give me some advice on what to look for. Are there any major faults that you just can't get parts for that would make this a million dollar rebuild? I'm in the middle of building a turboed CBX1000 so money is pretty tight for this project.
The injection has me baffled. I was planning to dump it until I read some of Gos's comments, so it may stay yet. How reliable is it though? I mean I don't want to get stuck out along the Darling river on some lonely bulldusty crap track with a bike I can't fix.
Fuel pumps, how hard are they to find? Or would it be simpler to just pull all this stuff out and run a set of carbs and pod filters?

Thanks for listening, hope you guys can offer me some wisdom before I do something stupid.

Cheers

Bill

[Kwakked Up]

Welcome OD.
Gos will be your man for the info you need but think he has been busy with VJMC lately. Hopefully he will drop in here or you could PM him. Otherwise try the fbook page
Cheers

[dickfaber]

Thanks for listening, hope you guys can offer me some wisdom before I do something stupid.


Bill

where's the fun in that?

but we may be able to stop you doing something expensively stupid though

[OldDog]

Heh heh thanks! Well I picked up the beast yesterday morning, ended up getting it for a few hundred. Gonna take a fair bit of work.

I'm not much of a facebook type but will look you guys up there!

Cheers

OD

[pkay]

Good luck with the build - I'd love to find an 1100 B1 for a couple of hundred too!!

[OldDog]

Thanks pkay, sometimes ya just gotta be in the right place at the right time! And speaking of which, a mate has just loaned me a set of BS34's off a GT750 which i'll jet up and use to replace the injection, for the moment at least. My plan is to get it rideable as cheaply as possibly and use it on the fund raiser then work it out from there. This weekend I was supposed to be fitting the CBX engine into its frame, but will try and get this GPz running instead.

[h.b.bear]

Glad you only paid a few hundred for it as it will make the restoration more bearable a little on the pocket and from what I read your going to need the coin, with the injection which I would stick with for originality should work fine as long as you service and maintain them once you have it going. There is a different set up on the earlier 1100 with a air flap design that was mounted directly to the cylinder head where the later model b2 had the throttle body injection from memory which were more reliable than the earlier, if you scrap the old injector system give us a yell as I would be interested in having them in my shed, good luck with your rebuild

[OldDog]

Thanks HB, at this stage yeah the injection is gonna be scrapped. The bike is going to be used as a charity ride bike (Scrapheap Adventure Ride) where minimal expenditure and maximum creativity are the goal, we find ourselves in some out of the way places and I think I'd rather be stuck in the bush with carb troubles than injection troubles. Granted both are hard to fix without support. After that i'll probably "café" it out with some CR and stacks and a 4 into 1 etc. I have a lot of spare modern bike suspension components laying around so will probably do something with those too. If you're after that injection I'm more into trading rather than cash sales, read on and you'll see I need some parts It seems all I do is throw my cash at the CBX I'm building

On an update, finally got the engine unseized, but couldn't get it to turn a full revolution, turns out the cylinders were really full of junk. Determined to get the head off but no matter what I tried a lot of the cover bolts snapped off in the head and too much heat and a little leverage ended up cracking the cover and a few head fins. Not how I like to roll but this thing really was seized up. The cam cover bolts had all corroded and "grown" in the cover etc. Anyway, once I got the head off I found this





I took the head and cover down to Hugh at Robinsons engineering in Bathurst and hopefully he can do some repairs.
I did a quick hone on the cylinders and three came up well enough, the middle one though is pretty bad. Not bad enough to break rings though so will probably just re-ring this time and let it blow a bit of smoke. I see Cruisinimage has 1170 kits for $200 which is very tempting but I don't know how good the bottom end is, may just make matters worse.

[h.b.bear]

That's what happens when people neglect machinery, very sad to see. Hopefully there was enough oil in the sump to help protect the bottom end but in reality it would need to be way over full to do any good really, good luck with it

[OldDog]

Well I managed to do a proper clean up of the bores yesterday with a hone and looks like the bore in number 3 is well past saving, so i'll get an 1170 kit for it.


There was a fair bit of oil in there but I wouldn't think enough, I've drained and refilled and spun the motor over, the bottom end feels good but I'd say a big bore and the extra compression might push the bottom end too far, we'll see. Ultimately it has to make about 1000 km's for the charity ride, might not be too much to ask. (Yes my fingers are crossed)

[h.b.bear]

bought back a few memories that bore where on a farm I worked at down near west Wyalong one of the old tractors had a bit of pitting in the sleeve so he dabbed a few spots of weld here and there where needed, filed them back then honed it out put her back together and she was still going after five yrs I was there bloody cocky's ! As for the new kit and bottom end I think you will be right as long as you don't ride it like a race bike, have a lot of mates that put a 810 kit in their 750 turbo's and there has been no mention off them rebuilding the bottom end but I guess a lot of theirs wernt sitting outside for yrs

[OldDog]

Heh heh gotta give that cocky points for creativity! Thanks for the heads up regards the bottom end, I'm trying to keep the budget low on this version of the bike and pulling the bottom end out completely would see it shelved. Once its duties as a charity bike are done then i'll pull it apart and do a good job. Still not sure how it will end up, but that still a long way down the track.

[OldDog]

Bit of an update, I picked up a set of 75mm pistons from Cruisimage in Japan so we're boring this thing out to 1170. I dropped the barrels down to RPE in Bathurst to get that work done along with a clean up of the head and some repairs. Should see that stuff back in a month or so. I also got the chance to strip and rebuild the forks, they were frozen solid so took a while to get em apart. I found that the PO had filled them with gear oil, I can only assume he got mixed up between gear oil and transmission oil. Anyway, they now have new bushings and seals and work perfectly, although the legs are a little pitted above the area where the seals travel. I also did the swingarm bearings which were also frozen. The wheels are in getting tyres fitted (they had hardened onto the rims, after much swearing I decided I needed a machine to get em off). Next is the wiring....which is pretty much melted together so i'll be making up a new one using the old as a pattern. I dunno much about electricity so this could get interesting. I'm going to discard the fuel injection and gauges and i'll be putting these in the for sale area directly. What I really need is a proper 4 into 1 exhaust if anyone has one (preferably rusted and battered but serviceable like the rest of the bike) let me know!

Cheers

[h.b.bear]

Bill ! Your from the bush obviously as am I , havn't you ever used gear oil instead of proper oil so the seals don't leak as bad another old cocky's trick

[OldDog]

LOL, its probably the gear oil out of the John Deere, once its past use there it goes into the farm ute, once its used up there then its still perfectly fine for fork oil..........

I've decided to stick with the agricultural look too. I've been looking at these fancy café racer websites and I see that patina is now the next big thing.....this bike has patina and to spare