tdupuis
TheTed
I've been riding for coming up on 20 years, all street riding. About a year ago I started thinking that dirt/adventure/gravel/off-road riding was appealing to me. Knowing nothing about that world of riding, I wasn't sure what to get, but a good friend of mine had an old R1150GS sitting in his garage that he never rode and that he'd gotten from his father who bought it new, rode it around the world, and put over 90,000 miles on it. So we made a deal, and the motorcycle moved to my shop last summer.
At first I'll admit that I didn't much like the bike. It was not in good shape and had a lot of neglected/deferred/incorrectly done maintenance. Despite being a single-spark bike originally, it had a twin-spark engine swapped into it at some point after the original one failed. You might wonder why one failed at such low mileage, but upon draining the transmission and final drive oil, it appeared that both of those had been changed on the first of never. Extremely dark oil in both of those and the final drive was very glittery.
The throttle cable felt like it had rocks in it when I twisted the grip. This was because it actually had rocks in it. The valves were very out of adjustment. The spark plugs were bad, the air filter was horrendous. Meanwhile, I was riding it off-road on gravel and around my property. I live on 11 acres so I do most of my riding on. Being new to riding off pavement riding and not having ideal tires on it at first, this happened a lot.
The more I rode the bike, the more that I liked it and the more I found what I wanted to do with it, which was resurrect it but do so in a reasonably priced manner. This is an old bike, high miles, not in great shape, so it's not something that is a good candidate for a restoration, but it is a great candidate to play around with.
Because a lot of my off-road riding is more technical and lower speed (following my kids around the property), and the final drive was glittery and should be replaced anyway, I decided to replace the stock 31/11 final drive with a 37/11 from an R850R, with Nushings (the stock bearings that had been in there were shot). This did a couple of things. The first one (and the real one I was looking for) was that it lowered the speed at idle in first gear for technical riding without slipping the clutch (which I was doing a lot of). Also, it's made the bike a lot zippier which makes it more fun around town.
Then with that, I put the bike on a significant diet. The previous owner had already done the charcoal canister and catalytic converter delete, which got a few pounds out. The ABS went inop, and given that I wasn't impressed with the system on the whole, I did an ABS delete including the main ABS unit, sensors, and trigger rings on the wheels. I kept on going, replacing the AGM battery with a lithium one (that was about a 13 lb savings). I also had a Jardine lightweight muffler that I'd pulled off my wife's Triumph Daytona 675. It was too loud and droney on that bike, but it saved around 15 lbs vs. the stock boat anchor, and I don't find it to be too loud on the 1150.
I also added some adventure pegs to it, making it better for off road, and the standard minor tweaks like my GPS mount and figuring out where I like the bars for off and on road riding. The tires were Metzler Tourance 80/20s which weren't in bad shape but not great, and I didn't like how they were behaving off-road. So I replaced them with some Mitas E-09 Dakars.
In the end, I've pulled something around 40-50 lbs off of the motorcycle. It's not as light and nimble as say my friend's liquid cooled R1200GSA, but it's a whole lot better than it was. I've got more stuff planned coming up. Most imminently:
- Right now this bike is only running the single spark plug, despite having a twin spark engine. I want to buy coils that will allow me to run the engine as a twin-spark. I think I know what to order, but want to check a few more things before ordering them (if anyone's done this before and can point me in a direction, I'd appreciate that too)
- I got high compression pistons from an R1150RT, which I'm going to swap in. I'm going to keep the stock cams and heads from the GS, as I don't want to move the power band up in RPM. I like the torque it has now, just want to get some more power across the rev range from the compression
The second one may result in some pinging/detonation issues. If so, I'll address those at the time. I can put in a different/stand-alone ECU in if need be and improve the tuning while at it (I used to do engine tuning for at a previous job), but I think I've got it will it will be fine.
I'll post more updates on those as they come along. For now, the bike has 95k miles, and I'm thinking I want to do an iron butt to cross 100k with it when it gets closer.
At first I'll admit that I didn't much like the bike. It was not in good shape and had a lot of neglected/deferred/incorrectly done maintenance. Despite being a single-spark bike originally, it had a twin-spark engine swapped into it at some point after the original one failed. You might wonder why one failed at such low mileage, but upon draining the transmission and final drive oil, it appeared that both of those had been changed on the first of never. Extremely dark oil in both of those and the final drive was very glittery.
The throttle cable felt like it had rocks in it when I twisted the grip. This was because it actually had rocks in it. The valves were very out of adjustment. The spark plugs were bad, the air filter was horrendous. Meanwhile, I was riding it off-road on gravel and around my property. I live on 11 acres so I do most of my riding on. Being new to riding off pavement riding and not having ideal tires on it at first, this happened a lot.
The more I rode the bike, the more that I liked it and the more I found what I wanted to do with it, which was resurrect it but do so in a reasonably priced manner. This is an old bike, high miles, not in great shape, so it's not something that is a good candidate for a restoration, but it is a great candidate to play around with.
Because a lot of my off-road riding is more technical and lower speed (following my kids around the property), and the final drive was glittery and should be replaced anyway, I decided to replace the stock 31/11 final drive with a 37/11 from an R850R, with Nushings (the stock bearings that had been in there were shot). This did a couple of things. The first one (and the real one I was looking for) was that it lowered the speed at idle in first gear for technical riding without slipping the clutch (which I was doing a lot of). Also, it's made the bike a lot zippier which makes it more fun around town.
Then with that, I put the bike on a significant diet. The previous owner had already done the charcoal canister and catalytic converter delete, which got a few pounds out. The ABS went inop, and given that I wasn't impressed with the system on the whole, I did an ABS delete including the main ABS unit, sensors, and trigger rings on the wheels. I kept on going, replacing the AGM battery with a lithium one (that was about a 13 lb savings). I also had a Jardine lightweight muffler that I'd pulled off my wife's Triumph Daytona 675. It was too loud and droney on that bike, but it saved around 15 lbs vs. the stock boat anchor, and I don't find it to be too loud on the 1150.
I also added some adventure pegs to it, making it better for off road, and the standard minor tweaks like my GPS mount and figuring out where I like the bars for off and on road riding. The tires were Metzler Tourance 80/20s which weren't in bad shape but not great, and I didn't like how they were behaving off-road. So I replaced them with some Mitas E-09 Dakars.
In the end, I've pulled something around 40-50 lbs off of the motorcycle. It's not as light and nimble as say my friend's liquid cooled R1200GSA, but it's a whole lot better than it was. I've got more stuff planned coming up. Most imminently:
- Right now this bike is only running the single spark plug, despite having a twin spark engine. I want to buy coils that will allow me to run the engine as a twin-spark. I think I know what to order, but want to check a few more things before ordering them (if anyone's done this before and can point me in a direction, I'd appreciate that too)
- I got high compression pistons from an R1150RT, which I'm going to swap in. I'm going to keep the stock cams and heads from the GS, as I don't want to move the power band up in RPM. I like the torque it has now, just want to get some more power across the rev range from the compression
The second one may result in some pinging/detonation issues. If so, I'll address those at the time. I can put in a different/stand-alone ECU in if need be and improve the tuning while at it (I used to do engine tuning for at a previous job), but I think I've got it will it will be fine.
I'll post more updates on those as they come along. For now, the bike has 95k miles, and I'm thinking I want to do an iron butt to cross 100k with it when it gets closer.
