'85 GL1200 LIMITED parts bike? NOT!

Good work and good score on the parts.

The rear trunk takes a beating, especially the trunk lid. I had quite a bit of repair to do to mine when I painted the bike. The bottom of the trunk can be repaired easily with ABS cement. Groove the cracks or whatever, layer in the ABS cement, let cure, sand and paint. I painted the bottom after the repairs with the OEM colour, but since it is the bottom you can also give it a coat of black paint as it is not well seen, unless you are up close and personal.

The trunk lid is another issue. I was always using the pillion arm rests to limit the forward travel of the trunk lid, PITA. When I painted the bike, I made 4 trunk lid restraints from a 1/16" sheet of ABS and 4 electrical cable staples. Poked a screwdriver through the ABs, and glued the restraint to the trunk and trunk lid. Attached a braided rope between the restraints to limit trunk lid travel. A small mod, but well worth it.

Here's some pics of the restraint. Restraint pieces:

Restraint installed:

The paint for the '85 Limited edition is still a valid paint code so you can get it from any paint shop. I painted my bike with spray guns - always wanted to use them instead of paint cans, but you can get custom made paint cans to suit as well.

Paint code for the Gold is:

Paint code for the brown is:

Great job so far. Keep up the good work.

Thanks so much for the paint codes. I'm gonna use those for sure once I get the trunk lower patched up. There are some large chunks missing and I'm going to have to find some ABS to fill in the gaps. Oh well time to try and locate some. It's kind of hard to find any near where I live. Time to do some surfing on the internet I guess. Well, I got her down off the lift and couldn't resist a cautious 5 mile check ride. I managed to keep it under 45mph since I have only 1 brake working right now, plus she's outside pretty naked right now. About a mile into the ride, the bike abruptly died. It would not restart and after looking at the ECU diagnostics, it was displaying the familiar code of no Crank Shaft sensor. I grabbed the connector and gave it a shake and reseated the contacts again. I restarted it again and proceeded to finish the ride. When I got back home, I left it running and shook the connector and it died once more. Luckily I have some 2 contact connectors and I will be replacing that puppy before I put the shelter back for sure. I had to get it off the lift in order to put it on the center stand to change the tires. I know I shouldn't have ridden it yet, but it's 66 degrees and clear weather and I just couldn't resist.

If you are inclined to adding a rad fan switch for manual use especially if doing a lot of city driving and such, this is a schematic of the circuit:

The rad fan should start when the dash engine temp indictor is in the 6 bar range. I use my manual switch for summer city driving, or when riding two up as necessary.

I've actually considered a manual override for the fan, but first thing is to replace the fan temp switch and sort out the wiring. The way that the fan was installed was ugly and not safe as there wasn't a fuse inline. I was pleased that I was able to bleed the brakes again today and managed to remove a couple of bubbles from the front caliper. I have a good firm brake pedal now. On another note, I was doing some checks about the RPM fluctuations between cold running at 1000 RPM then up to 2100 when warm. I hooked up the sync gauges to check the balance between left bank and right bank. I noticed that the right bank was pretty solid as far as vacuum goes, but the left bank was reading wonky and would change as it warmed up. On further investigation, I found that if I moved the vacuum lines connected between 2 and 4 at the "T" the vacuum would change. I replaced the vacuum lines on both sides and both banks and after restart the tach read 2300 rpm and the vacuum was stable on both sides. I let it warm up to operating temperature and adjusted the idle screw and set the idle to 1080 rpm. When I goosed the throttle several times and was happy that it returned to 1080 rpm. I'll check it again in the morning on a cold start. I ordered a couple of 12" x 24" x 1/8" sheets of ABS to try to do some repairs on the bottom of the trunk lower. I going to go by the plumbing supply house to get some ABS cement.

Good to hear you got the idle straightened out. There is no fuse inline to the rad fan, it's in the fuse box. I think I mentioned that I did a complete paint job of my '85. The spare bedroom was where the finished parts/pieces went:

Sonya was very understanding. had a lot of cracks, missing pieces and such to repair.

Great job so far, keep going, it will be worth it. Have more info if you need. Cheers

Continuing the journey of trying to remove the "shade tree" or I should say shady work, I pulled the radiator again to work on the fan and fan wiring. Once I got the radiator out I went on the hunt for the fan connector that should be in the front coming out of the wiring harness. I pulled the fuse for the fan circuit and connected my signal generator and using my signal tracer wand located the wire and found that the connector had been cut off. I had some 2 conductor Molex connectors that I had gotten to replace the connector for the camshaft position sensor. The current rating of those connectors is 5 amp max. I got out my multimeter to measure the actual current draw for the fan motor. On startup, the current spikes to 9 amps then quickly drops to 3.6 amps. I decided to use some connectors that were rated for 10 amps. Unfortunately the 10 amp connector bodies that I had on hand were 3 conductor. I ended up changing the connector on the fan motor to a 3 conductor. Now comes the shady part, the fan had been wired directly to the fuse box using 18 gauge brown lamp cord and also the bottom of shroud that surrounds the fan had been cut and bent towards either side and only 2 screws holding the fan to the radiator. Also noted that the fan blades had several chunks missing. I had a good used fan and shroud that I could use as a replacement. The donor did not have the .47mfd capacitor that is used for noise suppression, so I removed it from the old fan and installed it on the donor. Changed the connector on the motor to mate with the new connector that I had added to the wiring harness earlier. The "Zip cord" that was on the old fan wasn't soldered and was just twisted around the skinned back wires. Another thing, I think there may have been an attempt to do a "poorboy alternator conversion" on this at one time which would explain why the timing belt cover was a cutout that lined up with the crankshaft pulley and might explain why the shroud was cut and the one of the fan mounting tabs being cut off. Hopefully I will get the radiator and coolant back in the bike once I get home from my paying gig tomorrow.