Decided it was ’bout time to put the ‘lil ‘hack (Motorvation Spyder) back on the GS, given that it’s my newest and lowest mileage airhead. This was my first ‘hack “romance”, the Spyder first being mounted in late february of ’94 right at the Motorvation mother ship in northwest Iowa. The GS had only covered 28k miles then, now the odo reads 67k while the Spyder has covered well over 100k… No, I haven’t been riding with the tug wheel in the air, though the ‘hack wheel has been occasionally aloft! The GS had a whole bunch of the typical GS maladies: tranny X2, pulled cylinder studs X2, alternator, starter, and of course the dreaded paralever. Thus the Spyder got hitched to my R65LS for a while, and when the GS studs failed a 2nd time, an R80ST was seduced to handle the tug duties with a bit more torque than the R65LS had.
And given it’s unreachable “auto-retract” side stand, the GS cries out for a hack to hold it up. Throw in the GS’ couple more inches of ground clearance and enough power to buck our “normal” 30 MPH headwinds at faster than 50 MPH, and the GS is the better tug for my Buffalo Ridge wanderings. I’ve kept the GS close to home since I put HPD inserts in all eight stud holes, but 6k miles later the repair has held up. This summer I finally found and installed the little known 1 millimeter tighter fitting gearbox rear seal, so now the driveshaft is running dry as BMW but not god intended. After the 2nd transmission failure I subbed a pre-missing circlip tranny, so other than the paralever driveshaft, this GS’s demons have pretty much been excised. And with only about 10k on the current paralever, I can put off getting it rebuilt with greasable & replaceable U-jounts for a while.
And what of the now lonely ST?
It’s still got my spare set of mounts and subframe, so I’m in the market for another ‘hack… Heck, my plan is to have every ‘hackable bike I’ve got ‘hack’d by the time I turn 70! Roger, the final drive is holding up fine, though the rear main or something is still leaking, though that was my own “work”. Maybe I should haul the engine to Florida for tech daze? Naw, already got the R65LS pollutin’ the place with it’s leaky rear main seal!
GearheadGrrrl 