Touring
Through accidental circumstances the GT380 has now become a touring bike.
See, I also have a Harley and that’s my typical ride around town and for weekend trips. Well as it turns out, my Dyna was destroyed by a truck who backedup on top of it. The bike was a writeoff, bent frame and all, and although I ordered a new one, it will only be here in October. So for the time being my little hoby bike is now my main ride. Not letting this stop me in any way, this weekend the girlfriend and I went for a nice 3 days, 700 miles ride through norther ontario. Toronto to manitoulin island to sudbury back to toronto.
The GT performed flawlessly. In fact it seems to work even better now! I have put over 2000 miles on this baby since the rebuild and the engine feels very solid for such al old bike. The handling and the lack of storage or windshield make for a challenging ride in cold rain but aside from that it’s a surprisingly capable touring machine.
Harley under the truck
Suzie and I in Gore Bay
A little bit of paint
I kept looking at that triple tee and those scuffed up control and it was time to do something about it. Here comes the Rustoleum. I baked the paint for a few hours for additional durability. At the same time I rebuilt the master cylinder that was filled with grimy sludge. I also painted a few odd pieces that were worn out like the seat pan, battery basket and toolbox.
Before:
D
During:
After:
Smoking cessation
Well after over a 1000 km of riding, the smoke didnt get any better. In fact it seemed to smoke even more. The oild consumption was also totaly nuts, 1 litre of oild per 3 fill ups. I had to tackle the problem for good after I got pulled over by the cops and fined $110 for “unreasonable smoke”.
I decided to take swap the oil pump with a used ’76 unit from ebay. That was it!! Almost immediately the smoke went back to what you’s expect, a faint haze under full load and virtually nothing at idle.
I took both pumps appaft to see what could make such a difference and there it was. The old pump had been disassembled in the past it seems and was reassembled with the cam turned 180 deg the wrong way. The notch facing down when it should have been up. The result is the pump was at maximum output all the time.
Old pump with cam facing the wrong way
The notch should be facing the other way!
Now I can’t blame whoever did this because these GT oil pumps are quite cryptic. In fact taking it apart gave me no clues as to how it works. I had to read this diagram to finally understand it. Quite a clever design but totaly not what I had expected.
Yan's GT380 
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