Frame, Body, Chrome, Etc.
Frame
One of the steering stops had been sheared off at some point in the bike's life. With the engine out and the frame stripped down I made up a new one, and my friend Ross was kind enough to weld it in place for me. After filing it down to give it some shape I put the tank on to double check the clearance and all was good. I had a few parts powder coated (the battery box, stands, inner fender etc.) but painted the rest of the frame.
The bike came with a rear grab rail, which at first glance seemed great as these are hard to find. Sadly, upon closer examination it turned out the rail was for a GT550 and could not be used. A look around the web found a company called Webike in Japan that had very reasonably priced rear rails, so I ordered one and then started to sort out how to make it work. The problem here was that North American GT380's only had the grab rails for one year and the location of the mounting holes interfers with the brackets (the same brackets used with the North American GT750) that normally mount the rear turn indicators. There were also two different rear rails - an early flat style and a later "bent" style. The Webike rail is the later style. So I ditched the brackets that I'd just had powder coated, made some spacers on the lathe and can live with the result. The turn signals themselves are reproductions from Z1 Parts in the USA.
The tail light and bridge that came with the bike were not correct. Luckily I had a spare bridge (same as is used in the GT750) and the single bulb 'dog bone' style light assemblies are readily avalable from several places: this one came from Z1 Parts in the USA.
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Wheels
I find lacing (of the wheel variety) to be quite relaxing ever since I stopped using a dial gauge and fretting about the run out, and started just using an old spoke clamped to the wheel building stand. On the Takasago rims there is usually such a large bump where the two ends were butted together and welded up at the factory, that you never can get the rim perfectly round anyway. I have been told that the factory tolerance was an 1/8 of an inch in the two axes. which seems like a lot. I don't know if that is true, but you can get much closer than that just with a old spoke clamped to the side of the stand as an indicator, and when the tire is mounted it all seems to be good.
I do a static balance once the tire (or tyre if you prefer) is mounted, and leave the wheels off the bike over night just in case I've pinched a tube and have a slow leak. In truth, since I picked up a Mojolever (just do a search for it with your favourite search tool) and a set of his nylon blocks for my tire change stand, I've had much better success with not pinching tubes (of course it does still happen anyway occasionally).
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Body
The bike came with a freshly painted fuel tank and side panels, so with the wheels mounted giving me a rolling chassis, I hung the bits on the frame and rolled it outside for a photo.
The panels and tanks all fit well, but one of the tabs was missing off the left side panel. I plastic welded a replacement on, using zip ties as welding rod and a soldering iron having a large flat blade. These are readily available here for next to nothing in Canada from places like Princess Auto.
This bike is a 'bitsa' being a 1975 frame, a 1977 engine, wheels that appear to be from a 1976 model and a headlamp that I had on the shelf from a late 1970's GS400. In keeping with the theme, the colour is similar to that used for the 1974 models. As it is a decent paint job, I'm just going to leave it as is.
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Locks
I wrote a rather long article for the March, 2020 CVMG Newsletter on re-keying Suzuki locks, which in turn was based on a couple of blog entries I did located here and here . As a result, I'm not going to duplicate the material here, but a few photos are included below.
Electrical
Work in progress
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