Rear Stoppers

The 1982 GSX has rear brakes.

That’s pretty much all I can say about it.

The rear brake pedal is connected to the rear brake hub with a metal rod. Step on the pedal, the rod is pulled, and the rod in turn pulls on a lever in the rear hub. This lever has a cam that spreads the brake shoes inside the hub.

Once I cleaned up the metal (the usual wire brushing and sandpaper) I replaced the brake shoes. I’m not 100% convinced that this improved the braking, but it’s a bit a guesswork anyway since it takes forever to bed the brake linings in. Suffice to say, while rear brakes are the “safest” to use on a bike, they’re certainly not the primary stopping apparatus on this old classic.

While working on the brakes, I also cleaned up the rear axle.

Once the bare metal was primed, It was time for a coat of gloss white to match the rims.

Clutching at straws

I didn’t have to repair the clutch mechanism itself, thank goodness.

The sidecase / clutch cover was of course horrendously filthy. I guess it had last been cleaned around 1990.

I scraped out the worst, then got to cleaning the rest with a brush, some mineral turps, a rag, and plenty of patience.

I left the sidecover with some patina, and didn’t go down the highly polished route which would have ended in tears and frustration.

The actuating rod was bent a little, so I gave it a few whacks with a hammer to straighten it out.

I bought a set of new bolts because 2 were missing and the others were a random assortment. Turns out the missing bolts were actually broken off in the gearbox. So I bought an easy-out extractor (which worked surprisingly well).

Lastly, I cut the mirror mounts off the clutch lever, and polished up the alloy surface.

Pegs

Foot pegs are weird things. Just little folding bits of metal with a slippery coating of rubber. Yep, that’s all that keeps your feet from dragging along the road.
Granted, you can get those metal ones with sharp teeth that rip your boots to pieces over time. But in my case, I inherited the 30 year old rubber ones that were made of rusty metal with a chrome finish. And a whole layer of gunk.

But lo, the wire brush was handy. After an hour they looked almost good enough to put back onto the frame, so that’s what I did.