Gl1200 Engine swap

[starfleetengineer]

Ok guys, seeing as I can't sleep cause of these headachs I've been thinking and reading up. I have the 84 gl 1200 I. I bought and 86 gl 1200 A engine. I have been thinking about the poor boy alt setup. During my reading I found that there is a differance in the staters. It said that the 85 and up was a bigger stater. I was told when I bought the engine the charging system worked fine. I will ohm the stater before putting it in. Have to find the ref. for it again to check it. But anyways, is it true the 86 has a bigger stater in it and will it give it more chargeing power and how much. My mind has been blanking out on me her lately and I just want, need a few more opinions. Maling the brackets for the poor boy is easy. The pullie on the other hand seams a littler harder to come up with, and I can't justify paying $200+ for the kit. I have got an alt I took off a forklit from work. It's small and it's around 90 or so amp's. But like I say the pullie is the problem. If the stater in the 86 is bigger and better, and it does work right, I my use it till I get it fully back on the road and tuned in. I also read that a 4 to 5 inch pullie on the crank will give you about 13 to 13.5 volts at idle, witch would be great seeing as we all have alot of lights . I have an idea for the pullie from my old days at Ford, I remember some pullies that might work, but then comes the spacer Ideas that have more problems. At this point I'm not sure if I'm making any sence of what I'm trying to say and ask. I hope so. The doc says my brain chemistry is screwed up, and sometimes I can believe it, and other times I can't. It's like looking at an abstact painting and not seeing the full picture. Everyday is the weekend for me right now, so I got time. Hope you can help me figure this one out.......Thanks

Rick

[CrystalPistol]

The 1984 Std, and '84 - '87 Interstates and Aspencades all have the same stator.

The 85 SEi and the 86 Ltd have a bigger stater which also has a bigger rear engine cover to house it. These bikes had more electrics as well.

Been there.

[maestro319]

Ok crystalpistol, what are we looking at here. Is the round object in the lower right of the engine the stator? And, the round object in the upper left of the engine is a ...pully?? of some sort?I have not taken one of these engine apart so i don't know what everything looks like. Thanks for the info.

[starfleetengineer]

Ok crystalpistol, what are we looking at here. Is the round object in the lower right of the engine the stator? And, the round object in the upper left of the engine is a ...pully?? of some sort?I have not taken one of these engine apart so i don't know what everything looks like. Thanks for the info.

The upper left is the stater assem. the lower right is the clutch assem. And the shaft coming out is your final driveor the shaft the drive shaft hooks to.

Thanks Crystal for letting me know the size diff. I don't know if my new 86 engine is an LTD or not. They didn't say.
Rick

[maestro319]

Ahhhh...thanks starfleet. So THAT'S what the infamous stator looks like and it location!!! So now, if I ever have to tear my engine down, I 'll at least know what I'm looking at (kinda/sorta).
As Paul Harvey used to say on his radio show, "Now you know."
Thanks again.
P.

[CrystalPistol]

Well, actually that round object in the uopper left corner is the ROTOR, it's a hub looking thing as you can see ... with a magnet made in it, it "rotates" around the STATOR which itself remains "stationary" and mounts fixed inside the cover that is removed. The magnet passing the coiled wire windings of the stator induces current in the wire.

Understand never having "been there". I did mine myself one week in afternoons after work, first thing I did was take a piece of 3/4" plywood that was as large as the flat portion of the bottom of the engine. I glued / screwed some strips to it that fit in between fins so that once in place, the plywood is "locked" in place and can't slide sideways or forwards or back.

On the lower side of the plywood, I used another piece of plywood nearly same size, but with a round hole cut near center that was just larger than the round lift pad of the 1-1/2 ton small floor jack that you see in the pics.

This way, once I jacked up under the engine, no way the engine was gonna slide off that jack as I balanced it with my left hand and operated the jack handle with my right and once all mounts, wires, etc were loose, I simply rolled engine out on jack and set it down on those big chunks of wood.

[starfleetengineer]

Tonight I took to engine out of the old girl. Got a few pic's too. It took 2 hours to get it out and on a platform. Ran it to a few snags. 1st. the oil drain plug rounded off. 2nd. the wire that runs under the front of the engine up, has a red plug. was wraped around the coils and brake line. 3rd. Had to remove the thermo housing to get the heat sheild out. Don't know if I missed that in the book or what. Got the drain plug out then took off the back cover to see what I would see.... Guess what! I was right The noise I was hearing that sounded like marbles rolling around in a cardboard box was the stater, well kinda. The rotor came out with the housing. The washer and nut that is to hold the roter was on the front side of the stater It looks like it just backed its self off. The threads on the nut are bad, but the shaft is still good Guess now I know why it quit charging and what the noise was
All in all, the removel was easy. I did have to order some parts. I had a intake manifold come apart, and my subframe, well some one didn't know how to weld While I wait on the parts, I'm going to take some time and rewire the added lights and install my 3rd brake light! Even having one good arm and a helper, this is easy so far, knock on wood I will add the pic's when the job is done and write up a full story on what to do, so it is even eaiser for the next person.

[rrmiller73]

I'm currently swapping an 85 1200 into an 84 bike. The starter (not stater) is different. My 85 engine came w/o a starter so pulled the old one off the 84 motor but the mount pads are in the wrong place on the 85. The The ign crankshaft position sensors have been moved from the back of the engine on the 84 to the front under the timing belt cover on the 85 but believe (and hope)it will plug and play with the 84 coils and ign. module. I've still got to come up with a starter for the 85. There are also some visual differences in the rear case of the engine and the timing covers in the front. I'll let you know how it goes as I progress.

[starfleetengineer]

Yes the starters are differnt. The pulse gen is in the timing covers on 85 and up. 84 has it on the back of the engine. All the plugs look the sameI saw no differance between the 84 and 86 engine other than the starter and the pulse gen. O, and the 84 said Made in Japan, and the 86 said Made in the USA My sub frame came today. Took a day and a half I thought next week! The manifolds however says the 15th. This guy, I don't know wether to trust him or not. Screwed me on the shipping
Take pic's of what you do and post them for others. Also any problems that you might have. I am going to install the engine between now and Saturday.

Good Luck

[starfleetengineer]

Well, Friday night I put the engine in. I can say it was fun, "not" even for 2 of us she fought us! I got the lower sub frame a day and a half after I ordered it. That was fast! The drive shaft went i first try!! Lineing up the mounts was not so simple. We put in the top back bolt to help hold the back up. Then we rasied the frt. of the engine up so the side mount bolt would go in. Then we put in the sub frame. She fought us all the way. Had to raise the lt. side of the engine cause the starter kepl hitting while up tried putting it in. Then we had to tighten the sub frame bolts to get the side bolt to go in. Also had to put the lower bolt in at the same time. loosen all the sub bolts and let the engine hang and did the tightening sequance. O- and when we took the engine out, we must have hit the rt. frt. motor mount cause she was tweeked out. After getting things tight, hooked up the clutch and the wireing. Had to swap the temp sensors aroun, the where diffrent. The wire that comes from under the bike even thow it has 6 wires in it still works ok. She cranked over like a new bike! I hope to have the new manifolds on the 15th, so then I can finish her up. Got new hoses, thermostat filters and I'm going with the Honda prelude electric fuel pump. I have to swap over my valve covers and timing covers, but thats easy. The timing belts don't look much more than 6 moths old! I did check the stater before putting the engine in and it checks fine. Hope the rest goes smooth Next week is going to be better weather. Up in the high 50's. I feel good enough to give her a spin, but I will have my daughters boyfriend riding beside me just incase! I hope I can go back to work next month! 30+ days at home is driving me nuts, along with all the theropy!

[rrmiller73]

Worked on mine this week end. Discovered that the sub frame engine mount point after much prying is off about half a hole width. Evidently the starter change from 84-85 caused them to relocate the mount hole. With the other mounts all on and tightened it just will not line up. I'll have to cut the mount brackets off and relocate them if I want to use that mount point. (I need to see if the subframe clears the bigger starter befor I start sawing on it.) The engine appears to have plenty of support w/o that mount. Drive spline and boot spring fought me but got it together. Radiator upper mount/ heatshield is in, carbs, fuel pump and lines all on and leak checked. Wiring Plug that goes up to the left of the stearing hd and the temp sensors, oil pres sensors all connected. Bidding on 85-87 starers on Ebay. Need to solder in yellow stator wires and repair and plug in pulse generator wiring. Need to clean up a years worth of white powder and repaint the battery area. Then exhaust, crashbars, heat baffles and lower fairings. Need Plugs, oil, and antifreeze. With daylight saving time and warmer weather hope to be running this time next week end if all goes well. (It usually doesn't!)

[Ladha1990]

Hi all,

Trying to revive this thread, as I am in the same situation. I'm restoring an 84 Aspencade and just finished taking out the engine and removing the heads. Unfortunately, it looks like the timing was off and the #4 piston has some bad damage and so does the cylinder head. I have a parts bike (86 Aspencade) and am just seeing if I can use this engine? I know the rear case is different and that the 86 has the pulse generator in the front, other than having to extend the pulse generator wire from my 84 wiring harness to the front of the 86 engine, is there anything else that would prevent me from doing the swap? Thanks.

Another option I was thinking about was just splitting the 84 engine case a replacing the bad piston (cylinder bore doesnt look damaged) and stealing a head from the 86.

Thanks for any input.

[Ladha1990]

Pictures of the damaged piston and head for reference.

Head has damage in top left corner.
Piston is at bottom of picture.

[Rednaxs60]

Looked at the pictures. I would suggest having the head(s) refurbished by a machine shop to determine if the valves are still good, if so use the original head(s) - do both sides. Clean off the piston surface, hard to get a good appreciation of damage or not - may not have to change the piston. Rotate the engine and determine that all pistons are the same at TDC - if so don't think piston hit valves.

Before major surgery such as splitting the engine case, would recommend doing the cylinder heads, or not, put these back on and do a compression test. All may be well. There are threads on the various forums that have used components that look worse than yours without doing any changes.

Timing cannot be off unless the timing belts have skipped a tooth, very unlikely, and the crank and camshaft pulleys timing marks are spot on. Check the timing marks. Once the timing is set on these 1200 engines, nothing will change unless a timing belt lets go.

Upgrading the PG sensors to the front of the engine requires a crank trigger wheel for the carb model GWs, and a sensor harness with two sensors. You will have four wires going to the connection under the shelter. Here's a picture of the sensor install. These are installed on my '85 FI model, but the install will be the same for any 1200 with the PG sensors in the front. The crank trigger wheel will be different :

May want to investigate if there is a difference between the ignition control module (ICU) of the '84 versus the '85 to '87.

Good luck.

[Ladha1990]

Rednaxs60,

Thanks for the detailed reply. The pictures really don’t do the damage justice. There are pretty significant gouges in the metal on both pieces. I think I may just focus my efforts on restoring the 86 now. I bought the 84 and 86 as a package deal and both were at about 75% disassembled when I purchased so I don’t have a lot of history on either. I decided to restore the 84 because it had less miles but will probably just restore the 86 so I don’t have to swap components between different model years. Thanks!

[Rambozo]

The head looks totally repairable. First thing is to clean it up and check for cracks. My real concern is that the top ring groove on the piston has collapsed and has locked up the ring. A close examination of the cylinder wall to see if there is any scuffing. If there is, it needs to come apart. If not, you can just take a flat aluminum plate and drill it to match the head bolt pattern for one cylinder. Drill and tap a hole in the center and bolt it on the block. This will let you do a cylinder leakage test without the head. If it passes, rebuild the head and you're good to go. If it fails, piston has to come out.

[Ladha1990]

After much internal deliberation, I decided to remove the parts bike engine from the 86 and am going to use that. Got the engine removed today and luckily the pistons/cylinders look to be in great shape. This engine has 100k miles on it but camshafts also look good. The only thing I’m concerned about is the amount of varnish on the parts. Not sure how long it sat but assuming a long time. Attaching some pictures for y’all, please let me know what you think.

I have an ultrasonic cleaner, would that be a good solution to cleans these things up?