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May of 1988 I was a senior in high school and I worked 3 jobs for about 2 years by then. Saved up a good wad of cash and decided to put it down on a brand new 1988 GSX600FJ. I had just sold my 1981 Kawasaki GPZ550 and was stopping by the Suzuki dealer every week to see the new Katana. All my friends were headed to college and I just was not ready. I planned to ride in late July to California with my 17 year old brother and our mutual best friend. Great time for about 3 weeks on the road with a car and this bike and we switched riding every gas tank full. It was my sole source of transport after they flew back and my father picked up the car we had. I commuted through Trabuco Canyon from Laguna to Anaheim everyday to work on Glassell for an instrument repair company. In May 1989 I rode it back in 3 days and it was a pretty crazy adventure!
Long story short, I sold it in 1991 to a guy in Edison NJ that was at Rutgers when it had about 21K miles. Fast forward to February 2015 and my daughter had just had surgery and I decided to Google the VIN# and low and behold it was on Craigslist for sale. Bought it again and found it was in pretty bad shape. For the past 6 months I have been finding stock NOS parts and buying them up.
This bike will be my full restoration project this winter. I cannot wait to bring it back to life and complete a full resto to the exact way I had the bike with the Vance and Hines 4 into 1.
Has anyone on this forum done a full teardown and rebuild on a 1988 600? Anything specific I need to watch out for? Any parts just not available at all? What were your best parts sources?
Thanks,
J. Litvany
Washington, DC
Long story short, I sold it in 1991 to a guy in Edison NJ that was at Rutgers when it had about 21K miles. Fast forward to February 2015 and my daughter had just had surgery and I decided to Google the VIN# and low and behold it was on Craigslist for sale. Bought it again and found it was in pretty bad shape. For the past 6 months I have been finding stock NOS parts and buying them up.
This bike will be my full restoration project this winter. I cannot wait to bring it back to life and complete a full resto to the exact way I had the bike with the Vance and Hines 4 into 1.
Has anyone on this forum done a full teardown and rebuild on a 1988 600? Anything specific I need to watch out for? Any parts just not available at all? What were your best parts sources?
Thanks,
J. Litvany
Washington, DC
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