Tonight I performed surgery on the GS850.
The heli-coil that was put into cylinder 3 before I bought the bike came out the other weekend, so I bought one of these and installed it tonight
http://www.amazon.com/Perma-Plug-1-25-Spark-Plug-Repair/dp/B0025PMJHA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1282277418&sr=8-1 <<-- Perma-Plug M14 X 1.25 Spark Plug Hole Repair Kit
Pretty painless... and yes, I am lazy, and yes, I did leave the head on the bike. I put #3 at bdc and then coated the tap with axle grease and went after it, backing it out to clean and reapply fresh grease after every few turns. It worked beautifully, and I was done in about 30 minutes. There was one small piece of aluminum lying on top of the piston when I got finished, which was easily picked up by touching it with a screwdriver. I had the shopvac and a length of tubing on standby to chase wayward chips out of the cylinder, but turns out I didn't even need it.
I then put some Loctite red on the outside of the sleeve, some anti-seize on the spark plug threads, and installed the sleve. After hitting the expander a few times with a hammer, I threaded in the spark plug. It's all back together and torqued down now, and the bike fires up just like it did before.
The heli-coil that was put into cylinder 3 before I bought the bike came out the other weekend, so I bought one of these and installed it tonight
http://www.amazon.com/Perma-Plug-1-25-Spark-Plug-Repair/dp/B0025PMJHA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1282277418&sr=8-1 <<-- Perma-Plug M14 X 1.25 Spark Plug Hole Repair Kit
Pretty painless... and yes, I am lazy, and yes, I did leave the head on the bike. I put #3 at bdc and then coated the tap with axle grease and went after it, backing it out to clean and reapply fresh grease after every few turns. It worked beautifully, and I was done in about 30 minutes. There was one small piece of aluminum lying on top of the piston when I got finished, which was easily picked up by touching it with a screwdriver. I had the shopvac and a length of tubing on standby to chase wayward chips out of the cylinder, but turns out I didn't even need it.
I then put some Loctite red on the outside of the sleeve, some anti-seize on the spark plug threads, and installed the sleve. After hitting the expander a few times with a hammer, I threaded in the spark plug. It's all back together and torqued down now, and the bike fires up just like it did before.
The GS series is pretty stout. Most all of them were built like a tank and are fairly reliable, even when you consider their age now. The 850 was a good reintroduction to riding for me, and has been a good 'first' road bike. I still take it out and run it down some of the old two lane county roads around here a couple of times a month... there's just something about the sound of that inline 4 all wound up 