1987 Suzuki LTF230 refurbish

[skills4lou]

Howdy. New to the forum, just thought I'd start a thread. We own an 87 LTF230 (utility) quad. My son loves riding it, but decided it was time to refurbish it. I'd FAR rather have him out wrenching than staring at screens so it's up on the lift in the shop right now. We have all the plastics off, and yesterday I cleaned the carb up to see if it needed new parts. Thankfully all it needed was just a little sediment removed from the float bowl and adjust the pilot. It's running great again.

Next up is the valve adjustment. I'm 100% certain I'll need new 0-rings once I take the caps off, but so far I haven't found the specs for what the valves lash should be. Can anyone provide that? As a newb on here I can't dowload the FSM just yet.

Other things that definitely need work: Right rear hub splines are pretty worn out so we'll have to replace that, maybe a few bearings, brakes all the way around, sort out some intermittent headlight issues, and he wants to clean up and paint the racks. I may also get out the plastic welder and see what I can do for some of the plastics.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

GH

 

[skills4lou]

Who doesn’t like pictures? 😀

 we have a couple  of projects going on at the same time. The front brakes on the Suzuki just needed cleaned and adjusted. If I can get the master cylinder screws to release then I’ll bleed the front too, but as is typical the screws are seized. 

Edited April 10, 2022 by skills4lou

[skills4lou]

Question: does the rear axle have to come completely out of the rear end to replace the rear brake shoes? I can't see any way to remove the drum from the right side. We got the sheet metal cover off and found some oil in the brake dust so I've got a seal to replace as well. BUT...if I have to tear down the whole rear end I may put off that work until next winter.

Thanks

[Finnforest]

I changed the brake shoes on mine with the axle on. Removed the two nuts (maybe they where left threads) and pulled the drum. I just let the drum be on the shaft, or you can remove the rear wheel hub and take it all off.

You want to take the rear wheel hubs off anyway and clean and lubricate with copperpaste or something similar, the splines have ha habit of corroding due to loose fit. Worst case scenario you can always weld em to the shaft =)

 

Edit. Sorry it was on my 250LT 1987 i change the brakes. Dunno how to delete the post =)

Edited April 12, 2022 by Finnforest
misread title

[Dion Braud]

Here is a bunch of useful info for you. Including valve lash spec's. 

[skills4lou]

Thanks Dion, that's very helpful!

Finnforest, no worries. 

[skills4lou]

While I'm waiting for the new o-rings/seals to arrive I figured I could update one brake situation: Front brake adjusters where all but seized, so those were removed, cleaned/polished and regreased, everything was cleaned up and reassembled. It took a fair bit of adjustment fiddling to get everything happy again, but the front brakes now work as well as drum brakes ever will. The rear brake..I'm still trying to figure out how the heck the factory intended to service that. I just can't imagine having to remove the entire axle to expose the pads, but at this point it's the only thing I can see that will move the drum away from the shoes.

And, I knew the rear end was beefy on this thing but after spending more time around that...crikey! I'm pretty sure I could put that behind the 800 v-twin in my red Outlander and it woudn't even bat an eye at the added hp. Of course suspension travel is a bit limited ;).

 

[skills4lou]

OK, I stand corrected (now that I have 10 posts). The FSM procedure is indeed to remove the axle. After 35 yrs, what's the chance those big nuts are gonna come off without mangling them? I'm confident I can remove them, but re-use might be the key in this situation. I guess I'll find replacement before I go too crazy on removal.

[skills4lou]

Made some more progress today, the axle has been removed and cleanup has begun.

 

[skills4lou]

We finally got the brake actuator pin removed, cleaned up greased yesterday. Then it was just a matter of reassembling all the rear end parts. Overall the process wasn't too bad removing the rear axle. In the future if anyone is reading this and wondering, a 1-5/8" wrench will suffice for the big axle nuts.

Anyhoo, once we got the rear end back together we took it outside and gave it a good scrubbing. Then I did some plastic welding on the fenders before we got those put back in place. We also did some troubleshooting on the lighting, and discovered the handlebar hi/low switch had a broken spring for pushing the contacts together, causing poor/no connection. I replaced that spring with a custom one (made from a retractable pen), cleaned up the contacts and reassembled the switch. That solved the power issue, but the headlight bulb is burnt out so I'll have to pick up one this next week.

I still need to adjust the valves, but that's going to wait until the next oil change. It's running great now, the brakes work well all the way around, and I'll have the lights working soon. All in all it's been a fun little project and my son is excited to have his quad back in operation.