More tear-down progress last night and I started asking some Goldwing people on a different forum for opinion and advice. Interestingly, the manufacture of rebuild parts for these engines has pretty much stopped and supplies of NOS parts are hard to come by. That means that if the motor needs new pistons or rings, I’m pretty much out of luck. The best that I can reliably do would be to buy used pistons with used rings and hope. The good news, though, is that it sounds like the motors tend to be pretty stout and hard to kill, so given the mileage, I might only be a head gasket away from a good motor already installed in the ’87.
I did have one interesting thing happen last night, though. As I was taking the ’84 apart, I saw just a little hint of a key down on top of the motor. Figuring it must be a spare key for the bike, I dug for a while until I could get it out. Turns out:
Toyota key! At some point, someone was tearing their whole house and everything else apart looking for a car key because it couldn’t have just disappeared, and yet it did. So, to whoever lost a key for their Toyota however many years ago: Good news. I found it.
The night’s teardown progress gallery can be found here.