Fumicho Driving ( translated from ふみっちょドライビング ) on YouTube has got a nice video for you to watch. The Japanese content creator restored a Suzuki GSX400 Impulse at a professional level, with everything cleaned, replaced, and installed in just one video.
Please prepare an hour of your time (or play the video slightly faster) to get the full experience of this restoration build. With 57 or so minutes of restoration to be done, prepare for an ASMR trip to get this bike from disassembled to revving its inline-four up.
After the exhaust is repainted in some heat-resistant paint, it’s off to work on the smaller bits of the bike. For us home mechanics, getting your bike’s plastics restored is one of the more overlooked parts of maintenance, and true black plastics will do wonders to make your bike look like new even if it’s a few years old at this point.
Following that, all the other bits around the Suzuki engine are cleaned, restored, and then installed on the bike. Then the other bits like the handlebars aren’t left with rust on them as it, too, get a nice buff and polish before finding their way onto the newly-restored and installed triple clamp.
After a ton of small bits and other items, we head on over to the engine troubleshooting section of the video, where the engine gets its first startup and all the vacuum pressures are checked to ensure optimal performance. After everything was in order, it was then time to rev this four-cylinder sky-high just to make sure that it was running right and that all the carburetors were synced up.
Of course, it’s good practice to never close the hood of your car until you know that it’s running well, or so the tradition goes. Because this is a motorcycle, putting on the bodywork definitely is the last bit of work that needed doing. After a montage of painting and some work with painter’s tape, it was time to put everything back together.
The before and after clips are dramatic. From an all-black and dirty motorcycle, this GSX400 Impulse ended up becoming one gorgeous machine. It runs right, it’s got a new paint job, and refreshed parts, and it even sang a song right next to a Yamaha XJR400. Even with the hour-long video posted, there is more about this bike on Fumicho Driving’s channel. It’s a seven-part series involving this bike, so aside from this finale, take some time to check out the other videos in the series and beyond on his channel.
