The Suzuki A100 bore just enough resemblance to a motorcycle to be acceptable and, more importantly, held out the prospect of some low cost miles for an impoverished beginner. It was a pretty typical seventies single cylinder two stroker, with a rotary valve engine that just managed to produce something like 8hp and 55mph, and sported a poxy four speed gearbox.
They disguised this lack of speed by using cheap and inadequate brakes, steering and suspension - it made 50mph seem like very much more. With 14000 miles on the clock, the A100 really hadn't a hope against newer machines of its own size. In fact, it looked much like a moped, it felt like a moped, it sounded like a moped, it rode like a moped and it was really a 100cc moped with pegs.
Once I'd rebored it, the little horror gave me the satisfaction of nearly always coming out ahead of the suicide merchants on 50cc hairdryers. Along with the usual quick rot seat cover, the rest of the cycle parts also rotted noticeably. Despite this decay, I can't really accuse them of being genuine quick rot equipment since the bike has spent most of its life standing in the rain and much of it exposed to road salt as well. Only the rear mudguard had decayed to the point where replacement was actually necessary.
I had to throw the rack away because as soon as any weight was placed on it the handling became very dangerous indeed. The bike came with a SLS drum front and rear, adequate for sedate commuting but not for the young and stupid. I started by bouncing off the back of a tin box and blamed that one on the dark and pouring rain. I then proceeded to blame the rest on black ice, snow, oil and so forth.
I kept the A100 for a year and put another 5000 miles on the clock in the process. During this time the bike put up pretty stoically with a routine which settled into a repetition of four weeks riding, two seconds crashing and then two weeks rebuilding. Looking back, I can hardly believe I was so stupid.
On the positive side, all these crashes and silly antics did at least teach me a lot about how, and how not, to ride and I think this has stood me in good stead in later years. I also passed the RAC/ACU course on the A100 and I'd seriously recommend some kind of tuition course to any beginner who wants to stay alive.
Despite all my stupidity neither I nor the bike's frame sustained any significant structural damage. This is quite surprising since the frame was one of the pathetic pressed steel jobs so typical of small bikes. However, whilst the frame took it all in its stride, the crashes did bend forks and wipe out fork yokes, indicators, levers and footrests with monotonous regularity. It was at this point that I learnt the value of good breakers and the intrinsic worthlessness of most dealers. In the eleven years I've been riding I've only found one good dealer and they went bust, which I guess says something about the nature of the profession.
While the frame was second rate, the A100's mill was an excellent example of a very well made, straightforward two stroke unit. It produced a tolerable amount of power without any complexity. Once rebored it didn't complain in the face of hard use. The mill's only really annoying feature was the lousy position of the contact breakers behind the armature of the alternator. Trying to adjust them with a ferrous feeler gauge was a bit like trying to pick your keys off the hall table through the letterbox using a bamboo pole which is being attacked by a playful dog - it's possible but there are easier ways.
The exhaust downpipe was attached to the port by a large castellated nut which in theory was undone by a C-spanner, but time and indifferent maintenance had left the whole lot welded into the port. Recourse to a local engineering firm finally freed it, at the cost of a half stripped thread. I made up a special copper washer and by treating the nut with respect managed to keep the damaged thread serviceable.
The mill's good nature was more sorely tried when I tripped over the kickstart and turned over the engine while the top end was stripped. The piston was smashed to pieces, scattering debris into the crankcase. A few hours flushing out the engine saved the need for a strip.
All things considered, the piston had a rough time. Another had its crown rescuplted when the points slipped so far that the engine ran backwards. The pitted surface of the piston didn't stop me bunging the engine back together and running it for another 500 miles before I sold it.
I almost forgot to mention the powerband. It didn't have one. Nor do I actually remember it accelerating, either. To be fair, though, this was ten years ago. I never did measure the mpg but it must have been pretty reasonable because I could afford to run the bike on an income that came dry roasted and bagged.
All in all, the A100's only memorable feature was its robustness. It's fair to say that if you can still get hold of an A100 cheap and can tolerate the nondescript performance then it makes an excellent commuter hack or learner bike. It won't leave trails of burning rubber unless you set fire to the tyres, but it's simple, trustworthy, and the engine's reassuringly tough.
When, in the spring of '78, I sold the well thrashed and crashed remains of the A100 to a guy with even less sense than myself, I was still in the sixth form so the GT185 was the ideal machine. Some £750 was handed over to the bunch of obnoxious jokers who passed for the local dealership for a brand new 'un. Lean, with clean elegant lines, and about as mean looking as a small machine could manage to be.
Motorcycling mythology attributes a number of shortcomings to this machine. To quote the UMG...needs constant attention to avoid holed pistons, throwaway disc, swinging arm and shocks. It also has a reputation for dislodging the internal baffles of the exhausts, snapping tacho cables and having a fragile mill. One of the reasons for writing this is to set the record straight - as far as I can tell, the machine is no more nor less tough and reliable than any other small machine of the late seventies.
I, for one, encountered few of the predicted problems and none of the parts identified as throwaway ones needed throwing away after 25000 miles. Though the exhausts on my machine gave no trouble, it was certainly true that they could shed the baffles. In practice this was rare on later models and then only after 20,000 miles. More impressive was the fact that the exhausts could be expected to last that long. Like those of the larger GT's they were built out of heavy gauge steel and so took an eternity to rust through from either side.
On the other hand, I can imagine that snapping tacho cables were a problem on some GT185s. This was a genuine problem caused by a stupid design oversight rather than any fault in the cable or its routing. The locknut at the gearbox end of the cable is obstructed by one of the frame's cross members. This makes it difficult to remove the cable for greasing unless the engine's removed or at least tilted. I avoided this by injecting liquid Teflon through the cable sheathing about six inches below the tacho. Doing this every four weeks kept the cable sufficiently lubricated, although it made a bit of a mess of the plastic outer sheathing.
The swinging arm, or rather its bushes, was something of a weak point once wear set in after about 8000 miles and this gave me some minor irritation. Another part of the GT185's mythology is that the mill is short lived. In practice, the unit seems at least as robust as that of any of its contemporaries. Given reasonable care and attention and not too much thrashing, it should make a respectable 30,000 miles. In practice, of course, the bike was built to be thrashed, so the engines tended to develop problems before this.
The mill's only real fault lay in the difficulty encountered when tuning the damn thing. Balancing the carbs would have tried the patience of a saint. As a devout atheist I was starting from a disadvantage and in the end I simply gave up and let the accursed things stay out of balance. Adjusting the points was equally trying. Even with a dial gauge this sometimes took hours. I just couldn't achieve the necessary precision by sliding two plates against each other. I decided to do this as infrequently as possible as well.
In this state fuel consumption ranged between 45 and 70mpg. Driven sensibly on quite long journeys under fair conditions it returned 70mpg when young, declining to 65mpg as it got older - with a two gallon tank this gave a range of 130 miles maximum. Guess who regularly did a 136 mile night time journey? When the bike was pushed hard consumption rose to 45mpg.
Only once it managed 90mph, the usual top speed around 75mph. This unlikely event occurred when I was burning along the A38 into Derby. I distinctly remember looking down at the speedo, then back at two cones of thick blue smoke and thinking, Jesus Christ. Surprisingly, the bike remained steady even at this speed. Not so surprisingly, this thrash marked the engine's transition from new to old.
Turning from the engine to the brakes - these were quite unremarkable but correctly matched to the power and weight of the bike. The front hydraulic disc and rear drum were well balanced and gave good, gradual control with reasonable feedback and no grabbing. Pad and shoe wear was reasonable, both lasting in the region of 15000 miles. The front brake would certainly have been improved by fitting decent hydraulic hosing and European pads but I never bothered. Two up it would have needed more stopping power had not performance disappeared due to the extra weight.
Something almost as dangerous as a disc that doesn't work in the wet is one that damn well does when you're not expecting it to. For reasons that still remain a complete mystery to me, this particular unit worked almost as well in the wet as it did in the dry and if fear assisted would happily lock the wheel just as fast. I discovered this in a torrential rainstorm when the caged cretin in front of me did something very stupid. Thankfully, I stayed upright and avoided the indignity of being seen dead in an Austin Princess.
Most of the time the bike went exactly where it was told with little or no complaint. This was fortunate since lunch times in the sixth form were spent zipping around Norfolk country lanes in hot pursuit of a complete maniac on a KH250, pursued in turn by another one on a YB100. The GT was never happier than when it was out scratching like this and it excelled at the game, having exactly the right combination of weight, power and manoeuvrability for flicking around tight country lanes. It was very forgiving of sudden changes in line in the face of unexpected obstacles such as tractors, stray bricks and mud.
It usually gave a fair account of itself against the KH, at least until we had to blast back down the main roads for afternoon incarceration. The bike sometimes misbehaved under certain road conditions. Wet roads had a bad effect on the cornering. Worse still, this was unpredictable and so made journeys in the wet less than amusing.
This was the direct cause of my worst smash to date. While heading into Loughborough at a steady 65mph in a heavy thunderstorm the rear cover suddenly completely lost its grip. As I slid down the road on my backside, I was able to watch the bike following on its right-hand side. The road was straight and devoid of traffic as well as being lubricated with plenty of water and I was wearing a complete set of heavy duty bike gear, so all that remained was to admire the view until I slid to a halt.
It was one heck of a sight, quite literally poetry in motion. The bike was silhouetted against a huge vee of orange sparks produced by the grinding down of the footrest. Beyond that, in turn, was an evening sky black with thunder, with trees lashing about in the storm. The sounds of thunder and grinding metal added to the atmosphere. I had to spend the evening stitching my Kett gear back together and the next day rebuilding the bike. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the experience was worth the risk and the damage but it was certainly a sight I'll never forget.
More predictable than wet conditions were the effects of that shiny black tar they insist on using to stick together bits of the road. The GT absolutely hated the stuff. It twitched slightly on road markings but it absolutely skittered across black tar. Provided you saw it coming, however, it wasn't a problem. Ripped up road surfaces, found where the tarmac has been stripped off, literally threw the bike. That stuff was the bane of my life - I'd be running along, minding my own business, when suddenly a roadworks sign would zip past and two seconds later I'd plunge down a four inch drop in the road on to a miniature version of the Montana badlands. After a hairy mile or so spent trying to keep the tyres from tracking the grooves so thoughtfully provided I had to bounce up over another four inch mini cliff on to a real road surface, passing a sign that offered sincere apologies for trying to make me crash.
To be fair to the steering and suspension, the main causes of this bad behaviour were the two original, godawful, hard as steel, Jap tyres. The rear lasted to 10,000 miles and was mistakenly replaced by an Avon Deathmaster that refused to wear out. The guy who bought the GT off me immediately replaced the tyres with Metzelers and gained a substantial improvement in handling.
As mentioned previously, wear in the swinging arm bearings appeared at around 8000 miles, producing a certain sloppiness in cornering which was diminished by tightening the arm's axle as well as packing it full of grease through the grease nipple. By 12000 miles the slop was so bad it couldn't be adjusted out, resulting in a nasty straight line weave, but I never bothered to fix it as it remained as no more than a mild irritation.
I had fitted the front forks with gaiters immediately on delivery and never had any problems with the seals. The forks were adequate save they dived rather too easily. The rear shocks, adequate solo, had caused the back end to pogo about like the front row at a Clash gig when a pillion was on board.
Like all small bikes, the GT always responded enthusiastically to the slightest movement of the pillion. Usually, this was something that could be compensated for but when an idiot tried to fall off sideways while we were going around a tight bend things became distinctly unstable and we nearly ended up in the radiator grill of an oncoming Escort van.
The cycle parts aged surprisingly well on such a small machine which had both been used and parked in all weathers. The alloy discoloured after a few winters but the chrome remained intact despite receiving only very infrequent cleaning. In keeping with tradition, the low quality vinyl seat cover split. The mudguards remained completely rot free, mainly because I coated the inside surfaces with underseal. Paint has remained reasonably intact.
The main problems came from the gearbox, these started in the third year. Before that it ground down the brushes in the dynamo thus leaving me stranded in the dark and pouring rain on an empty hillside halfway between my lodgings and the University campus. I had spent days ignoring the flashing idiot light that said the battery was not charging, so it was really all my own fault.
Mention of the dynamo brings me to a peculiarity of the GT's electrical system. In place of a separate alternator and starter motor the GT has a dynamo which acts as both. This gets regarded dubiously these days, but in practice it's an effective arrangement which proved very reliable in both capacities.
Having forced me to push it home for the first time in our relationship, the bike was happy to more or less behave itself for a couple of terms and restricted itself to chewing through a couple more chains. The machine was fitted with a pretty substantial looking chain which wouldn't have been out of place on a 350. Despite this, constant adjustment and boiling in Linklyfe every weekend, there seemed to be no way to extend chain life beyond 3000 miles. Sprockets died in about 7000 miles, one stripped off all its teeth.
During these two terms the Suzuki also lost its kickstart lever on a trip home to Norwich and developed a copious leak in the petrol tap that forced me a buy a replacement rather than risk being consumed by flames. A new set of rings at 17000 miles revitalised the engine. The gearbox problems started as difficulty in finding second gear and rapidly progressed to the point where the bike had two gearboxes - first and neutral or second through to fifth. Whichever you chose before starting the engine you were stuck with until you turned it off again. This wasn't as bad as it might sound, since second could pull the machine away two up if necessary.
The problem got steadily worse, compounded by a sudden increase in mileage, until every change was accompanied by heart wrenching, graunching noises from the box. After all these miles of brute force gearchanges I was expecting to see something of a mess when I finally got around to opening up the box. To my amazement the gears looked like new but the selector fork was bent. A new fork solved that problem.
The bike spent Christmas 1981 buried in a five foot snowdrift. Much to my delight, it fired up first kick, something none of the other bikes similarly buried managed. Later, it was vandalised by someone who had made an incompetent attempt at removing a few minor bits, doing quite a lot of damage in the process. After I fixed it, circumstances conspired so that the bike was stored for a few years, by which time I wanted a bigger bike so sold the GT.
It was a bike which, on the whole, I remained happy about throughout almost ten years of ownership. It was a superb back lane sprinter and something of a classic little two stroke. It had character with no significant faults and if I could buy another in good condition I would seriously consider it for rushing around country lanes on summer days.
Lincoln Rickwood