Wheelies! That's what the DR seemed to be all about. With 16000 miles done when I bought it, the clutch was rather vicious. Every time I took off from a standstill the bike bolted forward, the front wheel waggling in the air, a couple of feet off the ground. A much modified exhaust and open Amal carb, large enough for a thumper of twice the capacity, made a wicked noise.
It also made the engine sulk below 3000rpm, roar from then on to about 4500rpm when the real power punched in. The grunt of a big single on cam has to be experienced, a large dollop of torque that hit me in the pit of the stomach, especially when the chassis had been worked over to the extent that the DR400S weighed less than 300lbs.
It was still in trail form as I live out in the country and enjoy the odd blast across fields or through forests. The DR was wearing Avon Gripsters, which were a bit more road oriented than I would have liked, but they were relatively cheap and lasted for ages. They didn’t like mud very much, clogging up and slithering all over the place, but on dry tracks they were tolerable. The faster I rode the better they became, which was just as well as the motor all but refused to run below 3000rpm.
The big Amal carb had come off some old British single, been refurbished, but only rarely ran cleanly at low revs, despite much fiddling with jets and slides. Once some serious revs were up, though, power flowed freely and in abundance. As might be imagined, starting a cold engine could be traumatic - I often had to heat a spark plug up and jiggle it in melting hands until it was put home. The decompressor valve helped with the amount of effort needed on the kickstart lever, but it took half a dozen kicks to fire up.
Starting a hot engine was a bit easier; just as well, as the motor would often stall in traffic, the cause of maximum embarrassment. I often ended up doing a bump start, as it was quicker than pissing around with the kickstart. It was so light, and lacked any dragging disc brakes, that a bump start was really no great inconvenience.
Running turned interesting in the dark when the ever so minimal lights gave the electrical system severe convulsions. It was often necessary to blip the throttle to 5000rpm to stop the engine stalling, which in turn solved the paucity of electricity hitting the ignition circuit by blowing the light bulbs. I didn't quite see it in that benevolent way, cursing the machine for hours afterwards. The electrics were a mere six volts and the tiny battery lasted hardly any longer than my patience.
Further amusement was added when the DR did the usual Suzuki trick of burning out its rectifier. The first hint was obscured by the aforementioned trait, I thought it was just the vibration that was blowing the bulbs....I eventually sussed the cause when the bike went completely dead in the middle of a particularly mad farmer's field.
Pushing the DR back out was hard work, but the adrenalin rush of sighting a couple of wolf-sized dogs rushing across the field helped. I made it with moments to spare, slamming the gate on the foaming at the mouth monsters. To see me on my way, the farmer let loose both barrels of his shotgun over my head.
Pushing the DR back out was hard work, but the adrenalin rush of sighting a couple of wolf-sized dogs rushing across the field helped. I made it with moments to spare, slamming the gate on the foaming at the mouth monsters. To see me on my way, the farmer let loose both barrels of his shotgun over my head.
I had my revenge, once the electrics were revived, by riding past his farm house at two o'clock in the morning. I could almost see his windows rattling as I revved to 7000rpm and the front door seemed to be buckling as the dogs tried to head-butt their way out. I left there on the back wheel with the dogs yapping around my head until I hit second gear and left them eating my exhaust fumes. After that little adventure I stayed away for a couple of months because I was damn sure he was going to ambush me.
Such antics were always a bit fraught with terrible possibilities. As well as the lights blowing the throttle cable could snap, however well it was routed and greased, leaving me with a dead motor, easy fodder for whoever I was annoying. To match the carb with the twistgrip I had to make up the cables myself - I was obviously missing some important point in the art of soldering. They rarely lasted for more than a 1000 miles.
Recently, the carb has taken to flooding in town, covering the engine in petrol. One imbecile threw a fag out of his window as I was trying to stem the flow. Whoosh! Almost took my eyebrows off! I ran away from the bike, not wanting to go up in flames as well, caught up with the cager who was stalled in traffic, and gave his tin box a good kicking. The fire had quickly gone out, it just caught the surface petrol, even the HT lead was still okay. Much fiddling with the float height and cleaning stopped it from happening more than once a month.
By the time I'd started the bike the cager had found a cop. They were walking towards me, requiring a swift U-turn through a very narrow gap in traffic, something that the DR managed with stunning ease. It was also good at hopping up on to pavements and the long travel suspension was able to soak up the deepest of pot-holes, even if at speed the handlebars would twitch a few times. Overall, the DR was an immensely comfortable town bike.
Another quirk of the DR, and I guess most big singles, is that when riding along at a decent clip the engine will go completely dead when the fuel runs out. No warning cough, by the time reserve is found the chances are that some cagers will have flattened the stalled machine. When that happened to me, I usually hit the horn and headed for the side of the road rather than pissing about with the reserve tap.
I usually kept an eagle eye on the mileometer, the bike averaging 70mpg. This was fine until the speedo cable broke, the connection at the wheel breaking off when I tried to pull it off; it was beyond reclamation. Thereafter I had to keep filling up the tank at every opportunity to avoid the stalled motor horrors when on the open road. In town, there was a bit of misfiring just before the engine went dead, so there was a reasonable chance of getting to the reserve tap in time.
The chassis was mildly modded, about the only weak spot the swinging arm, whose bearings lasted little more than 4000 miles. The DR was never entirely stable, down to its long travel suspension bouncing about but when the bearings went the back wheel slewed back and forth like a rat trying to shake off a hungry cat. So frequent were the bearing changes that the swinging arm spindle always popped out with just the slightest of blows from my hammer.
The DR's age was shown in its tiny drum brakes, which looked no bigger than those I had on my old FS1E moped (remember them?) and proved just as prone to fade. They were nicely sensitive off-road, when a locked up front wheel would've hurt, but riding through a minimal stream filled the drums full of water. A design fault that turned up on wet roads, when the braking disappeared altogether. I had to rely on engine braking, which was so fierce that clumsy downchanges would lock the back wheel up much more solidly than the back drum ever managed. I became so pissed off with the front brake that I ended up fitting a whole front end off an XT600 that had blown up its engine. God, that front disc was incredible, I nearly cartwheeled down the road the first time I used it in anger.
With some proper braking I was able to explore the engine's power to the full. 95mph turned out to be the maximum speed. Not that it was much fun, the whole bike shaking like some ancient washing machine filled full of ball bearings. With the trail bars not much more than 75mph was comfortable for more than a few minutes, even at that velocity there was quite a bit of vibration getting through.
At 28000 miles the valves started tightening up causing the performance to do a runner. I'd always given them a cursory look over every 5000 miles but they hadn't needed any attention until then. I set them up and it was back to business. A slight top end rattle is perfectly normal, the best way to check that the piston and valves are okay is to look for smoke in the exhaust and the engine breather.
I found out that the chassis was pretty tough when the rear drum seized on solid. A combination of worn out shoes and spindles. As it happened on a patch of gravel, the back wheel spun around throwing the whole bike completely out of control. We bounced off the road sideways, wedged our way through an innocent hedge and flipped over after hitting a ditch. My soft landing on the grass proved rather traumatic moments later when the bike landed on me. Country yokels came over to see what all the screaming was about, found my bruised body and third degree burns hilarious.
The DR was just a bit dented and scratched, after the back drum had been dismembered was back on the road. Not for long, the cheapo chain snapped, well, it was short of three links, the only way to make them last for more than 5000 miles. Down as much to the tiny engine sprocket as the thumper power strokes.
That wasn't the end of my woes, a few thousand miles later loads of pollution out of the exhaust indicated engine strip time. The OHC engine was easy enough to pull apart, needed a valve regrind, new valve seals and an oil ring. The bore and piston were only mildly worn. I went wild by buying a new gasket set as oil had already started weeping out of the cylinder. Rebuilt, the motor seems ready for another couple of years abuse. So am I.
Kevin Forster