When the guy pulled the '81 Suzuki GS850GT out of the garage I smiled in relief. I'd learnt not to believe anything I was told over the phone. This one, despite being ten years old, had only 8000 miles on the clock; looked as good as new. Even before I heard the motor I thought I'd have it. The test ride did nothing to dissuade me. One thousand notes poorer I was ready to take the world on.
Apparently, the way to get reasonable insurance for such a big bike is to obscure the cc markings on the engine and put 550cc transfers on the panels......Not that I would do a thing like that! Just joking, officer. Nope, I ended up paying out for third party insurance being but 22 years old and living in London. A couple of hidden theft deterrents along with two shackle locks would take care of the thief problem.
The GS850 is popular in the UK, although mine was imported from the Continent. Mine, judging from much modified electrics, had spent much of its time languishing in the garage from charging problems. I was assured that this was a thing of the past but didn't go far from home in the early days just in case I was going to be stranded miles from nowhere with a dead battery. I knew that there were plenty of 850s in breakers and that an electrical rebuild could be done at reasonable cost.
Assured that the electrics were indeed charging, I began to go further afield. The GS had one of those sensible riding positions that allowed me to whizz around town without much effort and also hold 90mph for a couple of hours. As my previous bike was a rat GSXR 750 this came as a massive culture shock. The GS felt very remote by comparison, giving sod all feedback from the ancient Pirellis but it was such a relaxing ride that I soon adapted.
Where the GSXR had been fast and twitchy, prone to monstrous wobbles if I didn't pay attention in bends, the GS was slow and ponderous, a carthorse to the GSXR's lean hurdler. The long wheelbase and 545lbs combined with the kind of conservative geometry that wouldn't have been out of place in a sixties Norton (which got its fast turning from low mass) resulted in a radical reappraisal of cornering angles and speeds. The GS would get around in the end but 10 to 30mph slower and with a lot more muscle expended.
However much these old retros are admired, their dated design can't be ignored or easily updated. To make matters much worse the rear shocks were original equipment that had lost any kind of damping. The back end shook so much over bumpy going that I was often thrown out of the seat, my spine taking a real pounding. No problem, I naively thought, heading for the nearest breakers. Having dissuaded the breaker that I was going to sell the bike to him for £200, and dodged a mangy Dobberman, I found a pair of suitable shocks only to be told that they were a hundred quid the pair.
I ended up buying a new pair of Marzocchi shocks and wasting half a day having rabies and tetanus shots after the breaker had let the dog loose when I'd foolishly laughed at his offer. I'm not complaining, mind, as I've now got a nurse for a girl friend. Up yours mate!
The joy at a firm rear end lasted no more than a fortnight as the previous oscillations had traumatized the swinging arm bearings. Or maybe it was just the complete absence of grease. Needless to say, the spindle was only removed after sufficient hammer force was applied to leave it, er, banana shaped. This time I found a friendly breaker who sold me a nice one for a fiver.
It was whilst fiddling around with the back end that I decided to investigate a churning, rattling noise on the overrun. My mate reckoned it was the gearbox bearings wearing out but I found this unlikely with such a low mileage. The shaft drive had absolutely no oil. The drain plug stripped its thread after it was finally persuaded out. New oil improved the transmission no end after the plug was coated in Plastic Metal and force-fitted. I'd drilled a hole through the plug and fitted a small self-tapper to allow subsequent lube changes.
On one early morning ride to work a horrible whining noise came from the shaft drive area. The self-tapper had fallen out. I rode gently home, fitted a new one and filled up with old engine oil as that's all that was available. The whine has persisted to this day but a bit of Loctite on the screw seems to hold it in.
Such delays were an excuse to ride like a maniac through town. With the compulsory engine bars fitted, the GS proved a bit too wide for comfort on several occasions but I felt it would just sail right through, such was the impression of mass and momentum. Ahem! When the engine bar caught the side of someone's bumper it pulled it right off the front of the car, with the sound of tearing metal waking up the cager. Well, that's what third party insurance is for, innit? The car looked like a write off. A bit of Solvol took out the minor scratches on the bars and restored the still immaculate finish.
For a 850cc motor the state of tune is relatively mild, the small bit of backfiring out of the standard 4-2 not causing me any concern. The silencers still shone up brightly but by 16000 miles they had rusted through from the inside out. I thought the exhaust was becoming a bit loud, as evidenced by the way some louts in a plod Metro nearly killed some peds by doing an highly illegal U-turn in a failed attempt at pulling me over. They didn't even get close enough to read the numberplate! I found out the state of the silencers when doing the weekly polish - a finger was poked right through the paper thin metal. A small amount of sawing, hammering and filing allowed me to fit a nice pair of pattern Goldie megas. A beautiful noise with only the slightest of carburation incontinence at 4000 revs.
The next bit of hard work came with winter and the dreaded salt on the roads. Yep, seized up calipers. This is a constant moan against old Japs but in the GS850's favour they did strip down easily. Just as well as they needed attention every month until the spring. Pads lasted 8000 miles and the brakes never convinced me that they were safe in the wet, let alone on the occasional patch of black ice.
Few bikes remain stable in such conditions but what I didn't like about the GS, despite its large front wheel shod in a newish Metz by then, was that the front end would let loose with no warning whatsoever. One moment I'd be sitting there freezing my balls off, the next I'd be warmed up thanks to the friction and fear generated as I slid along the road.
The GS was amazingly tough. Churning up huge swathes of tarmac, bouncing off cars and sweeping down lines of pedestrians but eventually coming to rest with nothing more than a few scratches and dents. My body was less used to such abuse but proper gear, including strategically placed bits of body armour, meant I was more bruised than bloodied. It made damn sure I never became bored!
After the winter most of the alloy and chrome had deep layers of corrosion. The bike was beginning to look its age, not helped by a blown head gasket that made disgusting noises and let the oil pour out. I tightened down one head stud so violently that it stripped its thread! With 22000 miles on the clock I had to take the top end down. As well as a helicoil job and new gaskets, the camchain needed replacing. I found the motor a real bugger to work on having only previously done a decoke on an AR125. The manual became vague at important points - how the hell do you pull the cylinder block off when it's corroded into the crankcase? I wedged a tyre iron between cylinder fin and crankcase and jumped on it. It only moved after I'd broken two fins.
Not entirely confident in my engineering abilities, I only rode the bike gently. It seemed to whirr away reliably for the next four months and 3000 miles. Fuel improved from 40 to 45mpg but I never felt it was a bike I'd like to keep for years and years. I was quite happy, even relieved, to off-load the GS for £750.
The GS850 feels very dated and isn't exceptionally reliable. Its shaft drive is nice, of course, but the weight makes it a bit of a pig in town and the consumable wear limits its appeal as a long distance tourer. I bought a Kawasaki GT550 as a replacement, which works better than the Suzuki in every way. If I wanted a cheap hack at around £500 I might be tempted by a GS850 but if I had to spend more I'd go for something else.
Julian Reynolds
****************************************************
Boom, boom, boom. The exhaust note of the straight-through silencer bounced out into the neon lit street as the 80,000 mile GS850 engine tried to catch. I was always surprised, as I headed off for the night-shift each time, that no-one called the police. Perhaps they did and by the time they turned up I was well on my way. I was still living with my parents who had toiled all their lives to make it into middleclass suburbia.
The motor finally roared into life just before the battery was about to give up....the electrical system had always been precarious, given half a chance trying to turn the Suzuki into a raging conflagration. There was little left that was standard - Superdream regulator/rectifier, rewound alternator, car headlight, indicators off a GS450 and lots of bodged wiring. Batteries lasted little more than six months but at least I'd gutted out the space under the seat to enable me to fit a small, cheap car battery.
I rode up the street, playing loony tunes on the pipe, slightly surprised that the gearbox was, as ever, slick, although some slackness in the still untouched shaft drive would cause the back end to lurch around in corners if I wasn't careful with the downchanges. The GS was a big bugger which reacted to having the back wheel step out a few inches by throwing the rider off the bike. Don't ask me how I know.
General handling was passable if you knew how to master the beast. Brute force is the answer to most of the Suzuki's inclinations towards running off the road. That and a newish set of Metzelers. Wide bars give a good chance of winning in the inevitable wrestling matches that result from fast riding. A cut and thrust technique through the bends irons out the worst of the wobbling and avoids the exhaust and stands digging big holes out of the tarmac; also results in bulging forearms. But you need to start out strong.
Not that the old slug puts out a crazed amount of power, despite the loud exhaust and dumped the airfilter. No, top speed is not much more than 100mph (new ones might just crack 125mph), though to be fair there's enough torque to run from 25mph up to the ton in fifth gear. A useful facility on long distance hauls when I've almost gone out of my head with sheer fatigue and the last thing I need to do is play around with a temperamental power output.
Just getting the 35 miles to work each day could be a fearsome prospect, with cagers trying to blind me with their headlamps on unlit country roads and hedgehogs careering across the tarmac. Upright, the GS has the bulk to splatter them and carry on regardless. Banked over was another matter, with the front wheel losing adhesion, trying to slide off the road. A vicious wrench on the bars was the remedy but both quick reflexes and big muscles were needed.
Main beam always had a tendency to blow, down to the fierce midrange secondary vibes that had started to intensify come 65000 miles. They usually went just as the road decided to turn sharply. The bike is built heavy and tough, if you can hang on to the bars it's possible to ride straight through hedges and the like with minimal damage. I've done more injury to myself pulling the heap back out; Suzuki omitted to fit a reverse gear to overcome its huge mass and dragging disc brakes. More's the pity.
The brakes were another problem area. Calipers seizing up every 5000 miles, which was about all the pads ever managed. The calipers seized up so badly that it was a major hassle to disassemble them. I kept a spare set so I could take my time over their renovation. When one of the threads in the forks started stripping I started swearing. Used a longer bolt with a nut on one end. Simple but effective. Other bolts and threads are susceptible to alloy rot.
The braking, when everything was set up perfectly, was good, but that happy state did not last for very long. The front brake soon felt very spongy, giving zilch feedback about what the brake was doing. The first I knew about the wheel locking up was the tyre screeching and the front wheel trying to slide off the road. Not one for weak hearts or those who want to live to collect their pensions.
The back disc's demise was more gradual, eventually fading away to nothing or locking on solid. The red hot disc lost some of its metallurgical qualities and subsequently started to crack up. Even the front discs would eventually go the same way. Whenever I visited any breakers I was always a very willing customer for brake bits and soon had a stock of parts.
My 1979 engine has not actually been torn apart except for a clutch job and alternator rewind. Consequently, a two-stroke layer of smoke is put down on the overrun and a slighter nostril assault in fast forward mode. The valves needing a regrind, I think, but I am resisting the urge to tear the head off. I just know all kinds of expensive nastiness will be revealed. Many GS850s have made it past 100,000 miles without a major strip. As it is, oil goes through the engine at 150mpp, not helped any by copious leaks from the cylinder head gasket and gearchange shaft seal.
The oil leakage does wonders for the quality of the Jap alloy, with almost miraculous anti-corrosive properties. This adds to the rat appearance, more a cunning anti-theft device than mere apathy and laziness on my part. Most of the chrome and paint has been replaced with matt black, in an attempt to confuse radar guns rather than an admittance of colour blindness.
The only girl I ever persuaded on the back lasted just a week - that was how long it took to wipe out her whole wardrobe. I told her the layer of oil and crud would keep off the water and make her warm in winter, but she didn't listen. Women! My own rotted leathers probably didn't help in the courting game.
Fuel is another expense, 35 to 40mpg. Long runs have become a bit dubious; in addition to the expense there's also the uncertainty as to when the bike will eventually fail. As tough as the GS series can be, the bigger engines do have a tendency to drop their exhaust valves. More than likely because no-one can be bothered checking the valves until the problem is all too obvious. My solution was to join the AA!
As mentioned, I have taken the 850 on some long runs. The seat was good for about 80 miles before I started shuffling around. 50 miles later I was happy to stop for fuel. The best cruising speed was 80mph, the handling was okay for motorways and the vibes tolerable. More than 300 miles of that kind of cruising caused all my muscles to seize up. Once, I was so far gone on the fatigue of a 600 mile in a day hustle that I rode straight past the turn-off for my house. My mind had shifted into a must keep going mode. It was only when I glanced at some familiar buildings that I knew I'd gone too far.
The GS is so physically big and heavy that it tends to sink into the mud at campsites. I once managed so much wheelspin that as well as digging a yard deep hole in the ground I covered about two dozen fellow bikers plus their frails, tents and bikes, in a deep layer of mud. They were not too amused, tying me between two Harleys, which were throbbing with power. They only let me go after the rope had gone taut and I'd pissed my pants. Told me not to come back unless it was on a Hog.
Fat chance of that on my paypacket. I really should be riding to work on a Honda step-thru rather than the GS, which goes through consumables in a thoroughly ridiculous manner (I've had back tyres last less than 4000 miles). I may indeed end up in such a sad state, the talk at work is of doing away with one shift due to the dreaded recession.
Still, if the motor does finally blow I can always spend my days resurrecting the bugger. I can just imagine how long it will take on the kind of money the dole will give out. Each time I leave work, I play havoc with the gravel, sending a huge plume over the directors' plush cars and then as soon as I hit the road, doing a huge wheelie with the horn blaring away. On the GS that takes a lot of nerve, lose a bit of balance and the thing will go into cartwheel mode. A fantastic feeling of freedom runs through me when I do this. It'll probably maim me for life or get me the sack. But I don't give a damn!
Phil
****************************************************
After three false trails - one bike had indications of light damage that could've been serious; another with knocking main bearings that drowned out the exhaust; the third an obvious DR hack with its tank and panel paint worn down to the metal - I found what I'd thought was a suitable machine.
A 22000 mile, three year old 1987 model. My euphoria dissipated when I realised that the name in the registration document wasn't the same as the vendor's, who bore a passing resemblance to Arthur Daley on one of his bad days. These kind of people seem to infest the used motorcycle scene, consuming hours of my precious time in wasted journeys as they lie like a politician over the phone.
But after half an hour's test riding I'd decided that all was well and at £900 it was too good a deal to miss. The engine purred nicely, the chassis held things in line and the bike felt like a good 'un I'd seen rat GS850's on offer at the same price. After a while you get a feel for a machine. However I was still dubious about the vendor and wondered if I was doing the right thing. His parting, shark-like, grin gave me the willies.
I wanted something with a shaft drive, good cruising ability and large dimensions to suit my own excesses. There were a couple of alternatives to the GT, but around the grand mark they didn't have much life left in them. I'd tried an XJ900, GT750 and even an immaculate XS850 but none really impressed on first acquaintance. By a process of elimination the worthiness of the GT had won out.
On closer examination over the next few days I pieced together what must've happened to the GS850. The electrical system was much modified, the alternator's cover screws mangled and a whole stack of wiring replaced with unmarked black wires that would be a horror story to put back together if it ever fell apart. The battery looked new, confirming that the old girl had a complete electrical burn-out in the hands of the first owner and had been fixed by the second, who was probably some kind of back lane creature. I hoped he knew what he was doing and the replacements were to a better standard than stock.
Although I was big enough to go back and thump him if things went wrong, the first couple of months were a bit edgy as I expected some major problems. Soon, though, we were old friends who were getting on well. If the GS was a big old-fashioned style of cycle it was well matched to my own 200lbs of meat. Wimps might have trouble handling the GT, but I could fling it around without feeling that I was forcing a workout on myself.
I did find the front brake a bit weak, needed a hell of a lot of muscle to make it squeal the tyre. There was more mushiness than feedback, so its lack of power wasn't that great a disaster. The rear brake had more of a steadying effect than a braking one. I had to do some high speed manoeuvres, to avoid hitting cagers, that left the bike wobbling all over the shop.
One reason for a large bike was the 20 miles trip back and forth to work every day. This was commuting with a vengeance that included five miles of crowded motorway, eleven miles of even denser A-roads and the rest town work through completely stalled traffic. As I always left for work at the last moment, the GS was caned without mercy. 110mph on the motorway, up to 90mph on the A-roads and a sometimes terrifying blitz through town traffic.
You'd think that with all the cars stalled dead there wouldn't be much danger. Wrong! For a start, the cages arranged themselves so that a fluid route on a bike became impossible. I'm sure they did this deliberately just to spoil the day for any stray motorcyclists left on the road.
Manhandling the Suzuki up pavements and through a couple of right-hand turns, slowed me down to a pretty pathetic pace. At one point on the route I always seemed to meet this old guy on a step-thru, fag dangling out of his mouth looking ridiculous with an oversized open-face helmet on his head, who'd hustle through gaps I couldn't take and hammer off into the distance. Very embarrassing, I'm sure the peds were laughing at me.
I'd often tried to go berserk on the throttle and horn, burn the bugger off. Most times I'd end up heavy on the brakes and bars trying to avoid hitting some cage that was creeping forwards into my gap at about 1mph. I know some people who'd give the car a good kicking or attack it with the engine bars, but hadn't yet reached that level of brain death.
This was only slightly less amusing than the time a cage tried to do a U-turn across my brows as I was accelerating along a line of cars on one of the stretches of A-road. Horn and prayers had no effect. Brakes and wrenching on the bars, with enough body movement to impress a ballerina, had me way over on the wrong side of the road.
I don't know who had the greatest screaming fit, the oncoming cager or myself. I ended up going right over to the other side of the road, churning up the gravel as the back end swung from side to side. The horns took a long time to quiet down, as did my heart rate.
I don't normally ride like a nutter even when all the stalled cars blocking the road cause me to froth at the mouth. I've come off too many times in the past to want to repeat the experience - it hurts a lot.
Despite its mass I found the GS quite difficult to fall off, its steering geometry was so conservative that you'd have to do something very stupid to enjoy the tarmac rash syndrome. Even with stock suspension, that was quite useful at combating the ruined roads, there wasn't any hint of nastiness in the chassis.
The Suzuki suffered from typical problems with the breed, although electrical hassles were, thankfully, absent. The silencers blew, making a god-awful racket until a couple of universal cans were knocked on. The carburation didn't need any jetting changes, even when I had to revive the airfilter with a screwdriver. The calipers kept seizing up, allied with an astonishing rate of wear from both the pads and discs.
At least the shaft drive removed the usual worries over the drive chain, it didn't churn up the back wheel to any great extent. Some clunkiness was removed by doing an oil change. The gearchange was marvellous, slick and precise as any I've come across; the change worked faster than the engine revved. I could get used to such luxuries.
For some reason there are a lot of thrashed GS850GT's on offer. It's well worth hunting down one of the good examples. They are very competent bikes.
Mark Hale