From then on the Suzuki was parked inside the house and the dog told to sleep next to it. I woke up one morning to find the canine out for the count and the front door almost off its hinges. Someone had popped some doped meat through the letterbox and then tried to lever the door out of its frame. From then on total paranoia ruled.
Someone obviously had the hots for the GT and was desperate to get their hands on the pristine relic from the seventies. The bike was in such good nick because I'd rebuilt it from the crankshaft up, using new parts whenever possible not as expensive as it sounds as there are a couple of dealers selling off old stock at deep discounts. I had about £1200 invested in the machine in total but if it was stolen would get back only around £200 from the insurance company. Talk about rip-off merchants.
After the attempted break in I rode the bike in a fervour of revs and haze of exhaust fumes, just to make sure that no-one was following me around ready to steal the bike the moment I left it parked up. My friends thought I'd gone completely mad, muttering about who'd want to steal such an old stroker. Riding the GT250, though, was a bit like riding an old Brit, all kinds of characters would pop out of thin air, claiming to have owned one just like it in their youth.
They are rare, these days, as most have been revved and ridden into the gutter. It's not that difficult to ruin the small-ends or even the whole crankshaft, few examples making it past 20000 without needing a complete engine rebuild. Even the chassis was designed to wear out quickly, with a combination of shot bearings and rusted through cycle parts.
With strong acceleration to 75mph and a top speed of 90mph, they are quite handy tools but not quite up to taking on the Yam RD250, which was the fastest stroker back in the early seventies. A porting job and a pair of spannies will let the GT break through the ton, at the price of an engine that won't last for more than 5000 miles and some chassis wobbles that would even worry Kawasaki triple owners, another stroker from that wild era...
My strange obsession with this machine came about through a sheer accident. My cousin bought a rat GT250 for £50 but gave up on the renovation and sold me the thing in about a million bits for a hundred quid. There’s nothing quite like rebuilding a bike from the ground up to become totally immersed in its character. There’s a fantastic feeling of pride when the motor finally wails into life after months of effort.
The first ride was an event in itself. The engine seemed reluctant to go beyond 6000rpm, with a heavy haze of pollutants descending on the immediate area. The motor had taken a while to start, one of the plugs oiling up slightly. When it cleared up the power zapped in and I had the front wheel up around my earlobes. The engine was screaming at fantastic revs, not at all conducive to running in. I slammed the throttle shut only to find that the carbs were stuck fully open. Before the whole bike vaporized in a frenzy of buzzing I hit the kill switch.
After re-routing the throttle cable and saying some prayers I was back in business. Surprisingly, this harsh initial treatment didn’t do the engine any harm and persuaded me that there was no point spending thousands of miles carefully running it in. Within a hundred miles I was using maximum revs and revelling in the power punch put out by the stroker twin.
Handling was rather weird but not all that surprising as this bike came from an era when the Japanese had not quite grasped the implications of frame strength, weight distribution and steering geometry. The bike felt light at the front, weak at the back and generally rather remote from the road even on a set of Avon tyres that used on other bikes had encouraged much madness.
It didn’t seem particularly dangerous the weaves - almost certainly due to the weak swinging arm support (bearings last only 4000 to 5000 miles) - never grew into wild wobbles, and the few times the back tyre let loose without any warning I was able to pull back the 350Ibs of metal without much effort.
It took about three months to become used to the cornering. The Suzuki never felt like it was wholly committed to the line I wanted to take and needed lots of minor corrections on the high and wide bars that were standard fare. The front end was constantly deflected and upset by minor road surface imperfections. I did find that if I crouched over the bars, the added mass on the front wheel had a tranquillising effect. This led to the first major mod, fitment of ace bars. Such an addition was, back in the seventies, almost compulsory on the GT250 - as well as giving much improved front end accuracy it also made for a racing crouch that helped eke out the effect of the 27 horses on 75 to 90mph performance.
Sixth gear was rather tall and only made any sense when the bike was ridden flat out with a following gale. I often ended up flicking up and down the box between third and fifth to keep the power flowing in as the road and traffic conditions changed. Ridden with a bit of elan the GT could be forced to fair fly along. Well, it'd stay ahead of my mate's derestricted TZR125 when I was in the mood to chance my luck in the curves.
Below 5000 revs the engine ran cleanly as long as it was purged with a brief burst of acceleration every ten minutes. Denying the engine its chance of glory resulted in one of the plugs oiling up despite having the oil pump turned down to its minimum setting and using modern stroker lubricant. A half litre of oil was needed every 150 miles whilst fuel economy varied between 35 and 50mpg.
After a little while I became quite confident in the Suzuki’s handling. If stability wasn’t as inspiring as a Ducati there was none of the mad unpredictability of a Kawasaki triple. When the stand’s prong or my boot started to dig into the tarmac I knew it was time to back off. If anything solid touched down it’d try to lever the back wheel off the ground. A terrifying lurch then ran through the whole chassis that left me weak at the knees and sick to the pit of my stomach. Felt like the frame was breaking up and the end was nigh. However, it was easily avoided by backing off on the throttle or taking a more upright line through the corner.
Despite being over 20 years old, having engine power that wouldn't impress most seventeen year olds and handling like something out of the ark, the character of the bike was so strong to still emerge as providing, if not defining, lots of motorcycle fun. I’ve ridden Yamaha strokers and Kawasaki triples of the same era, but both these bikes struck me as being too hard edged to be much fun (those who want to die young should consider putting a tuned RD250 motor in a KH250 chassis).
You may decide to dismiss this as merely the ranting of some kind of dangerous addict, but the past 14000 miles of trouble free riding (with just 1000 mile maintenance sessions) have only served to confirm my belief in the Suzuki. It occurs to me, as I write this, that my once serious and solemn face is usually found to be grinning widely with an excess of laughter lines around my eyes; that someone out there observing the transformation made by ownership of the GT250 wants a piece of the action and will stop at nothing to steal the Suzuki...
J. L.