The classifieds in MCN revealed that finding a decent example was not going to be so easy. Pertinent questioning of the vendors over the phone soon revealed bikes that sounded promising as on their last legs - it’s much better to spend £2 on a long telephone call than £30 on a train trip.
A month passed and I began to be dispirited. I went to see a T reg bike that turned out to look very nice but application of compression tester revealed:a difference of over 50psi between cylinders. The vendor dropped his price by £200 to £700, but it was five years old and didn’t feel right so I left an unhappy owner, hoping I'd made the right decision.
I did, two weeks later an A-reg bike was advertised as being crashed but rideable. A long telephone call later, left me in a state of shock - I mean would you really tell all the truth to a prospective purchaser of your crashed bike? I held back and it did some good, the next time I phoned the price had tumbled. £950, for a bike that was then only one year old? To be honest, I expected a wreck, but when he arrived I at first thought that he must be out on another bike. Where were all the faults?
A few scratches on the grab rail, exhausts, crash bars and head fins; tank resprayed, new bars, no tacho... I forgot all this on the test run, what a difference from the last bike I tried - it picked up with such ease, flicked smoothly thru the box and stopped like someone had just dropped anchor. There were no weaves or wobbles at any speed - I was in love. Upon my return the seller must have known he was richer just by my large grin.
After picking the bike up and travelling the 260 miles home I soon found out the bike’s first bad point - those bars forced out my wrists and put all my weight on my wrist joints, and boy did they ache; they had to go. Bad point number two soon followed. Seeing that it was crashed I decided to totally strip everything just to have a look. I found everything in order, save for a leaking head gasket. I bought one from the local dealer but found I had a head with an extra bolt - the dealer refused to change it because I hadn’t told him that Suzuki had changed the head!
Finally, I found a helpful dealer in Manchester who informed me that I had a GZ model. The real shock came when I enquired about the cost of the tacho - pay £110 now and wait for 6 months. Somebody was pulling my leg. I would even have to wait 6 months for a grab rail. I decided to forget it, no wonder the guy sold the bike. The bike I thought was a good buy was rapidly turning into something of a white elephant. But I must not slag it off too much as the engine really is quite excellent. Many two to three hundred mile trips up north returned 45mpg at speeds of at least 80mph.
The engine is quite capable of propelling the bike at very high speeds, but you go above 80mph at your peril. My test ride hadn’t taken in such fast speeds and I had quite a shock after I’d owned the bike a while when temptation overcame native caution. The bike goes into the most horrific weaves and twists all over the place. The one way to get out of this is to carry the kitchen sink on the back, the more mass carried there the better the ride at high speeds. I tried every possible set up of the adjustable forks and rear dampers, even different fork oil, all to no avail.
I also tried many makes of tyres. Metzeler were the worst. I left home for a trip to Birmingham, some 300 miles later it was totally bald. Contis lasted well, but don’t go out in the wet. By far the best I’ve tried are Dunlop K262 & K263 Arrowmaxes. Plenty of feel, held the road really well and lasted for reasonable distances - 9000 for the front and 7000 miles for the rear.
I had done 15000 miles when it started to rattle; just a small rattle. I first checked the shims (I’ve only had to change four in 30000 miles) but they were OK. The camchain had some wear in it, phoning the dealer produced the usual response, a six week wait. So off I went on a bike with a rattle - it took 8 weeks and £47 before it arrived.
Engine removal is quite easy save for the weight. You really do need two people. When I took the barrel off only three of the pistons stayed with their con-rods while I fell sideways. The cause of my rattle was found to be a sheared gudgeon pin and, yes, there was loads of wear left in the camchain - was the air blue?
With a new gudgeon pin and the engine back where it should be, I was back on the road. For the next year it gave me trouble free biking. I did a few European trips, one clocking up 2000 miles in three days, skirting with the dangerous handling by often getting the speedo touching the ton. To say I was a happy biker was an understatement. Then a black cloud appeared when the engine rattle came back. I decided to strip the engine before buying any bits this time. All the pistons stayed where they should, but the one that had given me trouble before had shot its big-end - this was going to be expensive.
The Suzuki dealers refused to exchange the crank (do pigs fly?) but recommended SEP of Keyworth, who refused to give me a set quote, just a rough guess. Their time estimate of two weeks rapidly disappeared because they were having trouble getting the parts. Heron Suzuki refused to talk to me - ’we don’t deal with the public.’ Who the hell do they think buy their bikes? Luckily, I found a champion for my cause, Kate at Brian Bardsleys (Caernarfon 3060) persuaded Suzuki to fly my parts out from the Land of the Rising Sun straight to SEP, who then dropped everything and fixed my crank. The bill was £236, but they did do an excellent job and it hasn’t given any problems in the last 11000 miles.
The brakes were excellent but I decided to improve them still further by fitting Goodridge hoses and DOT 5 silicon fluid. This proved such an improvement in braking that the discs cracked which took me straight back to the parts problem.
The paintwork is still in good condition, the chrome is still chrome not rust. The original exhausts lasted 27000 miles, the shocks for 30000 miles (more if the IOM steam packet company hadn’t bent them). Perhaps most surprisingly, they were much better than the Koni replacements. All the casings come up really well with Solvol.
At present I’m averaging 47mpg with a best of 70mpg and worst of 30mpg. The bike’s fast enough to attract Mr Plod but she’s no racer. Running costs are reasonable. As a tourer it’s in its element, and it’s also a jack of all trades. Would I sell it? No. Would I buy another one? Yes. And that says it all.
L. Astley-Jones