With my usual crystal clear foresight I sold my bike on Thursday night. I had Friday off and five day's wicked shifts starting at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon and no bus service to work. All I wanted was something over 500cc and under £700 on the road, that I could ride to work the next day and all over the place in the coming months with nothing more than an oil change and the occasional new bulb.
The only advertiser who answered the phone in the local rag was the owner of a Suzuki GS550E. The bike was garaged and very clean. It had a filled oil leak on the alternator cover, shot steering head bearings, no tax, the wrong engine number in the logbook (I later out found that it was an early engine), a worn out rear tyre and I thought it was one of the least exciting bikes I had ever ridden. So, I bought it for £505 after some pretty hard bargaining.
A new set of throttle cables at £16 (which didn't fit properly) and a set of pattern taper roller head bearings were fitted on Saturday morning. An oil change a week later and a used Pirelli Phantom was fitted at the princely cost of £5. I am not noted for religious attention to chain maintenance but even I was surprised at having to adjust the sagging links after just a week and remove a link after three weeks. Six weeks and 1500 miles saw a new chain and back tyre - the Pirelli was down to the cords in the carcass (it had 3mm left when I fitted it). The rear suspension was a joke which, 18 months later, is even less funny.
Over the years, Suzuki seem to be very fond of coining acronyms so it is surprising that they haven't thought of Dabs to describe the GS550's brakes. As in Delayed Action Braking System, a perfect description of the way the triple discs don't work in the wet. Screaming sintered metal pads don't make any difference, so don't bother trying them. The calipers need stripping once a year to prevent them binding and the rear disc pedal needs more of a stamp than most drums.
Most of the bike's limitations can be attributed to its excess weight for a 550 at well over 450lbs. The GS550E is very stable both at very low town speeds in traffic and through some very fast bends but it does need a lot of hustling around corners, so I tried fitting some higher, wider bars off an old CB500T - much better at low speeds but a real pain above 60mph. I soon changed back to stock bars.
The bike has the same kind of stability as the better British bikes, probably thanks to the relatively huge 19" front wheel. It doesn't get blown about by sidewinds and even the soggy rear suspension doesn't really upset it, I sometimes wonder how good it would be with decent suspension. It really needs to drop a hundred pounds to make use of the engine's minimal power, although there are big bore kits that take the engine out to as much as 740cc, a huge increase in capacity that just goes to show how tough is the basic engine - could this be the strongest multi around?
The weight combined with a small engine sprocket give the GS its Achilles heel - chain life is brief. Cheap chains or expensive heavy duty types last for no more than 4000 miles whether they are bathed in Linklyfe or left to rot. The sprockets seem to last forever but link removal becomes a regular ritual. The proximity of the clutch pushrod to the engine sprocket makes it impossible to fit a decent sized (as in 21 teeth as opposed to 16) cog.
A cheap front Conti fitted for £20 with a new tube has shown little wear in 8000 miles and a Michelin M48 still has 2mm at its worst wear point after the same mileage, although it does now whiteline quite badly.
Power delivery is never shocking, although it can be run up to between 90 and 95mph without too much effort or stirring of a typically precise Suzuki gearbox. Beyond that, it needs a long road and an awkwardly crouched rider to extract the top speed of around 110mph. Secondary vibes are never very apparent, I guess most of them are soaked up by the sheer mass of the engine and frame.
Comfort is reasonable up to around 150 miles, when it's time to look for a petrol station anyway, whilst pillions are still talking to me, so it can't be that bad on the back. Styling is either bland or classic depending on your point of view; cycle part paint ain't too bad, most of the chrome is still there, although the poor old engine alloy suffers from corrosion.
If I haven't mentioned the engine yet it's because it has drawn little attention to itself. A bad oil leak around the tacho drive prompted me to take the cam cover off. The leak was caused by some jerk destroying the thread and repairing it with Araldite, which eventually worked loose. While the cover was off, the valve clearances were checked and needed no correction, just as well as the camshafts control buckets and shims. The camchain and tensioner both looked in good shape. The previous owner told me he had not looked at the engine for ten thousand miles and I'd done the same; no mean achievement for any engine. Regular oil changes are a must, though, and the filter clogs up quite quickly so that should be changed at the same time.
The earlier GS550 had slide carbs instead of CVs and a kickstart. These two features are its greatest assets. The bike will accept any aftermarket exhaust with minimal changes to the jetting but the later versions with CV carbs are reputed to be extremely temperamental about non standard parts (not true, I ran mine on a straight through system after the silencers fell apart and then on Goldie megas with no trouble - Ed). The later engine is all of three horsepower more powerful - really noticeable after eight years abuse and neglect - and the almost self adjusting nature of CV carbs make them much more economical.
With a very loud, almost baffle free system of unknown origin, my slide carb engine did between 35 and 50mpg. I generally find published figures are optimistic compared to mine and I only work them out when I've really got nothing better to do. The lower figure is typical of the cold commuting thrash and the higher figure is for motorway journeys in warmer weather. A 1500 mile round trip to the Orkneys used 45mpg and 200mpp of oil due to a leak. Wynn's Stopleak cured that without replacing the miscreant O-ring but the problem has gradually reappeared. Cans of stuff scientifically designed to plug mysterious and inaccessible leaks should be treated with great caution as they can also block the narrow oilways in modern engines.
Although my GS550E has the kickstart engine, it also has the later more common chassis with cast wheels. Presumably two wrecks had been combined in the past, but the job done well enough not to cause any hassle. A few gobs of Hammerite and some steel wool up the exhaust got it through its most recent MOT. In 18 months it has only let me down once, an electrical fault cause by chafed wires. I've never felt tempted to keep a bike more than a year before but the Suzuki has drawn so little attention to itself that I didn't notice how long I'd owned it until the other day, which must be a recommendation.
Recently, I was riding two up with a passenger who'd never sat on a bike before but who likes driving fast. Some wally with an XRi-something was determined to make an exhibition of himself at the lights, so I made an exhibition of myself and missed third gear on full throttle. When the tacho needle had unwrapped itself there was a very expensive sounding misfire and no power at all. The compression gauge when later applied to the engine registered in the sod all zone on one cylinder and well down on another. Bent valve stem? Rings broken? Gasket blown? Who knows, because within a week the GS had cured itself, as I had half believed it would. Would I buy another? I'm not planning to sell this one yet.
Skid
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The engine sounded like new and the gearbox was still slick. The rest was rat city, the result of 15 years and over 100,000 miles of abuse. The owner had panicked when I'd tried to give one of the silencers a kick - it was hanging on by just a thread of good metal. He was looking for £500, reckoning the engine had plenty of life left and that the frame was still as straight as the day she'd come out of the factory. Needed a bit of work to get the MOT, but a good GS would fetch £1500 and wasn't I lucky to get there ahead of the pack. Eventually, I agreed to pay £375.
There followed an arduous couple of weeks which saw the bike taken down to the frame and a large pile of bits, including the wiring loom, petrol tank and back wheel, dumped, as they were beyond sensible, or at least safe, reclamation. The massive 550cc DOHC mill was left alone, save that many days were spent lovingly bringing back the glow to its once bead-blasted cases, with black paint hiding the ravages of time to the cylinder and head.
Breakers visited, about a hundred notes spent on decent cycle parts. Another fifty on new bearings all round. Amazingly, both the Avon tyres and the chain and sprockets were all in fine fettle, although the rear inner-tube, with twenty patches, was replaced with a new one. Cleaning up the cast wheels was a major trauma but matt black paint hid most of the damage. The electrics were sorted with car type rectifier and regulator, and exchange alternator, plus lots of wire. Universal cans on the ends of the existing downpipes solved the exhaust hassles.
Once it was all put back together I had a machine that looked a little worn around the edges but wasn't the kind of motorcycle that annoyed cops nor was likely to be taken away by the dustmen if left parked in the wrong place at the wrong time. Teething troubles were down to the fuel pipe coming apart and one of the new spark plugs not working properly.
Performance was somewhat lacking. It was a heavy old thing at 450lbs and not over-endowed with power even when new, around 50 horses. A 100,000 miles had had some effect on the go-juice. Standing starts were lethargic, the bike having a little zip between 5000 and 8000 revs, then going all dead again. A 95mph, flat out, top speed was a little embarrassing and it'd only happily cruise at 70 to 75mph.
A dead loss? Well, not really, because the bike did another 30,000 miles without needing anything more costly than a new chain and a couple of sets of relatively cheap tyres. It would run as if on rails for most of the time, a marvellously secure feel once over 30mph. At OAP velocities the front end liked tuck in, especially if the twin front discs grabbed on.
The brakes weren't to my liking, being over-powerful at low speeds but not brilliant at motorway speeds. I found using engine braking and down-changing through the box the preferable way of losing speed; the pads consequently never wearing out. The brakes hated wet weather, but despite riding through a couple of winters I never experienced any caliper seizures - judicious if potentially dangerous application of WD40 every week kept the calipers in good fettle.
With 134,000 miles under its wheels, the top end went all rattly - bear in mind that I never actually checked the valve clearances or balanced the carbs. There had always been a staccato rattle at tickover but was just the clutch, which seemed able to take massive abuse without in any way retaliating. By then the chassis had again degenerated to rat status - the cycle parts suck in water and spit out rust.
I was seriously thinking about off-loading the bike on the nearest breaker, but I thought I might as well have a look. Inspired by a mate of a mate who had a couple of boxes of GS bits, that I could have my pick of, for free. Turned out the valves had eaten into their seats, the camshafts were loose on their bearings and that the piston rings had snagged on the cylinders. The crankshaft was still solid and the gearbox had showed no signs of electing any false neutrals. All I had to find was a decent cylinder, which the breaker offered for £35.
Putting it all back together again was a breeze. There was obviously an excess of components but it was all very straightforward. The worst part of it was heaving the sheer mass of the engine back into the repainted frame. The motor had a fair amount of rattling on starting up but seemed a bit more urgent on the open road, the speedo flicking past the ton with almost gay abandon.
Encouraged, I did a 5000 mile Continental trip, in which the speedo stayed over 80mph for most of the time. Towards the end of the trip, the thrashing combined with 100 degrees of heat meant that the lubricant disappeared from the sump after one exhilarating 125 mile blast.
The waves of heat coming off the motor, plus the gearchange locking up in fourth, made me aware that perhaps all was not well. I staggered off the Suzuki (it wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world) as the engine died with an almighty clunk. I walked to the nearest garage to buy some bottles of extortionately priced oil. By the time I'd returned the engine had cooled down, turned over okay and started after a bit of grumbling and backfiring. It didn't want to know about more than 5000 revs, but it was only 75 miles to Calais, so we sauntered homewards on the back of prayers and blind faith in the rugged engineering of the Suzuki. It would've been sad to have to dump the poor old thing in some forsaken foreign field.
By the time we reached home the main bearings were rumbling and the gearbox only had half the ratios working - the sump was also near empty again. Still, I was pleased that I hadn't been stranded and a large amount of the cycle parts were in good fettle, something worth keeping.
The bike was dumped in the garage for a couple of months until I saw a local advert for a crashed 550 Katana. Most of the damage was to the front end and the frame. I really liked the style of the machine and as the clock read only 67000 miles there was probably plenty of life left in the motor - mine for £275.
I transplanted the tank, panels, seat and, of course, the engine. Took half a day, was a good way to build muscles. I was a bit annoyed to find that the new engine rattled away merrily, with a loud tapping noise from the top end...the valve clearances were way out. Once that was done, it burbled nicely and provided the bike with the best impetus yet - 110mph on the clock.
Bearing in mind the result of my previous excesses, I took it relatively easy. Although evocative and stylish, the tank/seat unit was ludicrously uncomfortable for anything other than brief bursts through town; sorted cheaply enough by using higher bars with a more radical pull-back, no great loss bearing in mind my newly moderate throttle hand.
What can I say? The new combo has done almost 50,000 miles without blowing up or causing any major hassles. Well, I did find that the front cast wheel was going the same way as the back - cracking up around the hubs, this with 170,000 miles of abuse - and in the machine's defence I do a fair bit of pavement hopping. They are ubiquitous wheels in the Suzuki range, easily and cheaply replaced, but worth checking every month, or so, because the effect of them actually breaking up doesn't bear thinking about!
Even with everything in fine fettle, these aren't rip-snorting beasts of the highway, but they are safe, secure and very tough cycles that last twice as long as most Japanese tackle. The Katana's are more popular on the used market because of their brilliant styling but they also tend to be used a lot harder by the younger set.
The stock GS550, by its very moderate nature, appeals to the more mature owner, who often as not does many minor mods - I've just paid £800 for a 24000 miler with fully enclosed drive chain, neat BMW-style RS fairing, comfy leather seat and Vincent-style bars. A marvellously practical cruiser that I will take on another Continental jaunt this year...the other GS will remain in the fold, used when the weather turns foul. I really fancy a custom version, just to complete my collection...
T.F.
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After a year and 13000 miles with a rat 550 Katana, certain conclusions come to mind. The most obvious being that despite a neglectful 73000 miles worth of wear the DOHC four cylinder engine still whirrs away merrily. Less obvious was that I would become bored out of my head with the Suzuki. The result of slow steering and even slower performance!
That made me reluctant to do anything other than ride the bike into the ground, which judging by the state of the chassis was exactly what earlier owners, all seven of them, had done. It was the kind of bike that looked like it was due to fail, the past three or four owners had probably thought themselves well shot of the heap, but would've been amazed to find it still running!
My first run in with the bike was when one of the apparently original silencers decided to fall off. It was more rust than metal, anyway, cracking around its circumference a few inches up from where it mated with the exhaust down-pipe. Even having only one silencer on the 4-2 exhaust didn't upset the carburation, so mildly tuned was the 55hp engine.
As I expected, trying to take the exhaust off made the whole thing fall apart, old hacks tend to have bits that are held together by corrosion. Something of an appropriate shape was found in the breakers, hammered on; the 4-1 proved to be loud enough to cause next door's Dobberman to try to leap over a six foot wall to get at the bike. I couldn't expect much for twenty notes.
The next little trick was for the swinging arm bearings to wear so much that the slight weave became a monstrous wobble that not even I could ignore. Stability was generally solid, but with nigh on 500lbs of mass, ultra-conservative steering geometry and a 19 inch front wheel so slow turning that it ultimately limited speed through the twisties.
Whacking out the swinging arm spindle was another of those traumatic experiences so rendolent of life with old hacks. I had to put in a slightly less battered one along with a new set of bearings. For all I know (and it's damn all, really) the bearings might've been original. Whilst the back end was in a multitude of bits I thought I might as well strip the rear caliper which had worked once then seized up solid. It would've saved a deal of time, money and screaming if I'd just thrown it away and bought a replacement from the breaker, which is what I ended up doing eventually. It was cheaper to buy a complete caliper with part worn pads than a new set of pads.
The only other problem with stripping the back end down was that it revealed the cogs to be so worn it was a wonder that the chain, short of five links, stayed on and explained a lot of the transmission slop. After selling some garden implements I was able to splash out on some mildly worn items.
Was the Suzuki transformed? Like hell, the weaves had died down and the back brake made a half-hearted, albeit noisy, attempt at working, but the transmission was as unpredictable as the longevity of a heavily tuned FS1E. The gearchange linkage was so worn it ratted whenever I tried for a fast change to help out the slow revving motor, usually ending up in a false neutral. It was something I got used to over the months.
The front discs were worn down to the metal, screeched a lot, but still pulled up the bike quite well. They totally lacked feel, taking a handful would lock the wheel up as solidly as if they'd seized on. This proved terrifying on wet roads and persisted even after I'd scored a set of new pads in a moment of wild extravagance. The best that could be said for the front end was that the calipers never seized up.
The worst thing that happened to the engine was one of the inlet manifolds cracking up. This proved elusive, I went through plugs, wiring and even balanced the carbs before finding the cause of the poor running and misfiring. The combination of tape and Araldite fixed the manifold, but only after pulling off the bank of carbs.
The engine proved brilliant in its reliability, with electronic ignition, auto-camchain tensioner plus shim and bucket valves that had probably never needed adjustment since the bike was rolled out of the factory. The clutch rattled and dragged after about 30 minutes in heavy traffic and I would never have trusted it to the excess of abuse necessary to make the GS wheelie.
One thing that pissed me off was the daily need for chain adjustments, even with reasonable components fitted. I spent a whole afternoon lining up the wheels only to find it made not one iota of difference. Every time the wheel spindle nut was tightened up it tried to turn the wheel against the adjusters, making it a tiresome business to set up the correct tension and keep the back wheel straight. Chains rarely lasted for more than 3000 miles even if links were taken out.
The part worn tyres never lasted any longer, but at least they could be used down to the carcass without throwing the chassis into any evil wobbles and just about any make would work okay. I was always in a murderous mood by the time I'd ripped one tyre off and replaced it, the profile of the cast alloy rims made it excruciatingly difficult to put a tyre on without puncturing the inner-tube. One case where persistence didn't make perfect, even though I'd had too much practice.
Why consumables should wear so rapidly was way beyond my comprehension. It wasn't as if the engine put out searing power. It would run from 1500 to 10,500 revs without any sign of a powerband, although if I was in a particularly perceptive frame of mind I would pick up a hint of urgency come 7000rpm. Its excess mass must've been tearing the already worn consumables apart.
The Katana wasn't particularly nice to ride long distances. The sharp edges of its huge petrol tank (fuel was a reasonable 55mpg) dug into my thighs, the thin seat turned hard after only 75 miles and the long stretch over the tank only made sense at a 90mph cruising speed, something which the GS was still capable of, although further acceleration up to the top speed of 110mph was so slow I could've chanted half the bible in the time it took; not that I knew half or even 1% of the Good Book. The angle of the bars also made an otherwise light clutch feel Harley-heavy after 15 minutes of town riding. In its favour, the seat height was low.
The centrestand was absolutely diabolical, causing me to fall over twice. Unless you had Rambo-like muscle the routine was to put a foot down on the stand prong whilst standing to the rear of the bike, heaving with one hand on the back of the seat as all my weight was transferred on to the stand prong. This left me with one leg waggling in the air as the bike slowly ascended on the stand. The back wheel ended about a foot off the ground! Were not perfect balance and coordination combined, the result was that I'd fall over with the bike on top of me. The frequency of chain adjustments meant there was no easy way to avoid this horror, the wife refusing to lend a hand however much I pleaded. I think she was hoping I'd give up motorcycling in disgust. The sidestand, to be fair, banked the bike over at a safe angle and could be used on adverse cambers, and the like.
So, the Katana has proved less than perfect but then it only cost £225 (it was advertised for £450 but everyone else had turned up, took one look and said no thanks)! The problems have been spread far enough over the year to give the impression that it's really not such a bad bike........it's only after writing down this litany of complaints that I realise how troublesome it's been. I would be more than willing to put up with such faults had the GS turned out to be a more interesting bike to ride.
Yes, it'll get you to work on time each and every day, will even cruise fast enough on the motorway, and I don't expect the motor to give any trouble until past 100,000 miles, but the grin factor has been distinctly lacking. As I said at the beginning, I'm bored out of my head and am even thinking about giving it a clean so I can change it for something else!
Hugh Symmonds
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The motor sounded like a machine gun with epilepsy. I pulled off the road whilst we still had a chance. I knew the symptoms only too well. The battery was draining faster than the alternator could supply power. There wasn't enough of a charge to supply all four cylinders, causing the engine to cut out. I whipped off the seat, surveyed the home-made rectifier and regulator - the stock stuff was such crap that it wasn't worth buying and the one Superdream rectifier/regulator I'd tried had gone up in flames. Life, with a worn out GS550 was never boring.
My electrical solution consisted of a bit of alloy plate (to act as a heatsink) to which a couple of car rectifiers and regulators were bolted. These were ridiculously cheap (a fiver a set from an electronics shop) but never lasted for more than six months. The solution was to duplicate the circuit; when one failed all I had to do was swap over two connectors and I had a brand new circuit, the burnt out components being replaced when I did the next service.
Of course that didn't take into account the times the alternator burnt out. Fortunately, it tended to go a coil at a time rather than all at once, allowing me to wire the light coils into the main circuit. Invariably, I was able to bodge the wiring so that I always got home. When I went touring I always took along a spare alternator, not a difficult job just a tedious one.
Anyone who's gone around the clock on a Suzuki GS550 will be well aware of the way the electrical hassles dominate life with this otherwise tough old machine. The electrics can turn so nasty that it's possible to pick up a perfectly nice machine for a song just because the charging circuit chronically blows fuses, bulbs and black boxes.
My bike is an '84 model, so anyone who thinks they got better with the later models is foolishly mistaken. There are other well chronicled problems as well, but a mild crash at 65000 miles gave me the excuse I was looking for to bung on a newer front end (off a GSX1100 Kat), thus benefiting from longer lasting calipers that allowed braking both more powerful and sensitive than the awful (at that mileage, anyway) stock units.
I had long abandoned the stock back wheel, with its permanently seized disc brake, in favour of an earlier model drum braked wheel. The remaining nasty was a chain that wore out in 5000 miles. A bigger engine sprocket, Scottoiler and home-made (in aluminium) chainguard doubled that, which I thought barely acceptable.
These mills knock out 54 horses when new, which age and mileage does little to diminish. They really are massively overbuilt and can take a hell of a lot of abuse. With 106,000 miles done all I had to do was put in two camchains and one set of clutch plates. Religious oil and filter changes must've helped but I very rarely did the valves or carbs.
This excess of engineering does have its price - too much mass. A careful pruning of the chassis plus plastic mudguards, alloy tank, GRP seat, alloy pegs, etc, brought the weight down to near 400lbs, gave the GS a much better feel. A few extra horses were extracted by combining a 4-1 exhaust with K and N air-filters. The engine noise was joyous, with a stronger power play between 7000 and 10,000 revs, although the motor would chuff along quite happily at lower revs.
The larger but narrower tank, with definitive cut-outs for my knees, along with non-standard pegs and bars positioned in imitation of an old BMW boxer, provided a brilliant riding position that would let me hold 100mph for a couple of hours without any agonies. Town comfort wasn't ruined, any deficiency in leverage afforded by the narrower bars more than made up by the lower mass. It was in many ways the perfect middleweight, which is how I ended up keeping it so long and doing such a high mileage.
Finish varied. The wheels tended towards corrosion and the frame paint became so bad at 70,000 miles that I ended up stripping everything off and having it powdered coated - it was a very cold winter, I was quite happy to take the bike off the road for a couple of weeks. With conventional rear shocks (Koni-Dial-A-Rides) there were no nasty linkages to worry over, although I had to replace every chassis bearing at least once. I take the swinging arm spindle out every 10,000 miles to grease it. Engine cases were mottled with corrosion when I bought the bike, had to take them off, have them bead-blasted - left them with a nice looking sand cast appearance that needs a polish every 500 miles.
The GS is a bit slow turning but can be made to hustle with a bit of muscle. Its best point is that it'd tighten up its line without going into a shaking fit when the throttle's backed off in corners - brilliant, when you've overcooked it and are staring death in the face. The most natural reaction is to kill the throttle, which on some bikes produces vicious wobbles, but not the friendly GS. The worst point is touching the front brake in slow corners, as the wheel will try to flip up. It's just a question of training yourself to use the back brake or engine braking.
With the non-standard suspension, the ride's quite taut but the modified riding position is so relaxed that my body is perfectly positioned to absorb most of the bumps. Large pot-holes shake the forks and throw me a foot out of the seat, but, as in all other circumstances, the GS maintains its line. It really is a secure beast, even on 90mph A-road or motorway curves there's no hint of a weave. It can be heeled so far over that I had to cut back the sidestand's prong, having long ditched the main stand as it was too difficult to use. As mentioned, that stability comes at the price of having to take it through S-bends slowly or by expending a lot of muscle.
With stock, worn, suspension it does weave a bit and lacked the precision of my machine. I'd found that Roadrunners suited the bike well, lasting over 10,000 miles a set, and didn't experiment with any other makes. A friend swears by Metz's on his GS650 but they only last 5000 miles! The discs aren’t standard, but for those interested I found Ferodo pads lasted 8000-10,000 miles, although it has to be admitted I'm not a heavy braker, preferring to ride in a smooth and predictable manner.
The bike looks neat rather than immaculate but it has surprising staying power. I know some rich gits who own newish BMW boxers and bricks. I tagged along on one cruise down through France to Nice, where one of them owned a house. They were a bit patronising about the GS, which was then sporting 92000 miles but running as well as ever. I had the French porkers on my side, only a maniac would try to get away with more than the ton and these were sensible chaps. The poor old GS was cruised at 90 to 100mph for hours on end, they having suddenly decided to do the trip in one go. They had fairings to hide behind I just had my BMW inspired riding position; if it'd rained I would've been in big trouble. Much to their annoyance I stayed with them, could still walk and the only sign of this abuse the GS showed was the sump level down to the minimum mark. Mind you, I went home at my own pace; once was enough and I didn't feel like pushing my luck.
Part of the GS550's charm is the absence of vibration, what secondary vibes the unit does emit are absorbed by the hefty engine cases and tubular frame. One of guys on a K100 was still shaking hours after getting off the brick and one of the boxer owners had cracked his exhaust stay. With the 4-1 and cammy engine nature it's also full of enough character to make life interesting, having a dual nature, either as a relaxed if fast cruiser or throttle snappy hustler. The stock bike tends much more towards the former than the latter, but they are easy to uprate into a more useful spec.
It is possible to break the engine. Just leave the old engine oil and filter in for, say, 10,000 miles. Luckily, the rattles and knocks are easily identified when the motor's thus abused. Not to be confused with a low rev knocking, which comes from the clutch, and should disappear when the throttle's opened. A little bit of smoke when started from cold isn't a worry, but it should disappear once the motor's warm. Camchains last 40-50,000 miles but the tensioner's good and doesn't need regular attention.
There are all kinds of GS550s on the market, from complete rats for a couple of hundred quid to immaculate, low mileage examples for over a grand. There are lots of bits off bigger Suzuki models that can be used to uprate them into a better spec. I've got my bike exactly how I want it now, don't want to sell it or trade it in for anything else. The GS is the perfect bike for my needs, and it'll be a very sad day when the engine finally fails. If you hate electrics, give this one a miss, but apart from that it's brill!
Dave Harris