When a bike has had seven owners in five years you know it’s had a very hard time. Despite that my 1986 Suzuki GP100 did not look too worn out, mainly down to the previous owner's insistence on spraying everything that he could gloss black, and boasted only 17768 miles on the clock. The latter I knew for sure bore no relationship to the little single cylinder stroker's true mileage for the front end had been written off at least once.
The forks and front wheel were actually off a GS125, of all things, so the cast wheel did not match the original GP rear end, whilst the clock was off yet another bike of unknown marque... More by accident than design did the speedo read accurately as I had checked it out with my mates’ machines. There was a whole group of us mounted on various Japanese 100cc commuters who used to terrorise the local citizens and burn rubber along the fast A roads that were but minutes from our small Hampshire village.
The GS disc brake was a finicky bit of work at the best of times. It was prone to fade, wet weather lag and locking up the front wheel... maybe down to the fact that the master cylinder was off another machine and the pads wore so rapidly that they were often down to the metal, resulting in a heavily grooved disc. The rear drum was not much better, a heavy downpour resulting in a drum full of a gallon or so of water with obvious detrimental effects to braking.
The little Suzuki was in desperate need of some new rear shocks and swinging arm bearings. I think they were all original and not of very good quality when brand new. This may have had something to do with the way the cheapo chain wore out in less than 5000 miles and demanded constant care and attention. Tyres were Cheng Shin's finest, so that combination led to a certain amount of weirdness whenever I had to bank the beast over more than a few degrees.
I was in good company, though, for few of my mates could afford decent shocks or tyres. We all sort of cornered rapidly in near out of control mode - a successful ride was one where we all avoided a dose of gravel rash. When you are 17 you think you will live forever. That myth was shattered when Tony, on an FS1E with a YB100 engine shoehorned in, rode his machine right off the road into an old oak tree that wasn’t even slightly scarred by the sudden intrusion of human flesh and motorcycle metal.
Total panic spread through our group as we surveyed the scene, the rider a pitiful sight with a broken neck. Some of the chaps (we were then a wholly male group) actually burst into tears. You can imagine the horror of our parents when we all, to a man, insisted on carrying on motorcycling. The thrill of a wobbling, weaving lightweight motorcycle had become too heavily ingrained into our veins to give it up that easily.
Oh yes, hardened bikers would laugh out loud at us and from the saddle of their mega machines try to kick us off as they sped past, but we knew what we liked and consoled ourselves with the knowledge that it took real guts to scream along with the speedo skirting 75mph on what was supposed to be a town based commuter that old geezers rarely exceeded 50mph upon.
We loved those bikes. They were the big thing in our lives. Other youths were into girls, records, glue sniffing or drug taking but we were into our motorcycling come hell or high water. I worked evenings and weekends to fund the purchase and carried on doing the same to keep it on the road.
I had the GP for 18 months and it was not without problems. After about two months of frantic abuse the motor seized up, luckily at low speed so the locked up rear wheel didn’t have much chance of throwing me off. It wasn't just a worn out piston, the big-end had failed as well. The engine had been making funny noises for about two weeks but as a mate's machine sounded just the same we decided it was normal. A week later my friend's Suzuki did the same trick!
The more we looked in the engine the worse things appeared, so a three year old GP100 motor was bought from a breaker for £135. It was not possible to hear this engine running so it could have turned out a huge waste of money, but luckily it was a good 'un and is still there 22000 miles later.
I was rather disappointed with the chassis, the tank and guards all rusted through, the former causing much embarrassment as I had a 14 year old girl on the back at the time She was not that amused at having to walk seven miles to my home! My reputation took a heavy battering after that event and I found it very difficult to persuade girls on to the back (the L-plates were QD, by the way). Even the lightest of girls on the pillion dented the performance and I had to exert Ninja like persistence on the gearchange pedal to keep up with solo mounted mates.
Another horror story emerged if we found ourselves miles from anywhere when darkness descended. If the government wanted to do something useful for traffic safety they could set a minimum standard for headlamps. the GP’s light was pathetic. It was not alone in that department. The H100 had the most effective light so we all used to follow its owner in the dark, lemming like clinging to each others tail lights down dark and deserted country roads, but even the H100’s beam was in reality pretty pathetic; when its pilot was blinded by oncoming car lights he rode straight into a ditch and we all followed. The only good thing was that it was a low speed pile up. In later years we were able to have a good laugh about it, at the time it was too painful!
Our antics out of the school gates were legendary. Not too far away from the school the road was divided by a bollard, when it was too crowded on the correct side we all used to zoom around it on the wrong side, the banshee wail and blue smoke cloud annoying upright tax payers. The Headmaster, an old git who used to cane the shit out of miscreants before such abuse was banned, used to spend half the morning prayer session ranting and raving, threatening to ban all motorcycles from the school grounds. By the time he'd finished he was beetroot red and out of breath, but he never went as far as he threatened; we used to behave ourselves for a day or two before getting back into the swing of things.
Another school problem, some jealous yob started letting down our tyres; when we finally caught up with him he wasn’t able to walk for a week. No-one else dared come within a yard of our precious machinery after that affair. Apart from some rich gits whose fathers bought them new cars, we were the only people mobile and demanded respect from everyone else. There was one scooterist whom we tolerated, we soon found that the two wheel brigade was too threatened to settle into old divisions between mods and rockers. We all made minor mods to our air filters and exhausts, generally making a large hole in the former and fitting a loud expansion chamber on to the latter.
Experimentation with internal engine mods did not bring much success, we soon learnt that the Japanese engineers knew best with regards to the power/reliability equation. Our machines had so much induction roar and exhaust wail that there was little chance of hearing any engine noises over that lot. The local cops, after an initial period of harassment, seemed to give up in disgust, happy enough to come along and scrape up the pieces when things went seriously wrong.
In retrospect it really was amazing the narrow scrapes we had, the near misses that we survived more by luck than skill; if we often did everything wrong it was because we really didn't give a shit. The combination of youthful spirits and speed was so heady that nothing could keep us off the bikes.
The GP100 was rated highly in this crowd. slightly faster than the Yamahas but not so reliable, it was the sort of machine you could abuse and take to the edge without it biting back too often. It would keep up with the restricted 125s but could not easily double its power in the way of RG and TZR 125s. The big difference, though, was in the price, the older 100s could be picked up for one, two hundred notes and were a useful meal ticket through the motorcycle test. I can't say I have the least regret about that wild period in my life, in fact, things have become even wilder with the ownership of a 350 YPVS. No stopping me now!
Paul Wellington