Suzuki GS750

In February of 1991 I was living in Amsterdam and anxious to get back on two wheels. I had about 3500 Dutch gilders (about £1100), which was not going to purchase me any spectacular hardware. After some shopping around I found the GS750 in a dealer's back yard. A late '77 vintage with nearly 60000km on the clock.
Though no Joan Collins, it did not look half bad for its age. There were a few spots of rust on the racing style handlebars and a large rip in the seat cover. Otherwise, it appeared reasonably healthy.

Apart from the bars, the only other non-standard items were a set of Koni shocks and a N-Eta four into one that emitted a lovely, aggressive growl. I parted with my full allowance and made her mine. The mildly sporty riding position felt good and, to one unaccustomed to big four power, it responded well to the throttle. As the Suzuki had come at a bargain price, the dealer stressed that I was getting it zonder garantie. In other words, if it fell apart half a mile down the road, it was my problem. Live dangerously, I reasoned, trusting the sixth sense that told me nothing could go wrong.

I loved the classic lines of the old Suzuki. There was no plastic covering the fat four cylinder engine, or anything else for that matter. I also found the wire spoke wheels extremely sexy. Yep, this looked like a real bike. And before the cries of old fogey become deafening, I should point out that I am all of 30 years old.

This was my first experience of a big four and performance was more or less up to my expectations. The best speed I saw on the clock was 200km/h, about 120mph. Not bad for such an aged beast. On good straight roads the handling was fine, but in fast bends, the plot shook like a drunk with a hangover. Without actually threatening to send me to the hospital, it quickly taught me to respect its limitations.

Whilst on the subject of speed, I had one sobering experience at the hands of the Dutch police. Blasting along a clear stretch of motorway, on a pleasant summer evening, I fell foul of a speed trap. The speed limit’s 100km/h. I was zapped at 148km/h. In Holland, speed freaks are fined by the km/h. My bill came to the equivalent of £120. Go too far over the top and they can take your wheels away. Permanently. It’s the boot in the bollocks approach to road safety becoming ever more popular throughout the United States of Europe, or whatever they’re calling it this week.

I'd heard tales of these old DOHC engines being unburstable, even when thrashed. There were traces of oil around the head gasket on mine, but no rattles to make me suspect it would give anything other than many miles of trouble free riding.

On the braking side, the twin front discs were more than adequate in the dry. In the rain it was a different story. I came close to grief on several occasions, when trying to stop suddenly and having nothing at all happen for a second or two. Then, the brakes grabbed viciously enough to lock the front wheel. I was lucky to fall off only once, when braking at about 30mph, for a cage that looked like it was about to pull out in front of me. Before I could utter even a small curse, the bike slid away, depositing me on the road. It suffered only a bent indicator and a cracked alternator casing. I grazed a knee and tore a lump out of my right glove. Only my pride suffered serious injury.

The single disc at the rear was worse than useless. Either it didn’t work at all, in any conditions, or it locked the wheel. The disc was badly pitted and the piston seized. Dismantling and cleaning it made little difference. A wiser man would've replaced it, in the interests of life and limb, but I chose to rely almost completely on the front brake, only using the rear pedal to activate the brake light, which did not work with the front. If I believed in some higher power, I would probably be thanking it that I’m still around to write this. The headlamp was another bad joke, scattering its beam every which way but where it was most needed. Not bad for nocturnal bird watching but on unlit roads slow was the only way to go.

Six months of fairly happy biking later, I packed my bags for a three week trip to Ireland. It was the beginning of August, which heralded the monsoon season in the Emerald Isle. The planned tour, consisting of many high speed miles and many more at a civilised pace, through some of the most breathtaking scenery in the land, turned into a miserable slog through heavy drizzle and driving rain. Arriving at our destination wet and pissed off became the norm for my passenger and I.

Instead of looking forward to putting many glorious miles under my wheels, I found myself merely enduring the journey to the next B&B, followed by a hot shower, a change of clothes and a refreshing bellyful of pints. The Suzuki slogged patiently on, pausing only to blow an exhaust gasket, on a Saturday afternoon in Galway. That provided a good enough excuse to go no further that day. We abandoned the bike in a local workshop and ourselves in a welcoming hostelry.

Two up and laden with a tank bag plus saddlebags, the handling was never better than twitchy. The Konis were set on the soft side. Jacking them up fully would probably have improved matters greatly. But I didn’t have the special tool and couldn't find one for neither love nor money. One dealer had informed me, quite seriously, that the only thing to do was buy a new set of shocks. I tried a variety of bodges, none of which worked. In the end, I told myself the handling wasn’t that bad and decided to live with it.

Holiday over, back in windmill land, the ignition switch packed in. No amount of hot-wiring, hammering or cursing could fix it, so | ended up pushing the beast about three miles. In the rain, naturally. Better for my arms than a month of weightlifting, but more damaging to my sanity than a cocktail of dodgy drugs. I was lucky enough to pick up a new switch from a dealer, for the equivalent of £35.

At the end of my first year with the GS, I was still reasonably content. Starting was never a problem, even on the coldest and wettest of mornings, one prod of the button usually sufficient. Fuel consumption in town was on the thirsty side at around 30mpg, but much better on the open road. A rear tyre was good for nearly 3000 miles and I only once had to replace the front. Metzelers were fine. Even with ritual harsh treatment, the chain and sprockets seemed destined to live forever.

The motor was beginning to drink rather a lot of oil, but I only started to worry when I noticed I was leaving a haze of blue smoke in my wake whenever the engine wasn't fully warmed up. A service helped, but the dealer put paid to my illusions of setting new records for the durability of a GS750 engine. The valves, pistons and barrels were not in the best of shape whilst the camchain was nearing the end of its useful life. Fine, I thought, best to get it done. Sometime!

In March ’92 I packed in my job in Holland to return to Ireland. Had I known then what was to befall the GS over the next six months, I would never have considered taking it with me. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20 vision. Or something like that.

Bike and I reached Eire in one piece. A week later, on the way to a job interview, the thing spluttered to a halt by the roadside and refused to start again. An urgent phone call to friends got me to my interview. A call to a dealer, who was to become family doctor to my two, wheeled friend over the ensuing months, got that picked up and taken into surgery. A new set of points and spark plugs got me back on the road, but I had a foreboding of worse to come.

Next to inspire a fit of cursing was the exhaust, which split from its rear mounting, leaving a gaping hole. A large metal clamp from a plumber’s merchants, wrapped around the pipe and frame tube, stopped it from rattling off. The extra hole raised the decibel level but not to the extent of shattering any windows.

Trying not to think about the wad of cash I was going to inevitably lose putting the engine right, I continued to take a modest pride in my mount. Until the throttle cable snapped, leaving me with another back breaking push home. Curses were snarled and bloody revenge sworn, but I settled for replacing the cable. The indicator switch was next to go, closely followed by the second tacho cable in a year. I didn't bother replacing the latter.

I forked out over eighty quid for a new chain and sprocket set, only to have the front sprocket retaining nut fly off, stripping itself of all traces of thread. Admittedly, this was probably due to my not having tightened it properly rather than another of the Suzuki's nasty tricks. Luckily, the shaft was undamaged, So a replacement nut (which was not as easy to find as it sounds) resolved that problem.

Summer came and went, it wasn't all tears. On the rare occasions when the sun shone, I quite enjoyed hustling the old beast around the highways and back roads (ie dirt tracks) of Ireland. But there was no ignoring the deteriorating state of the motor. The rattles were getting worse, oil was seeping from the head gasket and the performance was becoming noticeably lethargic.

At the beginning of October, I decided to ride it back to Holland. There was a certain twisted logic to my decision. To have the engine rebuilt in Ireland would cost me a packet and I had lost interest in keeping the machine. Selling or trading it in would also prove costly, due to the bureaucracy involved in off-loading a foreign registered machine. The idea was to get it back to Holland and get rid of it while it was still running.

The GS had other ideas. Two days before I was due to leave, it wheezed into silence in a cloud of smoke. Like a terminally ill patient who finally succumbs to the inevitable, it rejected any attempts at resuscitation. Despondently, I abandoned it to the local dealer and took an alternative route to Holland. When he finally got around to stripping down the engine, he found a list of horrors too awful to repeat - basically, it was shot to bits. As far as I know, it’s still languishing in his workshop and may never see the light of day again. A sad state for a machine that probably deserved better.

Michael O’Connor