January 25th, 2012 | custom |
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
The best custom motorcycles have a coherent look—a visual balance and flow that literally stops the traffic. And the modifications should perform on the road as well as in front of the camera. So this bike, a mix of Suzuki, Honda and Kawasaki parts from different eras, shouldn’t work. But strangely, it does—and very well too.
The core of this custom is a 1975 Suzuki GT550. It was created by MotoHangar, a Virginia-based workshop run by Pat Jones. Pat wanted to combine the old with the new, with particular attention to the suspension. “The bike handles like a modern sportbike, but with the charm of a vintage two-stroke,” Pat reports. “I wanted a more ‘road worthy’ two-stroke.”
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
MotoHangar completed the mods entirely in-house, including the paint and graphics. They gave the GT550 a custom subframe, and fitted the tail section from a Kawasaki GPZ. The air-cooled triple is bored .50 over, and has been boosted further with modified Kawasaki H1 expansion chambers. The seat is crafted from elk leather, and sits in a fiberglass seat pan. A Honda headlight sits up front, and the rear suspension is from a Kawasaki ZX-6R. The swingarm is a Suzuki SV650 item, and at the other end are GSX-R forks. It all helps to reduce weight, along with the GSX-R wheels.
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
The instrumentation is a little more down to earth, with just a tachometer and voltmeter providing information. And the oil reservoir, adding a twist of humor, is a German “Pilot’s Beer” aluminum beer bottle.
This GT550 is one of the most ambitious customs we’ve seen recently, but somehow, Pat Jones has made it work. And I bet it’s a blast to ride, too.
[Spotted on Return of the Cafe Racers.]
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
Suzuki GT550 custom Honduki
November 19th, 2011 | Bobber |
Holy cow! Now this Suzuki SV650 is not a classic yet but as a bobber, it’s one of a kind with the Honda single sided swingarm, super-chopped back frame rails, up-gunned front end and much more. Excellent execution!
Suzuki didn’t sell a lot of GN400′s but suprisingly, there’s still a good percentage of them on the road today. This one’s been given a second life as a lovely bobber.
Check out the creation the builders at Hiroshima, Japan based Heiwa Motorcycles have created. This 2002 retro twin is a great basis for a lightweight bobber. Amazing attention to detail here!
Heiwa Motorcycles is a Japanese bobber builder so you’ll likely have to do some travelling or lots of paperwork to get yours. It’s a shame!
This very nicely done Suzuki bobber is a Savage S40 belt drive. I think it’s an early eighties or even nineties unit which makes it an extremely clean bobber motorcycle. It’s a 650cc thumper and is probably the nicest Savage I’ve seen. There’s bound to be more out there as the Savage seems to lend itself beautifully to being bobbed. Think I’ll go find some more…
November 19th, 2011 | Japanese classics |
Arguably, the Suzuki GS750 was the first superbike from Japan to get it right. Sure, the CB750 hit the showrooms 7 years earlier and the faster Kawasaki Z900 came into production four years before the Suzuki. But neither of those handled particularly well. The Honda was akin to that of current day middleweight cruisers when it came to power and handling, whereas the Kawasaki had enough motor to totally overpower its chassis, enough so that it could really bite an inexperienced rider.
But not so the Suzuki. For the first time, you could buy a superbike that had a chassis good enough to handle the stock power as well as a bit of engine tuning. At the time, 1976, that was virtually unheard of for a big and fast motorcycle, and it was only fitting that it was brought forward by the last of the Big Four to introduce a four-stroke motorcycle. Because up to that day, Suzuki had made exclusively two-stroke engined motorcycles.
The new inline four had more than a superficial resemblance with the Kawasaki 900. They shared virtually the same cylinder bore, crankshafts, camshafts and the exact same valve sizes; heck, they even shared the very same valve adjustment shims and valve timing! Surprisingly, and disappointingly, the smaller Suzuki engine was 25 mm wider than that of the Z900. As a little consolation, it had a new feature in form of a fully automatic cam chain tensioner, relieving the owner of this typical maintenance task.
Modern riders who take liquid cooling, fuel injection, 4 valve cylinder heads and close to 200 hp per litre for granted may not be impressed by the old Suzuki, which only made half the power from its air cooled DOHC engine. It also sported a lowly two valves per cylinder and was fed by 26 mm slide carburettors. But despite not being particularly modern even by its day, it performed very well compared to the competition.
Suzuki claimed 63 hp for its first four-stroke, which was uncommonly modest for its time. Honda said their 750 made 67 hp back in 1969 and Kawasaki meant their 900 was good for 82 hp in ‘73, but in reality few met the claims made. The Suzuki, on the other hand, typically made around 60 hp at the rear wheel, suggesting somewhere just shy of 70 at the crank. It easily reeled off quarter-mile runs in the twelve’s, half a second quicker than the Honda 750. Really strong runners could reach 200 kph with a prone rider. Power delivery was quite peaky, with most of the muscle resting between 6 and 10,000 rpm, although in typical inline four fashion the engine was highly flexible and would pull from idle in top gear.
The chassis featured a swingarm resting in needle bearings in a time when bronze or plastic bushings were the norm. In addition, the swingarm itself was pretty hefty compared to that of the competition, as was the frame. Wheelbase was substantial at almost 1500 mm, speaking for great stability at high speeds. Rake and trail where more radical to ensure reasonably quick steering despite the long chassis Suspension was supple, yet controlled, and was what set the Suzuki apart from any other big bikes of the era. Up until then you could have a stiffly sprung bike with good handling or a softly sprung bike with comfort, but hardly anything with comfort and handling. And only the Z900 had more cornering clearance in stock form – although it had plenty more.
Cycle magazine described the chassis like this in their original test: “For 99 percent of all riders the GS750 is an awfully good handler, and for 100 percent of all riders it sure has comfortable suspension.” It definitely was the best amalgam of power, handling, comfort and versatility money could buy in 1976.
Although the GS750 only lived for 3 years before being replaced by the GSX750, Suzuki found time to produce it in basically three different disguises; standard, luxury and cruiser. The standard model had wire wheels and a single disc brake up front and another at the back, although it had twin front discs up front at some markets. The luxury model, called GS750E, was mostly the same bike with cast wheels and a slightly stepped seat. It also had three disc brakes of a different design. The cast wheels made it heavier and the increased unsprung weight confused the suspension a bit. The final model was the cruiser, or Low Slinger, called the GS750L. It featured shorter mufflers, a smaller teardrop shaped fuel tank, a heavily stepped seat, cast wheels and a single disc brake at both ends. The mufflers robbed some power and together with the tall, wide and dastardly uncomfortable handlebars this made the bike 15 kph slower in top speed. 
The Suzuki GS650 made from 1981 to 1983 was a mainstay of the Suzuki lineup with a strong reliable motor and styling that ran the gamut from what looked like a 1970’s superbike to the avant-garde lines of the earlier Katanas.
Just try to find a Suzuki GS in decent shape these days that anyone wants to sell! They’ve become few and far between on the market and for good all-round reason.
If you can get your hands on a good runner, buy it! Then you can go to town modding it or go after the Holy Grail of box-stock perfection.
A very sweet classic Japanese bike indeed!