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| |front_sprocket= 16T | | |front_sprocket= 16T |
| |rear_sprocket= 40T | | |rear_sprocket= 40T |
| |frame = Welded mild steel tubing | | |frame = |
| |suspension =Front: Telehydraulic Fork <br> | | |suspension =Front: Telehydraulic Fork <br> |
| Rear: Dual Shocks Swinging Fork | | Rear: Dual Shocks Swinging Fork |
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| == Review ==
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|
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| IT WAS Colin Curwood freelance
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| photographer of this parish who really reminded me of the problem. Giving
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| us some Long Distance Information on his 32.000 miles-plus GT550 Suzuki in June
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| he observed that hurling such a machine round Silverstone and then bitching
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| about the handling (as Bike did. many moons ago) is a pretty pointless exercise.
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| Stick your neck, nose, elbows, bum and boots out on the street if that's where
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| the bike belongs. I agreed; I still do. So what was I doing on a 550 in the Isle
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| Of Man ferchrissake?
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| It just didn't seem right, somehow. Race week in the Island without a bike may
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| be strawberries without cream, Coburn without Hughes, but I didn't really fancy
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| my chances of beating Mike Hailwood's angle of lean round the course on a Suzuki
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| triple. Or rather I did, but only after visiting every Bike pub between Ramsay
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| and Peel. Anyway, my route home across the mainland is specifically designed to
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| test any street bike to the outer limits, so I settled for using the 550 as
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| transport, pure 'n' simple.
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|
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| Until these two maniacs hustled by
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| me one evening, going round the course. The leader was on a Trident, giving his
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| mate on the 750 Honda behind some work to do just keeping the horizon the right
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| way up. I'm well aware that you'd have resisted this vulgar challenge to ego and
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| riding skill and just continued plodding on towards the Chinese meal I was
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| headed for, but I was due on the midnight boat and it was a nice evening and I
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| hadn't really had a good blast all week and ... I tucked in behind the Honda and
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| soon we were cruising in the high eighties, playing tag in and out of cars,
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| combos, tractors and packs of bikes. The 550 was keeping up on the good surface,
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| slipstreaming the four along the straights and nudging him through the bends on
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| braking. Then the road deteriorated with that sort of sudden unexpected
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| brain-loosening lurch you get crossing county boundaries. Using all the 550's
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| amazing mid-range whizz to haul down the straight from one turn to another, I
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| felt my internal organs cannoning off each other like the BBC had decided to
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| hold the final of Pot Black in my visceral region. Liver off kidney down the
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| centre pocket: that sort of thing. I gave in finally cowardice is one of my more
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| attractive attributes and let the throttle slip forward beneath a limp and
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| unresisting wrist. Try it yourself if you don't believe me, but don't eat first,
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| okay?
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|
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| Lack of rear suspension compliance
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| must be one of the Suzuki's worst points, along with a poor riding position and
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| inadequate fuel capacity. We've said it before about Suzuki's and it still
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| applies. Stiffer springs do not a better handling motorcycle make. We've also
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| moaned about footpegs mounted so far forward that you find yourself hanging your
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| heels on the passenger's rests for some relief on motorway drags. I've seen so
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| many other riders at the same game to know that I'm not alone, but W. Haylock of
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| this address informs me that the new GS750 Suzuki is built to accept normal
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| human beings in reasonable comfort. Perhaps before long Japanese manufacturers
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| will all be building bikes with old-style European riding positions, but until
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| then ...
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|
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| The GT550's thirst remains a problem
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| in a country where since the great gas crisis of '73 garages shut up
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| shop earlier and earlier and keep the shutters up on Sundays. Multiply 3.3
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| gallons by 31 and you get 102.3 miles, which is the sort of distance you can
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| easily cover in a Sunday evening without ever sighting an open petrol station.
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| On three occasions I stretched the 550's limited reserves of fuel and my own
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| patience to the limit, droning along in fifth gear with a handful of revs on the
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| dial. Twice I was overtaken by mopeds in my prayerful search for hydrocarbon
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| distillate. Oh, the humiliation.
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|
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| But I haven't mentioned the engine
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| at all. Well, there's precious little to say. Mods have been so minor that it
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| almost takes a storeman to spot them. Early electric starter motor clutches gave
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| trouble and that's about it, because we know enough folk with high mileage
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| examples to be sure that you'd have to be rather unlucky to cop an unreliable
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| big triple. Most stunning internal mod on the latest A model is bores machined
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| straight into the cylinder casting sans liners, but coated with Suzuki Composite
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| Electro-Chemical Material (SCEM) or hard chrome time and thee. The GT250 is
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| similarly constructed and benefits are claimed to be better heat dissipation,
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| more constant piston tolerances and, therefore, more consistent power output.
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| SCEM is further claimed to be ultra hard wearing and to present no problems for
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| reboring.
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|
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| Since its introduction in 1972, the
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| GT550 has changed very little. The front drum finally faded away completely in
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| '73 to be replaced by a single disc. Along with improved ground clearance a year
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| later, this was the most significant performance improvement, and the less said
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| about the original front brake the better. I've yet to encounter an owner who
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| hasn't tried to uprate it in some way. And while we still find it far too easy
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| to knock chunks off the road with the GT380's centre stand, I never succeeded in
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| making its bigger and much smarter brother kiss the deck. Instrumentation was
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| 'improved' for '75's M model with larger idiot lights under smoked acrylic sheet
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| and a digital gear indicator. I found great reassurance in looking at this
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| instrument and always discovering that the figure displayed was still the right
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| way up: a worthwhile addition for those of a nervous disposition.
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|
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| Best thing about the rubber-mounted
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| motor is its vast acreage of usable power, spread from anything over three grand
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| right up to the 8,000 rpm redline. Maximum torque a hefty 38.7 lb-fts is
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| developed 2.000 rpm below that figure and it shows in magnificent mid-range
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| pzazz. Even five gears the GT 750's seem one too many on occasion, so smooth
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| is the urgent surge of three cylinders. But you have to take the rough with the
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| smooth. The Suzuki three may be way silkier than Honda's four most of the time,
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| but just as you're about to sail smoothly over the legal limit at 5,000 rpm in
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| top, an ugly patch of vibration shows up. It lasts from just below 70 mph to
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| just over 80 and hammers through to your feet. There's no alternative to
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| choosing either a 65 or 85 mph cruising speed. No prizes for guessing my choice.
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|
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| Suzuki's greatest achievement in
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| producing the 550 was to succeed in complete understatement. Inevitably it was
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| compared with the early Kawasaki 500 triples, whose bowel-loosening performance
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| left a legend which has tended to rub off on all air-cooled strokcr threes.
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| Instead the 550 looks staid, almost portly, but. nonetheless, attractive. Its
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| frame may look just like a collection of tubes holding two wheels apart, tacked
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| together with aesthetically repulsive gussetting, but it handles despite the
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| rear springs' attempts to prevent it holding a line. It may not wheelie its way
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| into your affections, but a standing quarter time in the 13 second bracket from
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| 543 cc ain't to be sniffed at.
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|
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| As I looped across England, the bike
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| really began to grow in my estimation. A quick warm-up down the M6 to Knutsford
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| had us threading in and out of the deadly day tripper traffic I hoped would be
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| well clear of the Peak district by the time I got into the Macclesfield - Buxton
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| - Matlock groove. It's a route well worth exploring if you want to learn
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| something about your riding and the bike you do it on. Combined with stretches
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| of both M6 and Ml and a final mad dash across Leicestershire and Rutland on the
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| A606, it features everything from a series of devastating uphill and down dale
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| hairpins, steep valley descents and climbs and finally a wide, lolloping stretch
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| of blacktop curling over the rolling English countryside. Now that the M62 has
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| drained it of heavy truckers, all you have to contend with are other loons who
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| think it's a great way to go home.
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|
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| At first I was baulked all the way
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| into Macclesfield by coaches and caravans, until things thinned out on the
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| twisting climb up to the brief plateau before Buxton. Arms splayed round a
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| bulging tank bag, I began to feel speed fever taking over easing the Suzuki into
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| tight uphill curves, picking it up and squirting the power on simultaneously. No
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| wriggles or twitches, just power and plenty of it whenever it was required.
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| So far I'd failed to miss a cog in the positive, if slightly clunky, box and the
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| brakes were holding up under a fair amount of punishment. Even my hind quarters
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| weren't protesting: this is a road which demands total concentration or it's
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| splat into some picturesque stone wall or a long echoing scream down into a
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| charming roadside chasm. Heading down into hairpin after hairpin with precious
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| little engine braking had me grasping the brake lever yet more fervently as I
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| gave in to the tempo of a ride that was rapidly getting out of hand. Under the
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| hypnotic effects of swinging rhythmically through bend after bend I kept on
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| wanting to do it faster and faster and faster still. The brake pedal sagged
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| lower and lower and the disc seemed to require more and more pressure. I'd have
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| given all the digital gear indicators in Hammamatsu for another.
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|
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| Source Bike Magazine 1974
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|
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| ==Specifications==
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| {| class="wikitable"
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| |-
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| !Make Model
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| |Suzuki GT550K
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| |-
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| !Year
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| |1974 - 75
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| |-
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| !Engine Type
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| |Two stroke, transverse three cylinder
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| |-
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| !Displacement
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| |543 cc / 33.1 cu in
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| |-
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| !Bore X Stroke
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| |61 x 62 mm
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| |-
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| !Compression
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| |6.8:1
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| |-
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| !Induction
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| |3 x 28mm Mikuni carburetors
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| |-
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| !Ignition
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| |Battery/coil with contact breakers
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| |-
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| !Ibattery
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| |12V, 11Ah
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| |-
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| !Starting
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| |Electric and kick
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| |-
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| !Max Power
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| |40 kW / 53 hp @ 7500 rpm
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| |-
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| !Max Torque
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| |53 Nm / 5.4 kgf-m / 38.8 ft-lb @ 6000 rpm
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| |-
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| !Frame
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| |Welded mild steel tubing
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| |-
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| !Transmission
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| |5 Speed, constant mesh
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| |-
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| !Final Drive
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| |Chain, endless 530
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| |-
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| !Front Suspension
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| |Telehydraulic fork
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| |-
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| !Rear Suspension
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| |Dual shocks swinging fork preload adjustable
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| |-
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| !Front Brakes
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| |Drum
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| |-
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| !Rear Brakes
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| |Drum
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| |-
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| !Front Tire
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| |3.25-19
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| |-
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| !Rear Tire
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| |4.00-18
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| |-
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| !Dimensions
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| |Length: 2195 mm / 86.4 in Width: 815 mm / 32.1 in Height: 1160 mm / 45.7 in
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| |-
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| !Wheelbase
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| |1465 mm / 57.7 in
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| |-
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| !Ground Clearance
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| |145 mm / 5.7 in
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| |-
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| !Dry Weight
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| |200 kg / 441 lbs
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| |-
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| !Fuel Capacity
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| |12.5 Liters / 3.3 US gal / 2.7 Imp gal
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|
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| |}
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|
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|
| | {{Suzuki}} |
|
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|
| | [[Category:Suzuki GT series|Suzuki GT series]] |
| | [[Category:Suzuki motorcycles|GT550]] |
|
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|
| ==In Media== | | ==In Media== |
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| {{reflist}} | | {{reflist}} |
|
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| {{Suzuki}}
| | [[Category:Naked motorcycles]] |
| | |
| [[Category:Suzuki GT series|Suzuki GT series]] | |
| [[Category:Suzuki motorcycles|GT550]] | | [[Category:Suzuki motorcycles|GT550]] |
| [[Category:1970s motorcycles]] | | [[Category:1970s motorcycles]] |