It's a 1980 Suzuki GS850G. It has a shaft drive, disc brakes front and back, an electric starter (thank God) and not much else. There's no ABS on this baby, no plug-in for my iPod or GPS locator. It doesn't have cruise control or a stereo.
It's just a solid, old-fashioned bike and I love the goddam thing. Still....I had kinda hoped I could buy this old bike on the cheap, hop on and ride off like I did when I was a kid in my 20s.
Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way, because if you buy one of these grandpas, expect that the bike is gonna need work.
You will have to get dirty sometimes, or have a pile of cash you don't mind sharing with a mechanic if you can find one who will work on old bikes.
I bought my bike for $2,000 in September 2008. I thought it was a little high for an old bike, but I really like the GS models and had been looking for a while, so I gave the man his money.
One big reason I bought this bike was that I had looked at about a dozen circa 1980s bikes in the previous month during my hunt for a motorcycle.
One of them was running, but it had a hole in the crankcase cover that was sealed with epoxy, or maybe it was chewing gum. It smoked and it had a chain drive, which I didn't want. The electric start wiring was all messed up. In short, it had problems that were visible to me immediately.
Several of the other bikes weren't even running. A couple of the owners said their bike would run with a carburetor cleaning. My local bike mechanic said the carb job would cost about $500. I'm not a mechanic and didn't want to do the work on my own. Plus, honestly, if the owner is admitting the bike doesn't run, he's probably only guessing as to why it won't run. There's no guarantee that cleaning the carbs would have gotten them running.
Even if the problem is fuel, it could be a fouled tank, a bad petcock, even a problem with the airbox.
One particular jackass told me the two bikes he was selling were both "road worthy," which I took to mean they could be driven. I drove about 40 miles in heavy rush-hour traffic to find that one bike didn't have a seat! The other bike had no battery and its rear wheel was off!
Road worthy. Right.
OK. So then I walked into a garage in Kirkland and there was my bike. It looked beautiful. It was black, a shaft drive, started right up and didn't appear to have been wrecked. It had one minor dent on the gas tank. But that was it.
I paid for it and rode it home the next day.
Little did I know, I was taking my life in the my hands.
I rode it for a week before I was able to figure out I had a problem.
When I rode, the front disc would get really, really hot sometimes. And when I rolled up to a red light, well, I didn't roll. The bike would just come to a stop. I couldn't figure it out.
I asked a neighbor. He suggested my rotors were warped. I spoke to a mechanic at a local bike shop. His thought? The calipers were rusted out.
So I did the first smart thing in my new life as a motorcycle owner - I researched.
On the web, I found this website, the GS Resources.
I guarantee you that if you are looking at old motorcycles, type in the model you want and you'll find the fan base for that bike.
At the GS site, I found all sorts of other riders who owned the same brand of bike as mine, and most of them own older bikes, like mine. Some owned the same damn bike!
In any case, people suggested I look at the brake system. Sure enough, when I finally pried the brake fluid reservoir open, it looked like a bog inside. See?
The owner told me he had replaced the fluids. Guess what. He lied! The fluids on my bike were probably the same fluids poured into it back in 1980.
I'll save the details for another post, but to suffice it to say I replaced the brake fluid, replaced the brake lines, rebuilt the calipers, the master cylinder and installed new brake pads.
I need to do the same thing for my rear brakes.
What's my point? That if you buy an old bike, it's going to need work.
So before you buy and old bike, make sure:
1. You have a place to work on your bike.
2. You have a basic set of tools.
3. You get a repair manual for your bike. (I was able to download mine from the web thanks to a very generous guy who owns the same kind of bike.)
4. You are willing to work on it unafraid of screwing up, but prepared to put the time in correcting your mistake if you do. (I had to re-do a few steps on my brake job).
5. You are prepared to work the web, both for research and purchases. Most bike shops simply don't carry parts for older bikes and, even if they do, you can usually get the parts cheaper on-line, you'll just have to wait for them to arrive.
This all sounds like a lot but, honestly, it's not. I have come to feel that on a motorcycle, it just seems lot more critical to make sure the work done on it is done right. And, frankly, I've got a lot more at stake making sure it is done right than a mechanic whose just trying to get my bike out of his shop.
Ride safe.
