YOUR BIKES, YOUR WAY
A radical, enduring factory look coupled with vast amounts of urge from the aftermarket seldom fails to make the grade. Witness...
The big Suzuki is the staple diet of so many PS readers. No wonder. Power and torque in abundance. Numbing reliability, even when tuned to the hilt, and no shortage of spares, or go-even-faster bits. Why wouldn’t you?
Andy Harriman is in no doubt: “By the time you’ve done all your two-stroke stuff, there’s really only a few ways you can go that make any sense – and big Suzukis are one of the more sensible not very sensible things you can spend your money on, if you see what I mean.” We do. Of course we do. Certainly, Kawasakis are an option, but Zeds are getting prohibitively expensive, and crafting a decent Honda CB900 in the Freddie mould has always been one of the more cash-heavy roads to travel. Aside from the XJR1300, big Yams are largely liquid-cooled, which leaves Suzuki as the preferred provider of big-inch, air-cooled, four-pot power units.
“After the usual way up the ladder from a GP100 to X7s, then LCs, a GS750 and a GSX1100 I just stayed with Suzukis,” says Andy. “I had a Power Valve too, but once you get started with big four-strokes there’s no going back. I mean, there is… I bought another LC but at £9000 that was my heart overruling my head.”
Aside from helically-cut primary gears, which don’t give any trouble, as opposed to spur (straight-cut), which are always the preferred pattern, the clutch is the only GSX bottom end item that needs attention to cope with the extra urge from the big bore and lumpier cams. The backplate requires new springs and rivets – essential if the thing’s not to explode and jam the oil pump (that lives directly behind it) with shrapnel.
The otherwise bombproof four-valves-per-cylinder GSX lump with its pressed-up roller bearing crank (with the pins welded in Andy’s engine) was the unit that rewrote the dragstrip record books when it first appeared in 1979.
You may remember what a minor fuss Suzuki made of their TSCC (twin swirl combustion chambers) way back when. It was nothing more than a longitudinal ridge in the roof of the chamber between each pair of valves, designed to promote both axial swirl and tumble of the incoming charge. The 1074cc unit made 100bhp and 63lb-ft. Andy’s 1230cc engine is most likely making more than 150bhp, and very close to 100lb-ft. And it’s that towering torque figure that makes it such a hoot to ride. “It’s so different to something like a GSX-R1000,” he says. “It doesn’t hang about and it’s the torque that gives it such character, and makes it go. The midrange is just ridiculous.”
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