1982 Suzuki GS1100L
Win: Shaft drive. Destroyed a left-turning Subaru.
Lose: Lunched transmission. Lunched stator, rectifier, and regulator. Lunched starter motor. Clutch
made of potmetal. Lunched carburetors. Complete piece of garbage.
This was another big heavy shaft-drive beast with a two-tone blue color scheme. Some friends who saw how
easily I fixed up the 550 bought this bike with the engine in a box, with the intention to fix it up and
sell it. Turned out the bike had been terribly mistreated and the transmission was completely lunched, and
that rebuilding it was a major money-losing proposition. After the GS550 was stolen, I bought it for
transportation, which was a big mistake.
This is a picture of the actual bike in its normal state. Actually, that's not true, it looks like the
engine is in one piece.
When they got it running, it wouldn't stay in gear. When they popped off the oil pan to check out the
transmission, lots of ball bearings dropped out. This is never a good sign. It turned out that a bearing
died and the balls had gotten between some of the gears. One of the gears had 1/3 of the teeth ripped off,
and one of the mainshafts had a hairline crack visible for the entire length of the shaft. We had to buy
both gear clusters from a junkyard.
There was a morning when it wouldn't start. Not even a click, but the front light was nice and strong, and
there was no blown fuses. I finally took the starter motor off, removed the front cap, and poured what was
left of the rotor out. The core had completely and totally shattered into coarse sand. I've never seen
anything like that. The windings were still in hollow rectangles. We had to buy a new starter from the
junkyard.
The previous owners had decided to do carb mods, which included removing the idle mixture screws completely
and losing some of the springs and o-rings underneath. This is great for performance until you wish to
exceed 45mph. In addition, the floats were majorly screwed up, and the idle jets were stripped beyond
repair. We had to buy an entire bank of carbs from the junk yard.
I think we sent the junkyard owner's kids to college, or at least allowed him to retire to the Caribbean.
Once when the stator and regulator were both toast, I used to carry a quick start jump unit and plug it in
where ever I could steal some 110v power. I was working at UCF as an assistant in the computer labs, with
long late hours. When I needed to go home, I had to push the bike around campus at 2am looking for
power. Once I saw a UCF police car drive up, and I thought I was really going to get
interrogated. Nope. They drove right past the helmetless guy pushing a bike. No "do you need help?" or "what
are you doing?" or even "is that your bike?" I did get busted once on the way home from work on the
expressway because my front light was out. I had removed the fuse so the battery would last long enough to
get home.
Since the shorted stator would kill a new regulator and vice-versa, I splurged on a brand new stator and
regulator from a place on the brand new Internet-thingie. The difference in the technology was so great, the
old stator looked like it came off a World War I plane and the new one looked like it came from the Apollo
project. The windings in the old stator were woven-fabric-insulated, for god's sake. It was expensive, but
worth it.
The electrical system completely quit once, and I had a friend from Martin-Marietta teach me how to do
voltage-drop testing. We eventually traced things to the ground strap hidden at the back of the engine under
the swingarm.
Yet another morning, I was leaving for work dressed nicely in a dress shirt, pants, and tie. The bike was
on the centerstand and when I tried starting it, it started hopping about an inch vertically on the
centerstand, making a horrible banging noise. It turned out that one of the bolts for the clutch had backed
out and was banging away inside the engine cover. I drained the oil, removed the side cover, inspected
everything, cleaned the metal filings out of the side cover in the sink, reassembled it all and filled it
back up with oil, without getting my shirt and tie dirty or becoming late for work!
When you can do this is when you know you need to buy a new bike.
The clutch hub was such soft potmetal, that you could put the spring bolts in by hand, and the spring towers would squish like
play-doh.
I got rid of the Suzuki by smacking it into a Subaru turning left in front of me on University Blvd, on the
way home from work. It absolutely totaled that Subaru, to the tune of a bent axle, a bent frame, and one of
the rear wheels ripped off. I went over the top and slid for about 170ft. Wear your gloves, helmet, and
jacket, folks. The Suzuki's motor shattered into sharp triangular fragments like a dropped crockery
jar. That was very strange.
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