Page last modified: 09/03/08

That leak, that miserable base-gasket leak. A pear-shaped o-ring that fits under the gasket is the culprit; I’ve seen it before, but in other people’s GSs. Ride a little, wipe it off, ride some more, again wipe it off. Concoct a temporary fix with a paper towel and some adhesive, to soak up the oil, then it’s saturated after several hundred miles. Oil mist over my lower pants leg and boots. What to do? Fix it myself? No way. Have no tools, 9 and a half thumbs, and a cold garage floor from which it’s getting increasingly hard to get up -- getting old and cranky, not just the motorcycle, but me too. Do it yourself? No way.

Wait until late Fall, then have it fixed. Time off the bike won’t be a factor then, but money certainly would. It’s early November; I take it to Kevin Pohl’s TriState Motorcycle Service, an independent shop out in beautiful downtown Funkstown, MD, for an estimate. Kevin does good work -- excellent work, in fact. He fixes things right, to last a long time. Even the cheapest fix, not bothering with condition of valves or piston-cylinder wall clearance -- the absolutely cheapest fix -- would run up to several hundred dollars. New gaskets and seals, new little parts here and there; those cost, plus Kevin’s highly skilled labor, add up. The driveshaft boot is cracked, Kevin notices; true enough. That’s another not-so-small charge, as the rear wheel and swingarm must come off to get to the boot. That 1980 GS850 I picked up for a total investment of less than $800, two years and 24,000 miles before, is going to cost me more than half that sum to get it fixed. It already has 47,000 miles. Do I get it fixed, or do I start looking again for a similar deal? Other than the leak and the torn driveshaft boot, the 850 runs great; it starts every day, it idles perfectly, it accelerates, it brakes, it turns, it does everything well -- it even leaks oil in style. It’s now early November; I give myself a deadline: the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s the day I arrange with Kevin to deliver the GS850 to him for his care.

To the internet I go. Erols has a long list of “Excite” classifieds. There’s also EBay and “Motorcycle OnLine”. I check them out for an old affordable 850cc-plus shaft-driven Japanese UJM, (Universal Japanese Motorcycle), preferably Suzuki. I make several inquiries and make some offers. Find a beautiful 1982 Kawasaki KZ1100 in Roanoke, VA, low miles, beautiful condition, shaft drive, windshield, bags, $1800. Offer him $1500, gently refused by the owner. I’m cheap, I gladly admit. Still recovering from sending Son #1 to professional photography school, and now Son #2 is in college. Minivan payments eating into my motorcycle budget, 16-year-old daughter expecting to attend mom’s and my Alma Mater, the University of Dayton -- all on a school teacher’s salary. Not a poverty wage by any means, but still...the motorcycle budget is a low priority these days -- so says wife and common sense. Would love to have a new or newer bike like a Voyager XII or a Concours or an ST1100. Can’t afford any of these; gotta stay with old Japanese UJM types. They’re out there, cast aside by a throw-away society that must have the latest and the fastest and the most expensive and the most glamorous; it’s just a matter of finding them, restoring them, and riding them into the ground, extracting every mile possible out of them.

More internet surfing -- kind of fun in a way. Looking to buy a motorcycle is certainly an entertaining pursuit. Find a 1984 GS1100GK, the factory touring model put out by Suzuki during those days when the factory was developing the now-defunct Cavalcade. Back in those early 80’s, Yamaha had come out with the Venture, and Honda had revamped the GL1100 with the new and improved GL1200; the BMW “K” models had just been introduced -- all that while the Cavalcade was still being developed. The GS1100GK was a basic GS1100, an air-cooled four-cylinder shaftie, outfitted with fairing, bags, rack and trunk, and crash bars -- all to fill in the gap in the touring market left by Suzuki’s conservative marketing strategy coupled by the poor state of the early 80’s economy. Fourteen riding seasons on four successive GS850’s had convinced me of the value of those old GS Suzukis. Fortunately for my wallet, this is one of those best-kept secrets. Practically nobody wants those old GS bikes when they can have the state-of-the-art machinery available at dealers in the 90’s and 00’s.

1984 GS1100GK, $1200 miles, near Boston, MA. I correspond with the owner, a woman who had recently moved to an apartment and had no way of sheltering the bike from the elements. What’s a woman doing with a bike this top-heavy? She must be built like an Amazon to handle such an animal as a GK. Those big-displacement UJM shafties were heavy -- top heavy to the point of being dangerous in parking lot maneuvers. Betcha she’s dumped the bike at least once in her parking lot. She says she’s 5’5” and of slight build. No wonder she’s selling it, I think to myself; that bike is a monster in her eyes. High seat to accommodate the large-displacement engine and still provide enough ground clearance for people like me to tackle the twisties with temerity. She can hardly muscle that monster perpendicular to the ground from the sidestand, much less maneuver it out of the parking lot, regardless of how experienced and competent a rider she may be. Nothing sexist here, folks, just a statement of fact: it’s been only recently that manufacturers have been putting out motorcycles that are friendly to short-legged people with little upper-body strength. Buying this bike was a mistake for her in the first place. -- How long had you had the bike?
-- Since February.
-- February when?
-- February 1999.
Bingo! I offered her $900 for the GK.

A few days later was the Sunday before Thanksgiving; my self-imposed deadline was rapidly approaching. No word from Boston; no word about any of the other serious or half-serious offers I had made. I’d just ridden home from having breakfast with motorcycling friends. Checked the e-mail, and there it was: Lady Boston had accepted my $900 offer! Wonderful news. Now it was up to me to drive my Dakota to Beantown and bring the GK home, which I did the day after Thanksgiving.

I quickly arrange for a credit union loan, get out a cashier’s check, then off to Boston. Those of you who read Peter Egan’s column in a recent Cycle World probably understand the excitement that accompanies the act of fetching a “new” motorcycle. I haven’t sold a motorcycle since 1979, when I traded in my RD350 Yammie for a well-used MotoGuzzi T-3. In 1986 I parted out the worn-out Guzzi -- owners of this kind are easy to sell to, since they’re compulsive packrats to start with. I then parted out my first GS850, a 1982 model, when I replaced it with an identical bike. Four years later I parted that one out and got myself a 1979 GS850 to replace it. In the Spring of 98 I crashed the 79 and replaced it with the present 1980 model, Mr. Leak-thru. I kept thinking on my way to Boston about how much I liked that particular GS850, which I had built up with parts from the 82’s and the 79, and how I wouldn’t be driving north in November to get an unknown product, sight unseen, had that great bike not started to leak oil through the o-ring under the base gasket. I supposed that what really appealed to me was that I had picked it up in Ohio for $175, since it had just sat, unused and unappreciated, for years, inactive and collecting rust. What an act of faith -- or stupidity, picking up that 850 in Ohio and now, two riding seasons later, this 1100 in Boston. Faith in Suzuki and the strength of their products, I suppose; and faith in my own past luck and highly developed instincts (i.e. dumb luck) in such things. It wasn’t the first such act for me, so I kept on smiling and trucking northeastward. The leap into the unknown creates considerable excitement and trepidation.

The GK was ready and waiting for me. The selling lady started the bike -- not the usual smooth, effortless firing and subsequent idle of my previous GS’s. I could tell I was in for some kind of repair bill. The exhaust was rusty, but otherwise intact; but at least I had the exhaust from the 850 to back it up. So, we (I) loaded it up in the rain and started for home.

Didn’t even take it off the Dakota’s bed. That Monday after school I drove the 700-lb monster to Funkstown, where I instructed Kevin Pohl to “make it run right”. That means cleaning the carbs, thoroughly and “right”, the way Kevin likes to do it. I like right v. wrong, black v. white, moral v. immoral; motorcycle maintenance and repair falls neatly into this set of values. A motorcycle is either running 100% right, or it has no right to run at all. This is why that Mr. Leakthru just had to go; and why I even considered having a 20-year-old motorcycle, one I had practically stolen, at least minimally repaired; and why I thought that starting anew and replacing the tired 850 was preferable to half-fixing it. Do a State inspection, a compression check (again, that leap of faith I referred to...), replace what has to be replaced (yet another leap of faith!)

Three weeks later I pick up the GK at Kevin’s. Bill’s bottom line: $928, more than 100% of the original price of the bike. Compression is good and even in all four cylinders. Bike runs good, Kevin assures me. To pass State inspection, the steering head bearings had to be replaced. Carbs were taken apart, put together and synched; all o-rings and gaskets replaced, orifices opened, all four intake boots replaced, valves adjusted (5 out of the 8 shims were replaced). I hand Kevin the plastic, pick up my receipt and inspection certificate, and head for home.

Lots of things to do to my “new” $1,800 touring bike. Headers were rusty, so lots of rubbing compound and brillo pads and rags awaited me. The State of Maryland still claimed its due to the tune of $100 for being allowed on the roads. This is how I spent my Christmas 1999 vacation: getting this monstrous thing functionally, legally, and aesthetically ready for the roads. At the recommendation of a friend, I took the seat to Joe’s Upholstery, a friendly local shop, for a dosage of harder foam and a re-covering job, to the tune of $70. What a difference to my overloaded buns it makes! Altogether, the bike represents a rounded total of $2,000; my $2,000 touring bike. Unlike the previous two GS850’s, this GS1100 is a keeper. Goodness, it looks good, with its two-tone silver paint, a wonderfully functional yet beautiful fairing, smallish saddlebags that are beautiful yet functional, removable trunk that is somewhat beautiful yet a bit functional. Goodness, this thing goes -- fourteen years and 160,000 miles on GS850’s hadn’t prepared me for this kind of long-legged kick.

My $2,000 new touring bike -- I think I’ll keep it. Meanwhile, anyone out there need some good GS850 parts?

Readers:

I've had the pleasure of riding with Nick on many occasions. This story is but one of the many that he tells about his passion for the GS Suzuki bike. If his garage could talk, we'd be here for a long time being regaled with colourful lessons in GS life.

Here we see the results of Nick's work. The bike took him (among other places) in good fashion to enjoy the view of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from the Blue Ridge Parkway above the town of Buena Vista.

Nice job Nick.

-Dan Bard

photo: g. stanis