wire wheels

[John Kat]

Tatu, that is really a nice looking bike, those wires just work so well with it, good choice, it really is a head turner.

Now please excuse my ignorance but I don't understand this whole fairing and weave thing.
The feeling seems to be that he "S" fairing causes a high speed weave and it seems that most agree to some degree or another.
I highly doubt Suzuki would have put a bike out for production until such an unsafe quirk had been rectifed, I find it hard to believe that a bike would roll off the showroom floor with such a quirk.
Secondly if the fairing was designed foor the S then it should work on the S, if not great on any of the other models, although the 2 valve liter bikes are so similar I doubt there is much in it.
Thirdly, my 1000G ha spent a great part of it's life adorned with an S fairing and I have never, in hundreds of thousands of Km ever experienced this wobble or weave, at any speed, and I have spent hours at WOT, tucked in or prone, she has always been rock steady.
Can someone with more knowledege than I in these machines please explain this phenomenon, as I have never experienced it, I will not easily be convinced it is the fairing at all, there has to be an underlying fault with the bike.

I can only add that I have a copy of the period french Moto Journal
magazine that reported this same issue when the bike came out.
They blamed the issue to the front fork.
I solved this same issue on my own GS 1000 ST by making sure there was close to zero stiction in the suspension ( including the removal of the fork brace).
I related this in my thread " Getting a GS 1000 S to handle"
There are many reasons why your GSG doesn't exhibit this trait starting with the fact that your frame is different from the chain model not forgetting that the trail was reduced from 116 mm to 112 mm, that there is no air in the fork and so on...
I know it's hard to believe the factory let a model out with this kind of behaviour but I believe the industry had many more of these.
Did I hear Chevrolet Corvair???

[Flyboy]

Mmmmmm , interesting observations, John, it would seem then that your observations with your exersize has indeed removed blame from the fairing itself, but rather lays it squarly at the door of the frame/suspension setup/geometry.
This I can believe as a quirk of the model, someone say spaghetti Kawasaki frame??
If one were really serious and hell bent on solving the problem, for instance someone who spends a great deal of time on the wrong side of the ton, surely the easiest fix would be to rebuild all the S bits onto an original E frame to reclaim the extra 4mm wheelbase.
Not ideal, especially for the purists, I know but more a practical riding solution, I have never seen mention of the E having the same problems.
Or more radical would be to cut, adjust and reweld the steering head, if you wanted to remain pure....so to speak.
I guess a set of leading edge forks off an L or later GSX would also reclaim those few millimeters, asethetics being the price you would pay there.
Interesting debate.

[TheCafeKid]

It's a fork mounted fairing. They'll induce some weave or steering abnormality to some extent. It's basically a wind catch mounted to the steering mechanism.

[Flyboy]

It's a fork mounted fairing. They'll induce some weave or steering abnormality to some extent. It's basically a wind catch mounted to the steering mechanism.

TCK, I understand your reasoning, but I don't quite buy it, that would imply that any and all fork mounted fairings would do the same and all bikes with such fairings would have the same weave present, which we know is not the case. The later Kawasakis with the bikini fairings don't have this problem, and as I said, niether has my bike with the S fairing, no I don't believe it is the fairings doing at all.

[salty_monk]

I tried a big "cop" fairing on my G & it would weave over 80. Even with just the panniers on (Krausers) with some decent weight on it would weave at that sort of speed even with no fairing. With no fairing & no bags it was rock solid up to V max.

I have used the Maier GPZ style fairing on my skunk & the 750 with no handling issues at any speed...