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Gs1100e or katana 1100 motor

timebombprod

Forum Sage
Okay so, have a 1983 gs1100e, picked up for good price as project, now it's ready to go and selling it.

So from what I know the difference of the gsx and the katana motor is the conrods and you simply find the number that's on them, forget what number is but I'd need a dental mirror and pull the clutch basket off to probably see it, or maybe a bore scope.

Anyways, one of my friends that owns two genuine katanas has the serial number on the motor starting as "gs110x" and my motor also matches that beginning part of the serial.

I have another friend who has katana 1000 motors but those were like "gs10xz" or something of that nature

Anyways, for people who would know if i would be able to tell simply by the serial number on the engine let me know what I can do.

The only reason I have a suspicion of it being a katana motor is because the guy who sold it to my friend that i bought it from said its a katana motor, and it has 15k miles, well the odometer says 51k miles on the bike but the motor has like 185psi compression and the pistons look clean at the top so it must have some truth to it, I know I can't just go off a seller saying it's this when there might not be a way to check visually on the outside.

Also the carb set still has mixture screw covers on it, and it seems to act a bit lean, it has an exhaust but figure not much difference, so it might have a bigbore kit if stock carb settings are lean for the motor, it has the original airbox.
 
As I'd never heard a difference in the rods, I took a quick look at Suzuki parts, connecting rod part numbers show the same part number for all the 16 valye 1000 and 1100 engines from 1981 through 1983. Didn't bother to look any farther. When advertising, just say the eng. has been replaced, "E", "ES", or "KATANA won't make any difference. Just be sure the eng. isn't a GS750, if you don't know what to look for, they look very similar.
 
Those special rods is something mentioned by the hot rod racer guys. Unless someone is building a race engine, nobody would care, though.
 
Yes. 16valve 1000cc Katana only I think. Homologation special for TTF1 1000cc limit. And for countries where the top limit was 1000cc for production or production based racing
 
Okay so, have a 1983 gs1100e, picked up for good price as project, now it's ready to go and selling it.

So from what I know the difference of the gsx and the katana motor is the conrods and you simply find the number that's on them, forget what number is but I'd need a dental mirror and pull the clutch basket off to probably see it, or maybe a bore scope.

Anyways, one of my friends that owns two genuine katanas has the serial number on the motor starting as "gs110x" and my motor also matches that beginning part of the serial.

I have another friend who has katana 1000 motors but those were like "gs10xz" or something of that nature

Anyways, for people who would know if i would be able to tell simply by the serial number on the engine let me know what I can do.

The only reason I have a suspicion of it being a katana motor is because the guy who sold it to my friend that i bought it from said its a katana motor, and it has 15k miles, well the odometer says 51k miles on the bike but the motor has like 185psi compression and the pistons look clean at the top so it must have some truth to it, I know I can't just go off a seller saying it's this when there might not be a way to check visually on the outside.

Also the carb set still has mixture screw covers on it, and it seems to act a bit lean, it has an exhaust but figure not much difference, so it might have a bigbore kit if stock carb settings are lean for the motor, it has the original airbox.

Hi, Suzuki make it easy for us when it comes to identifying "Katana" engine capacity from the early 1980's. The capacity is cast into the base of number 1 cylinder and viewed from the front of the engine. The other method is the prefix before the engine number. As you have noted with your friends Katana the prefix tells the story.

The engine number prefix for an 1100 is GS110X. The 11 after GS = 1100cc.

Same thing for the 1000 engine. GS10X. The 10 after GS = 1000cc.

The numbers after the GS110X are not used to identify the capacity of the engine, the prefix does that.

The Katana 1000 was supplied to a few markets and depending on which market the engine specifications are different. In some markets Katana 1000 was supplied with detuned 34mm CV carbs where as most other markets the Katana 1000 was supplied with slide carbs as they were manufactured to compete in Production Series racing in some countries and were not performance restricted.
 
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493 kat rods are only in 1000 kat engines. 83 black 16 valve engines are all the same no matter model.
 
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