RaWarrior
Well-Known Member
So what did you all start out riding? Show some pics if you've got any handy, this should be interesting.
I bought this gem of a bike for $900 when I was 16. It's a 1982 Suzuki GS450A, with the A designating it had the "suzukimatic" 2-speed transmission. It worked like a 4wheeler's, you shifted with the foot but there was no clutch in a N-L-D pattern (low and drive). It put out 22 horsepower and topped out at about 85mph. Was great for my road test since you couldn't stall it. It would maintain 70 for highways without too much trouble, but WOT was needed for some grades. It also had shaft drive, though burnouts/wheelies were obviously out of the question.
Yep, those are oil drips underneath it. It had this nagging habit of randomly hemorraging oil. It had been crashed at some point and the side of the oil pan was sorta smashed.
DOHC and shaft drive...high technology for an entry level bike then.
Tough to see, but the speedometer tops out at 85. It would just barely reach that. Note the omission of a tach for the N-L-D indicators, and side-stand idiot light/buzzer. The blinker indicator worked when it felt like it.
That last picture was taken the night before I sold it. I had replaced the rusted out stock exhaust with a MAC megaphone, which had a slightly goofy sound, like a deeper, louder weedeater. I sold it for what I paid for it, I believe I totaled about 3500 miles on it, in two months. I bought the Magna shortly afterward, which I still have.
I learned to ride on it, and often pretended like I was riding something that possessed something resembling performance, leaning waaay into corners and flooring it a lot. I realized shortly before I sold it I had been riding on 15 year old tires that whole time(when I first heard about date codes on tires). I figured they weren't cracked or dry rotted and didn't give it another thought as I was going WOT down the biggest hills I could find, hoping for 100mph(that never happened).
I bought this gem of a bike for $900 when I was 16. It's a 1982 Suzuki GS450A, with the A designating it had the "suzukimatic" 2-speed transmission. It worked like a 4wheeler's, you shifted with the foot but there was no clutch in a N-L-D pattern (low and drive). It put out 22 horsepower and topped out at about 85mph. Was great for my road test since you couldn't stall it. It would maintain 70 for highways without too much trouble, but WOT was needed for some grades. It also had shaft drive, though burnouts/wheelies were obviously out of the question.
Yep, those are oil drips underneath it. It had this nagging habit of randomly hemorraging oil. It had been crashed at some point and the side of the oil pan was sorta smashed.
DOHC and shaft drive...high technology for an entry level bike then.
Tough to see, but the speedometer tops out at 85. It would just barely reach that. Note the omission of a tach for the N-L-D indicators, and side-stand idiot light/buzzer. The blinker indicator worked when it felt like it.
That last picture was taken the night before I sold it. I had replaced the rusted out stock exhaust with a MAC megaphone, which had a slightly goofy sound, like a deeper, louder weedeater. I sold it for what I paid for it, I believe I totaled about 3500 miles on it, in two months. I bought the Magna shortly afterward, which I still have.
I learned to ride on it, and often pretended like I was riding something that possessed something resembling performance, leaning waaay into corners and flooring it a lot. I realized shortly before I sold it I had been riding on 15 year old tires that whole time(when I first heard about date codes on tires). I figured they weren't cracked or dry rotted and didn't give it another thought as I was going WOT down the biggest hills I could find, hoping for 100mph(that never happened).