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Built Like A Tank - Not!By PeteG
Suzuki GSX 1400
By PeteG
Strange isn't it how quickly the summer passes? Fruit
hangs in the trees, young fledglings abound in the hedgerows and the crops
in the fields are golden brown. Soon be Christmas. No matter whether you
ride your bike through all four seasons or are one of those who puts the
bike under sheets until late spring and compromises your way onto a
clapped out trailie, or even if you migrate into four wheeled warmth for
the winter, the terms of the contract still apply. Oriental built bikes
have the build quality of a tomato box. There, I've said it. You shell out
between six and ten grand in May for a shinny new bike and by the time the
farmers are busy throwing cow shit all over the roads the damn thing has
turned into some reject from
Robot Wars.
Even if you didn't use the thing at all
over winter, unless it was kept in a sealed, temperature controlled
vacuum, I bet you got a shock when you pulled the dust sheets off and
looked at what the snow and frost demons had done to your poor old
sickle. Did you cry? did you throw the nearest spanner at the wall?
Did you curse the gods of the winter and cast their icons into
the pit of oblivion? I know I did all of these things after
giving my bike a 'once over' as soon as daylight had returned
to the planet. Those odd little crusting, white growths had spurted all over
the place, the white rust that you find on poor aluminium
- but on my bike it was even growing on the black
painted cycle parts. How come? It's barely two years old and never ridden in
the wet? Cleaned religiously every Sunday after church? Smothered in baby oil every 300 miles?
Buffed up with the girlfriends best knickers? How come? I read all the
right mags, I drink lots of beer, I soak my socks
in engine oi.... Ah, just a minute, I remember, those three nice days
we had in February when a couple of mates came round and said
lets blow the cobwebs off and go for a run up into Yorkshire. It was
a good run, Pete on his ZZR 1100 and Gary on his
'Busa'. Yes, it was that day it was so cold coming back I
just put the bike away without giving it a quick clean and
made haste into a hot bath with my favourite plastic duck. It was just after
the frosts and the only day of the year the roads were gritted with........ SALT! They reckon
too much salt is bad for you and I can see why. It grows
little white crusty bits on
your bike.
Now unfortunately, I am old enough to
remember when bikes had solid polished alloy on them and when the only
non-metal item on the machine where the tyres, so when I see what looks
like alloy on a bike I tend to think that's what it is, but no, not now.
Close inspection shows what it really is. Reconstituted cornflake box,
sprayed silver and coated with some horrible plastic shyte that saves the
cheapskate gits the cost of polishing. It looks more like spelter than
aluminium. It's our fault of course, we want the latest GP bike that will
go, handle and look like the latest Foggy racer and cost a little under
the price of an all day breakfast.
We've got the bike manufacturers cutting each others throats
to sell an extra bike or two and they are most definitely
cutting corners to make them cheaper. Nevertheless I can quite easily understand that Mister
Horishito and his employers may not realise sitting in the summer sun of the land
of the rising Yen that in dear old Blighty what we call rain
is actually pure ammonia, or that to make things worse we
put corrosive material on our roads or, that in here in Lincolnshire sea
breezes lift up whole beaches and carry them inland over the hedgehog flat
county to sandblast everything in sight. But what I can't understand is, that as most
of the designers over there are British, why in the name of
all that's shiny don't they realise that all those bikes they are sending
to Europe or the States need to be Oxygen resistant? Oh and
another thing, that falsification and work of fiction called a warranty is just part of
the scam because if you have used the bike on a 'B' road or ridden past a
caravan on a Wednesday, that paper porkie is completely invalid and as much use
as a grab rail on
a Harley.
Only once have I ever bought a bike
brand new and that was long ago before I had a visit from the common sense
fairy but when I bought this bike I wanted something 'almost new'. I found
an extremely low mileage Suzuki GSX 1400 just a year old at the right price, handed over my fun tokens
and went to play with the big boys in the certain knowledge that
if I looked after it with all the love I would languish on
a favourite Granny the shiny toy would stay that way. I did, but
it didn't. Don't get me wrong, the bike was great, just what
I needed. I do a lot of mileage so it had to be
fast, comfortable and fun and in all these categories it came
up with the goods but I expected the thing to look nice
for a tad longer than it took for the engine to cool down. I
was under no illusions, when I looked over the bike in the showroom I had
already noticed the spray-on chrome - and only where you could see it,
I saw the mist of black emulsion so expertly draped on
the cycle parts, I copped the blacking on the barrels that seemed to
have the consistency of soot. I even spied the host of unfinished bare
metal that was just waiting for a humidity of medium to high before it turned
the colour of Chris Evans and fell off in disgust. I had
seen enough owners of Kawasaki Zephyrs with that nervous look and an eye
towards the heavens, carrying a plastic sheet and a tin of WD40
in a backpack. The year previous at the Barton-on-Humber bike rally I had witnessed the
owner of a Zephyr leave his very pretty dark green example parked up whilst he went for
a burger. Someone close by sneezed and the extra moisture content in the air
quickly dissolved it into a
KH 250.
The big Suzuki is like a
magic carpet of fluffy comfort with massive amounts of torque, the handling is
good for a roadster as is the ground clearance. This is a
big, heavy bike and long with it but to be honest the front wheel comes
up with no effort, fortunately the big fat back tyre keeps the whole thing together. It's a
great bike and I think the best of the Muscle bikes but without a
fairing doing120mph requires a dose
of morphine.
The main faults are definitely the build quality. Yes
I know oriental bikes rot quicker than a kidney in a sewer but I just
never expected the canker to set in so quickly. When I had
British bikes all those years ago riding in the snow and rain was
part of the game, I was on a wet saddle so much
I used to wear incontinent pants under my leathers. Even the bike was called a
Norton 'Navigator'. The rain on the roads was so deep we had to ride with our feet
on the handle bars to stop the fish biting our toes and the best
tyres were Dunlop Surfmasters, blah,
blah, blah.
There are some incredible
bikes around and there must be a machine to cover every type
of rider, to make him or her happy whatever their wants and needs. They
are bigger, faster and prettier than ever before. They are also easier to ride and
safer but all this comes at a cost. That cost is a tacky,
horrible build quality with poor finish on most components, making this
acceptance an essential part of nearly every new bike purchase. Yes, we all
want cheap motorbikes but the old adage of 'You get what you pay
for' seems to have a greater significance on a machine that can loose £3000 in
their first year and can fail to fetch £900 by the time
it's ten years old . I know most people just don't care, it's
great fun and that's all there is to it and to a
certain degree I concur, particularly as most high performance bikes need a two feet wide
back tyre that costs about the same price as a small car and that comes around after
every few thousand miles. On the top of that comes an insurance figure that
looks more like a date
than price.
So what's the answer? I don't think there is one
but if any thing is clear it's the fact that as
consumers bikers are a large and wealthy section of the population and that
must stand for something. If you buy from a dealer, have a moan
about build quality even if it's on one of the bikes you have no interest
in. It doesn't seem like much but if every biker walking into
a showroom this year moaned about poor finish I'll bet someone would do
some homework. It's not just for showroom sales either. Any benefits would
work their way down to the lowliest private sale eventually but don't go carping on
about build quality when you go to buy that 1976 CX 500 for £295 from the free
ads this weekend. It's not their problem and you may just get a lesson
on nasal build quality for
your trouble.
Personally I have learned my lesson,
I loved the bike but it had to go. If I
have to spend more time cleaning it than riding it boredom sets
in and I haven't got an endless supply of money to keep up-rating. What
I have invested in the thing has to keep me going for a while and
if I kept it much longer it wouldn't be worth the price of
a bus ticket to the bike shop. So I'm always looking
for a new bike, in exchange I have the previous one, low mileage,
well looked after but going off quickly and showing signs of a strange
white mould. To replace it I want something fairly old, something from the early to
mid 90's. Something that's had all the crap taken off and some
proper alloy bolted on. Something like... a Kwak 9R or a GSXR 1100,
with a big bore kit and a small tank of laughing gas
strapped to the side with a big red 'go' button on the bars that says
"Press if you want an orgasm.". You know the sort of thing..... Something built like a tank
- or even a tank, but as with your bike you will have to
take that with a pinch
of salt.
Original Images and Text Copyright of
the author. © 2007 Tricky
Imp Productions
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