Whitham’s Wisdom
I rode one and bought one in 1987. By that time the G and H models were identical but with just a few changes to them better: thicker spindles and a little bit beefed up on the longer swingarm. I loved it, but you didn’t want to be crashing one. People now forget that they were (and still are) very light and they were built down to a weight, so that meant thin wheel spindles, pivots etc. so it didn’t crash well. If you had a big off on one then all you got back was a bag of scrap. It had a welded rear subframe too. I spent a lot of time down the local ally welder’s place straightening mine up after every other crash. The engine was properly bullet-proof: if you could blow one up you’d do well, but mostly all too much exuberance did was tickle the valves. Riding the Suzuki GB restoration around Mallory Park was dead enjoyable. I’d forgotten how free-revving they were. It’s got not so much compression and less mechanical resistance, so the engine wants to run. It felt like there’s no power; maybe 90-95bhp, but it pulled nicely and wanted to rev. The great thing about this restoration is that I’ve ridden a few and lads get all the aesthetics sorted, you know, the painting and stuff so it looks perfect, even the shock, but the linkage and shock is actually shot, so they don’t often ride well. You then assume that they were actually shit back in the day, which isn’t the case. With a bike like this with an as-new shock, fork internals, head bearings, swingarm bushes etc. it rides stunning and not bad at all at Mallory. It feels quite stable. The seating position is such that I could ride it all day compared to all modern sportsbikes. It’s just as tight as I remember, but the handlebars are up and forward and almost semi-touring. Okay, so the footrest to seat-height is tiny, but I’ve got good knees, so it’s brilliantly comfy for me and your arms are up and not straight down like on a modern bike, so I found it quite good. Perhaps the worst feature of this bike was the brakes and I’m wondering why I’m complaining. They didn’t feel brilliant but perhaps that’s because I’m used to modern tackle with really good brakes. I’d just jumped off a new GSX-R750 and they have excellent brakes. I’m sure Nathan did a good job with them but I had to use four fingers instead of two. I found the bike pretty easy to go quick on, it turned in predictably – it never dropped into turns like some older bikes on 16-inchers could do. In fact I would have loved to have
seen just how fast I could go on this bike with more time; I bet you’d surprise yourself and that would be thanks to the fact that a lot of this bike is (effectively) brand-new. You can see where the £30,000 would come from when you add it all up yourself: it’s a dear way of building a bike up! Historically they are important as they are a lovely bike and if you want one you may have left it too late to get a reasonable one now.