READER’S SPECIAL WITH BRIDGESTONE!
CMM reader Graham Zimmatore finds a 1975 Suzuki rotary being sold by none other than Sammy Miller and restores it
Welcome back to our 2020 search for the best special/resto with Bridgestone tyres!
Winter was coming and I needed a project: something quirky, something rare! I’ve restored a few Mach III Kawasakis in the past, a couple of Triumphs, a Norton Commando, GT Suzis (125, 185, 250) so what next?
Eventually, I spotted a tiny ad in a classic bike mag for a 1975 Suzuki RE5 M that had been sitting in a garage for 35 years. I knew nothing about RE5S other than the fact that they’ve been touted as the worst motorbike ever made and that Suzuki nearly went to the wall because of them. Clearly with no logic in the decision I had to have it…
It was a non-runner (a bad thing), but it was a complete bike (a good thing.) Best of all, it was being sold by the great Sammy Miller of The Sammy Miller Museum fame! He wanted £3500 for it, so I saddled up the TDM850 and headed south to take a gander. I’d always wanted to meet this legend of a man and check out his museum, so this was going to be an interesting trip.
Sammy is an enigma: he’s 86, but looks 60, and is still brimming with energy and vitality and I realised I wasn’t going to be haggling the price down! I had a great time looking at the museum’s collection (and bikes yet to find room), but that’s another story. Sammy agreed to the RE5 delivered to me as part of the price.
I got to work on the wheels and I spent a lot of time simply wire brushing off the crud and oxidisation, sanding and then polishing them. It didn’t cost me anything, just a lot of work. I also restored the spokes in a similar way. The frame was in fairly good condition, and the rear shocks were both in working order. They all polished up well. I decided that the original 45-year-old classic metallic blue paint was staying. It was blemish-free apart from one tiny rust bubble on the tank.
The radiator needed a good flushing and it didn’t appear to have any leaks in the core. After a thorough clean-up of the exterior, neatening up some squashed fins and very light wire brushing, I then spray painted it with satin black VHT paint. The final drive was in good shape. The sprockets and chain were dirty, but cleaned up well, and there was no discernible wear on the teeth. The chain was a sealed O-ring unit and though it looked quite rusty it oiled up fine with no kinks. The forks were good, minor blemishes were sorted and I got some old gaiters to fit over them.
One of the signature parts of the RE5 M was the instrument cluster. The one on this bike was tardy but complete. The green plastic roll up cover (that flips up when you turn the ignition key) was opaque, as was the inner clear plastic instrument cover.
The inner one came up pretty good by sanding it down with gradually reducing grades of wet and dry, then several uses of T-cut. The outer movable green one also cleaned up ok, but getting the ‘hazing’ caused by years of exposure to UV rays was impossible to polish out. Finding a NOS one was also a futile task….
That carburettor: it’s a complex piece of engineering. There were a multitude of filters, diaphragms, springs, screws and hoses. I managed to get three of the diaphragms apart and found they were all sound with no leaks. The fourth one couldn’t be dismantled. The float chamber was encrusted with dry white dust. I sprayed some WD-40 and Plus Gas in there and cleaned it out as best I could, then started on removing and cleaning the jets. I got three of them out, but the other three wouldn’t budge. There was also one missing by the looks of it. I decided to drill them out: big mistake.
Thankfully, Stuart Knox on the RE5 Facebook forum contacted me after seeing the pictures of my self-inflicted carb carnage and he reckoned he could save the carb. He successfully drilled out the three jets, made new jets on his lathe and sourced/installed a few other missing bits for just £106! I fitted a new battery that I had hanging around, cleaned and adjusted the points – it has two sets of points this bike, despite having one spark plug. Then I filled up the engine, gearbox and tank with new oil and put half a gallon of 50-1 petrol/oil mix in the fuel tank. Those apex seals need oil mixed in with the petrol to keep ’em lubed. The air filter was replaced and