SUZUKI DUNSTALL GS1000
Barry Sheene famously disliked four-stroke race bikes. He made an exception with this Dunstall Suzuki GS1000 – but only ever raced it once
Barry Sheene didn’t like fourstrokes – but he raced this one
ABOVE: Bike-mad brothers, from left to right: Mark Gecko, Andy Cole and James Hunt with the ex-barry Sheene Dunstall Suzuki GS1000 that James and Andy own jointly
Ex-sheene race bikes, eh? You don’t see one for ages and then three come along more or less at once. First, Barry’s first works Suzuki ride turned up in south London (CB June 2018). Then our man Mike Armitage was invited to ride Sheeney’s world title-winning 1976 Suzuki XR14 (CB November 2018). And now two brothers from Yorkshire have invited us to take a good look at their Dunstall Suzuki GS1000 – a bike Sheene rode back in 1979. Things really do happen in threes.
They certainly do when it comes to half-brothers Andy Cole and James Hunt, who own the bike, and third brother Mark Gecko. Three siblings with a passion for motorcycles adds up to some fabulous bikes owned between them – as well as a host of stories from a past intertwined with racing and riding. “We grew up near an old RAF base in North Yorkshire,” Andy explains. “There was plenty of room to muck about with bikes and cars. Bikes just became part of our lives.”
Andy dabbled with drag racing and rode speedway in the early ’80s – until a broken leg led to his retirement from the sport to concentrate on his career as a police officer and his family commitments. But he never lost his interest in bikes. “As soon as the kids had grown up, I was back on bikes. I’ve got quite a few now.”
Mark, who now owns GMEC Motorcycles and Route 64 Bar and café, rode grasstrack in his earlier years, while James – co-owner with Andy of this wonderful ex-sheene Dunstall Suzuki – was a more than handy road racer, competing for about 10 years from the late ’90s to the late 2000s, ending up with an EX-HRC Honda Fireblade. But how did owning a real slice of racing history like the Sheene GS1000 come about?
“I was on a break at work and spotted the bike advertised on ebay,” Andy recalls. “I thought it was too good to be true. I knew James was looking for something a little different for his collection and rang him and told him about it. He said he didn’t really have the sort of money it was up for, so I suggested we bought it between us. I phoned the guy selling it and he told me he’d had some serious interest in the bike from a collector in the USA, so James and I jumped in the van and headed to Reading to take a look at it. It turned out that he’d bought the bike at a Bonhams auction in April 2012 and they’d done a thorough job of researching and verifying its past before selling it. It was restored earlier by George Beale, too, and checking with him confirmed that it was the real deal. We bought it and we had to stop the van a couple of times on the way home, open the back and just look at it to check that we actually owned something as special as
‘WE STOPPED THE VAN TO CHECK WE ACTUALLY OWNED SOMETHING AS SPECIAL AS THIS BIKE’
this bike. We couldn’t quite get our heads around it.”
Andy and James had bought a genuine slice of British road racing history. Before its Bonhams sale, the bike had spent 10 years on display at the Lakeland Motor Museum. It hasn’t been raced or paraded since renowned race bike restorer George Beale restored it prior to that. “I owned the bike in the early ’90s,” George confirms. “I got hold of it through Rex White [Suzuki GP team boss], who put me in touch with the owner. I sold it on when I’d restored it.”
Now, though, the bike might see some action again. “The guy we bought it from had the top end rebuilt by Dyno Tech,” Andy says. “So it shouldn’t take too much to recommission it. We plan to do that this year. It would be great to run the bike at one of Suzuki’s classic track days or maybe at Goodwood.”
The genesis of the bike was Wes Cooley’s 1979 AMA title-winning GS. Impressed by how well the Gs-based bikes were performing in the States, Heron Suzuki brought three American-spec racers to the UK to contest the new TT Formula 1 series. The bikes all ran stock frames as per AMA regulations, but Formula 1 bikes were allowed to use racing frames – and Heron enlisted Kentbased frame builder and tuner Paul Dunstall to run their F1 effort and do whatever he could to improve the bikes.
With time at a premium – the bikes only arrived during the week before Easter – Dunstall opted to retain the stock frames. Dudley Cramond was the first to test one of the bikes at Snetterton. With just Dunstall clip-ons and rearsets fitted to the otherwise stock chassis, the South African ended the day with a best time just one second outside John Cowie’s F1 lap record at the Norfolk circuit.
Dunstall and the team were on the right track.
The engine was a different matter – though it was still in a relatively cautious state of tune. The GS1000 engines were built by Pops Yoshimura at his facility in California and, while the bottom end of the engine – including crank, rods and main bearings – remained standard, the top end received more than a little love.
Lightweight, cast slipper pistons bumped the compression up to 11.75:1, Yoshimura race cams were fitted and both the inlet and exhaust valves were larger than stock at 39mm for the inlets and 34mm for the exhaust – with thinner stems and guides to suit. A closeratio gearbox was used with a beefed-up clutch and power was quoted variously at 114-125bhp. To give the hardworking camchain a slightly easier time, two extra jockey wheels were fitted to bear on the top run of the chain. One was mounted at the front of the underside of the cylinder head and the other – actually an idler wheel from a Kawasaki Z1000 – in a specially-machined housing on the top of the cambox cover. F1 regs specified the stock, 28mm carburettors had to be retained, so they were rejetted to run without filters.
In contrast to the full works bikes being campaigned by Honda, the Dunstall Suzukis may have seemed relatively low-tech, but a lot of work went on at the Belvedere race shop to make them competitive. Following Cramond’s initial test session, P&M were commissioned to produce shorter, braced swingarms. Kayaba forks ran in RG500 yokes. The brake discs were RG500 items too, while Campagnolo wheels, a Yoshi four-into-one exhaust and Dunstall-designed tank and bodywork completed the spec.
So, for the 1979 season, the Dunstall Suzuki F1 team was equipped with three just-about sorted bikes and regular riders Dudley Cramond, Bob Smith and Steve Manship. But they would also turn to a few star guest riders in an effort to stop the relentless march of Ron Haslam and his Honda. At Mallory Park in June 1979, Mike Hailwood was running in the top ten in what was to be his last ever motorcycle race, but struggled with a brake problem and retired from the race. Then, in late August, Barry Sheene gave the team its best result of the season.
Andy and James’ bike is the one Sheene rode to second place in his only ride on the four-stroke at the Oulton Park August bank holiday meeting. Quite how Suzuki persuaded Sheene to ride the bike when his dislike of fourstrokes was well known, we’ll never know. He famously described racing four-strokes as “muckspreaders”, but you couldn’t say he didn’t give it his best shot. In a field stacked with talent including Ron Haslam, Mick Grant, Roger Marshall, Graeme Crosby and Tony Rutter, Sheene bullied the Dunstall Suzuki round the 12 laps to finish just a few feet behind Haslam on the works Honda. Had he not been baulked by a back marker late on, he might even have nicked the win. Only the man would know.
We’ve taken the bike a few miles up the road to Oliver’s Mount in Scarborough. It’s a place that Barry Sheene professed to like, despite his well-publicised aversion to real road circuits. In the sun, the bike looks an absolute treat – though I imagine it would be quite a handful on the tight and twisty circuit. It’s still pretty much as Sheene raced it too – with the later paint job being the only thing Barry wouldn’t recognise. When he raced it, the fairing was finished in plain red. But the special through-shaft to
‘THE GS1000 ENGINES WERE BUILT BY POPS YOSHIMURA AT HIS CALIFORNIAN FACILITY’
facilitate the right-foot gearchange he favoured would be familiar, as would the extra bracing on the frame and the slimmed-down alternator case.
On first impressions, it looks a pretty big beast. But standing next to it, it seems to shrink. It looks low and compact and, while there’s no hiding that big lump of a four-cylinder GS1000 mill, it’s clear the Dunstall team did a lot of work to transform a modified street bike into a competitive racer. Throw a leg over the bike and it feels a lot smaller than those first impressions indicated.
It’s probably fair to say that the Dunstall GS1000 was a stepping stone into F1 for Suzuki. While Sheene proved it could be competitive in the right hands – and that the basic architecture of the GS1000 engine could be adapted to produce ample power – the following season, Suzuki unleashed the XR69 onto the F1 world. It was a purposebuilt racer from the ground up and would prove to be one of the most competitive F1 bikes of its era.
At the end of the 1979 season, the team bikes were advertised for sale – but amazingly, there were no takers. Eventually, Tony Robinson, who was involved in running the Dunstall Suzuki team, took them on. He later sold this bike to a gent called Martin Jones, who in turn sold it to arch Sheene fan Mike Ryan of Cheltenham in 1998. He only owned it for a year and the next owner was Richard Ford, who bought it in 1999. He sold it in 2009 to the collector who Andy and James bought it from.
For Andy and James, the important thing is that this is a genuine ex-sheene bike. “He was just such a star,” Andy explains. “The chance to own this bike was impossible to resist. If you were brought up in our era, the combination of three names like Sheene, Yoshimura and Dunstall in one bike is pretty special. It’s a privilege to own it.”
We think it might be a keeper.
‘THE LATER PAINT JOB IS THE ONLY THING THAT BARRY WOULDN’T RECOGNISE’