Delay the decay!
Bits of PB’S DR600 that aren’t the engine finally get some love! What took him so long?
Two bloody years! That’s how long I’ve been devoting all my attention to getting this DR600 running properly. If you read last time’s article you’ll know it’s had a new cam-chain, which doesn’t sound like a performance mod but it’s cured the previously miles-adrift cam timing. That one small improvement has led to many significant benefits; it’s a different beast now, cruising and top speeds are way up, overall liveliness is much improved and it’s even more of a hoot to thump-thump-thump around the local country lanes. I’m genuinely hopeful the motor is now just about as good as it’ll ever get, as there’s not much else left to change. A tweak to the carburation on the dyno is all that really remains to do, but that’ll be saved for (yet) another part! So, having hopefully cured the engine’s woes, it was time to take an overdue look at
stuff away from the engine which has been neglected for a bit too long. Top of the list: brakes, which have always been rubbish. The front brake was at best a device for mildly dipping the front forks and the most useful function of the back brake was only that it activated a brake light. Retarding progress was only ever achievable with a white-knuckle cocktail of maximum pressure on all available levers and several quick-fire stomps down the gearbox. Taking a close look at the condition of this DR’S braking system revealed that we had significant headroom to make improvements. The front disc was thin, lipped and dished – it was immediately junked. The front brake pads still had meat on them, but were ancient and glazed. The brake caliper, which is only a feeble sliding pin device anyway, had a single piston that looked like it had been in a fight with an angle grinder and lost (see pic). I still can’t quite get my head around how such a tucked-away component ends up looking this abused?! Thus as well as new pads I needed a new piston and a full caliper rebuild kit – Suzuki’s excellent Vintage Parts back-up means all were available without fuss and the albeit underpowered caliper was cleaned up, refurbished and back to being as functional as it could be. If you like horror stories about how rubbish/dangerous cheap internet parts can be: pull up a chair and enjoy the next couple of minutes. Let me tell you about the master cylinder swap. After deciding the one on the DR was tired of life, I shopped for a replacement. A popular auction site led me to a reseller of master cylinders in the USA. I suspect the components were made in China, as the listing said ‘assembled in USA’ not ‘made in the USA’. Anyway, they were offering a great deal – a new OE replica master cylinder that fitted the DR for £30, plus a bit more including post. That also came with a 16-month warranty, a matching clutch perch, both levers and a brake light switch. Not bad huh? It was slightly bigger than the DR’S original 14mm item at 16mm, but the extra hydraulic power was worth inviting to the brawl for better braking power, or so I thought. Although decent value on the face of it, sadly my joy was short-lived – having reverse-bled the system up using a syringe in record time, I didn’t expect to see brake fluid drip on the floor every time I pumped the brake… Thankfully I spotted this before it went on the road, because it turns out there was a casting defect at the end of the piston chamber.
Every pull of the lever was squeezing fluid out through an unwanted hole! The 16-month warranty proved useless, with a seller who provided more barriers to resolution than were worthwhile even given the life-threatening nature of the problem – also having dithered between purchase and fitting I was outside the usual 45 day time frame to lodge feedback or a complaint, meaning I didn’t have help from the auction site’s own resolution centre either. Ho-hum, lesson learnt. Turns out the bigger 16mm cylinder was too much for the small brake anyway and may have created more power, but when bled up (even with the hole reducing pressure) it had zero feel and lever travel. Another lesson learnt! I needed a quick fix so I bought an instantly available used replacement from a Suzuki DR125. Although this turned out to be a 12.7mm bore (about 10% smaller than the OE 14mm item) when bled up it worked just fine – loads of feel, more than enough power and the right wing mirror thread position to allow the original 1984 Suzuki handlebar guards to clip on – for £16 delivered I wasn’t moaning. The DR featured an ‘interesting’ OE brake hose set up with a confusion of two rubber hoses and two metal hoses. The world has moved on since Suzuki decided to use four hoses where one would do, and so I replaced the fossilised 33-year-old rubbery stuff with a single full-length braided hose
for £19.95 from the same popular internet auction site, this time with a drier result! The rear drum brake by the way, that just got a set of shoes and a clean-up. Away from the things that make the bike stop, there was a little more stuff in need of love. The remains of the chain and sprockets were knackered and affecting the ride quality too (see pics). More wallet opening meant that got fixed, and with a gold chain. I love gold chains. A new clutch cable and a new decompression cable were also thrown into the mix. Another niggle with this bike during my tenure of it has been the fuel tap. Riders of a certain age were bought up with tricky little fuel taps, right? Well, being used to them and liking them are two different things, and the one fitted to this DR is at the very bottom of my ‘fuel taps I’ve enjoyed using’ list. The fuel tap is on the same side as your brake/throttle hand (think about going on reserve with your right hand off the bar – it’s not good), it is almost impossible to locate as it’s so near the lower tank lip, its lever is too small to use with gloves and it turns only halfway to reserve from the off position before it’s too stiff to move. Basically, every time you hit reserve you have a trauma to deal with, usually ending up with a hunt for a safe place to stop and a motionless vehicle that doesn’t particularly enjoy being kick-started from hot. Well, no more – I ordered a new tap from a trade catalogue, even at retail prices it’d be less than £20, and while a competition level restorer would be peed off that it doesn’t match the original one, it’s got a longer body (see pic) and thus a much easier to access position for a gloved hand, as well as being easier to turn. The last thing on the to-do list was the fork-seals, one of which had reached epic failure level. Working on the forks it was crystal clear the gaiters are owed a debt of gratitude – the chrome on these stanchions is mint, way beyond the average condition of the rest of the machine, solely because of the rubbery bits that have protected them from the outside world for 33 years. I’ve never really considered the work of the humble gaiter before, but seeing my distorted but smiling face reflected back from the mint chrome on these forks changed all that. Rightfully after such a top-to-toe refresh of the cycle parts the MOT was a breeze, even though the brakes were still bedding in and far from being as good as they were 50 miles later. Even when the DR has been slow, hard to stop and unreliable I’ve enjoyed riding it – it’s a really charismatic motorcycle. This huge raft of improvements has made it smoother, faster and way easier to stop (time will tell about reliability) but more importantly they’ve turned up the fun factor from seven to eleven, which is exactly the return you want when you spend a bit of time, love and money on a bike. The bike feels way punchier, so next month’s trip to the dyno will be interesting – I’m 100% sure there are more horses waiting to be counted, but how many? Who knows? All we know about bhp is that it was at 27 when I first got the bike. Then I got a rebore and new piston; after that it was 32. Having now changed the cam-chain (and also the exhaust) I hope it’ll make between 36 and 40bhp. Oh my, how after two years of trying I’d love to see 40! After this amount of love and attention, it owes me that, right?