I'd like your opinions on this bike please. Ta muchly like.
Heavy and very very ugly (particularly the new ones with the bug eye lights - ug!). The one I had a go on felt like it was strangled power-wise. It was as if someone had soaked the air filter in road tar and stuffed a dead moggie up its chuffer. Also, this particular example had severely rotting downpipes (looked like bird shit) despite being only 6 months old. In a word - shite. Of course, that's just my opinion. I once read about a guy who liked his.
<fx:scream> "Run away, run away!" Ummm... unless you want to buy my wife's, in which case they're lovely little bikes; novice-friendly handling, reasonably good acceleration, brakes are good enough to get the back end waving in the air, and they're fast enough to out-run Blackbirds and ZZR1100s on autoroutes. No probs.
The best thing about them is the ability to stuff the early 1100 engines in them and many other parts from the bigger bikes in the same range fit too, thus producing a nice little street sleeper that will toss you into the ditch as soon as you like.
I liked mine. Mechanically very reliable. Lovely gearbox. Easy to service once you've taken the fairing off. Don't worry, you become quite adept after a short time. Handle OK, brakes OK, comfort good enough for Mansfield ( Notts ) to Edinburgh stopping only for fuel and not being crippled when I got there. Used to commute 100 miles a day on mine without major issue. Problems I had in well over 100,000 miles that fall outside normal maintenance. The electrics rot. Had to change a few connectors. The chassis eventually rots. Stock suspension not brilliant. Hagon at the rear, stock spring with 6p in 2p pieces and a plate washer on top of each spring ( drill a 5mm hole in them for the damping adjuster to fit through ) sorts that out. Chassis bearings, and there are a lot of them, need regular maintenance. Strip, clean and regrease the rear suspension links every year. The calipers tend to rot. An easy but time consuming job to rebuild them. Pattern seals and pistons available at 50% Suzuki prices, so not that bad really. My automatic camchain tensioner was an ATC in name only. When it rattles, slacken it, whack it, tighten it. All in all, not a bad bike per se. Not brilliant, but if cheap enough for a good 'un, go for it.
Moon Badger says... I take it this is the prescribed bodge for sticking GSXR/Bandit style ACTs? I hope so, cos it's what I did to my Bindit one and it worked.
Aha!, you spotted the delikabe acronym misberate. I found on my 600F and GSXR/Bandits owned by friends that when the ACT no longer takes up the slack, the 'chocolate orange' fix kept things down to a quiet rustle between valve clearance checks when a quick whack ( oo-er ) was added to the maintenance schedule. If you bother stripping the unit down, you'll find no wear. You may even replace the spring, to little avail. Even moly grease during reassembly, which will have it working fine before you refit it is defeated. My theory is the pushrod distorts by a fraction of a mil, but that is enough to foil the attempts of the spring. Not sufficient that a small ball-pein<sp> cannot coax it forward again.
