Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Cycle News 1972 09 12

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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N ~ W Z W ...J o > o The fro."t brake is a big four leading shoe number. A disc would be better. . - The Suzuki 750 is just the thing for two-up riding. By Art Friedman Photos by Larry Groves and Art Friedman "That one of them water powered three cycle jobs?" The Suzuki GT-750 inspires a host of questions, ranging from extremely intelligent to ignorant_ The reasons are the super sophisticated design and the unusual appearance. _ The single most outstanding feature of the top of the Suzuki line is, of course, water-cooling. Even though the machine has been available in this country for about a year the majority of service stations produced a "Wow!. A radiator! Far out! How come?" . The advantage of water cooling over air cooling is simply that it works better_ It keeps the engine cooler, and that means that there will be les. wear, that tighter clearances can be used in the piston to cylinder surfaces, and that the engine will be more reliable. The though t that it is just something else to go wrong doesn't seem to be confirmed by the experiences of either our testers or our acquaintances who have owned GT-750's. The radiator needs no attention as it is sealed and uses almost no'water, and the water pump and hoses should last a long time. Included in the cooling system are a water temperature gauge, a thermostat, a plastic expansion reservoir, and a fan that cu ts in when the water temperature gets close to dangerous. We have never met a person who has seen one of those fans operate. The radiator is protected by a crash bar. The water pump is located at the bottom of the crankcases and operates quite silen tly. Which brings us to another poin t about water cooling. Since the fms necessary for air cooling can be dispensed with, the noise emitted by them is eliminated. The Suzuki 750, as a result is a very quiet ,motorcycle. Exhaust and intake noise are kept to a minimum and it is a very unobtrusive machine to the bystander. Except for the smoke. Our machine smoked a great deal out of the pipe from the right cylinder which was probably due to a sligh t flaw somewhere in the machine since none of the other pipes smoked noticeably. Suzuki has tried to keep smoke - down to a minimum by installing a one-way valve at the bottom of the crankcases that picks up excess oil and delivers it back to th,e transfer port. There are four pipes eminating from three cylinders. The middle pipe splits and runs out both sides in tWo smaller pipes. All four pipes are connected by balance tubes whIch probably help to keep the noise down. As a matter of fact, there are pipes and tubing running everywhere. There are a lot of water lines running hither and yon for the cooling fluid and the pipes are all interconnected. Someone Ground clearance was adequate. commented that you would have to be a plumber just to pull the engine. However, it doesn't appear that one will have to pull the engine very frequently. Maybe never. The water cooling will aid engine reliability to a considerable extent, and, at 67 claimed horsepower, the engine isn't working too hard. That 67 horsepower wasn't developed at the tip of the pen of whoever wrote the specifications, either. It has to be one of the most accurate claims going. The big three weighs about 525 pounds but still is a jet. And that sao.rprised us. Looking 'at the bike you see a big (oh, is that big) bulky, slow-looking motorcycle. -One person walked up to ).Is 'at a gas station and asked if Harley-Davidson had moved to Japan. That is the image and feel that the machine has. So the rather spectacular acceleration came as something of a shock. The mach ine is torquey and throttle response, especially at freeway speeds, is excellent. At 65 mph you can accelerate hard without needing to downshift. The powerband is very broad for a two-stroke triple. This surprised us for another reason. We had ridden another 750 Suzuki before we received this one and it was quite peaky. There must have been something wrong with it becau~ our test machine came on the ports at a little over three grand and pulled hard to the 7000 rpm redline. Seems like it could win a high gear only drag race with almost any other 750 from a rolling start. The acceleration allows you to forget the weight. Weight affects other things, too. It more brakes to stop more weight. The rear brake is excellent. The four leading shoe fron t stopper is adeq uate (if a little SQueaky\. but a disc would be better. You couldn't lock the front wheel, and it fades some. The fade can be cut down by pulling the covers off the air scoops. Still, any 750, and especially O{le weighing over 500 pounds, needs a disc up fron t. We expect that one will appear on next year's model. Suspension is just fine for a machine that is a freeway-oriented tourer. It does an excellent job of absorbing bumps on all kinds. However, in certain types of comers taken moderately fast it gets into a pogo-ing wobble. This won t bother the cross-coun try tourer_ too much unless he a propensity for stuffing ~akes '" -....n.:'-.f,j :'"' •• c. j. •• ~ • • " .

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