Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

c U2 " II 5lII II: 5lII ..,; a s ran • • • weig ht would be in t erest in g to fin d o ut . It will scoot to 95 MPH in t op gear just abo ut anywhere, can break 10 0 if you give it room, and can whip around a car as quick as a though t - provided you're in the right gear. (Sneak a loo k at the digital indicator to see. Trick.) Po wer begins in earnest at 5500 RPM and it revs freely past eight thou. Grab a handful below five thou and it's tractable but stone slow. Past the lake angling nor th, then up the bac k side of th e m ountain. I've go tten quit e proficient at han ging o ff to avoid grounding (the sidestand drags on the left, the centerstand on the right. It's said they im proved the ground clearance t his year. I'm glad 1 never had to ride one of the o lder ones) but my knee is reall y heginning to pr o t est. At the summit, light is failing and the body is ready to pack it . A sign beckons warm food. Time to quit. After chow, it's picky-picky d o wn a powdery dirt road by headl ight, lo o king fo r a nice solitary spot to thro w down the sleeping bag. Finally, there's a little trail leading up off the road into a shel tered hollow ringed wi th pines. While it's no trials bike , the GT 380 is fairly stable and controllable in t he powdery dirt and slippery pine needles. Silence roars in my ears when I cut the engine. It's warm and soft up here; a deer coughs in the distance and squirrels chatter overhead. Lights out. g ~ g -e- "'l O ...... ...... s.. IlJ ..c a ..... u 0 . Day two - morning mil eage reading 303 ., Suzuki.GT ·380L: One way to test a motorcycle is to falloff it, then 'ride it a thousand miles. By Lane Campbe ll weren't starting to stiffen up, I'd really be enjoying myself. "GT" stands for ''Gran Turisimo" , an overworked 'a nd often misused (especially by Detroit) phrase that the Italians coined to describe a • special kind of touring in a special kind of car. To them, "Gran Turisimo " meant, literally, touring in the grand manner; which from the elbow and one knee, and I've squashed my lunch . I'm det uned fo r the day. Still, I set out to put some miles on a test bike, but I' m thinking, "Well, it continental viewpoint means taking two people and their overnigh t luggage from Point "AU to Point HB," no matter what the road or weather, in safety, style, comfort, but most of all fast. No four-passenger sedan could properly qualify as a GT car, the ideal was a slightly de-tu n ed sports/racing car with closed bodywork, wind-up windows,· a heater and fitted luggage. What, then is a GT motorcycle? The three-cylinder 380 is plainly not a racer, not that it couldn't be made into one. Yet it's no slouch when it comes to covering ground, and I've got a test to prove it. It's an eighty mile stretch not unlike an inter-city jaunt in Europe, an unabashed test of gro und-eating capability in a "GT" setting: a twisting, turning semi-alpine road that lets you down in fast sweepers through a valley, over cattle guards and broken pavement, past construction si t e s , and thro ugh chronically flas h-flooded dips with treacherous wisps of sand, then on gradually improving but narrow blacktop through 'th e pineywoods to the freeway. We Day one - 36 a recap My right knee throbs because I was dumb enough to fall off this morning. Yup, there I was, GT 380 Suzuki, bedroll strapped to the back an' all, indulging in a downhill coasting race with three other guys, equally crazy and far more familiar with the road . Phooey! Bike's not badly dinged; it lit on a han dl ebar , a footpeg, and my bedroll. One turn signal lens is gone, clutch lever's curlicued, and the bars are tweaked. I've Rot raspberries on one sure ain't no racer." arrive at the interchange after an hour and 29 min u tes, average speed just 60 · M PH wi t h 0 u t doing . cons pic uous violence to the laws of God or Man (55 MPH speed limit excepted in spots). Fuel consumption was j ust about 41 MPG . No ne too shabby, and if my knee I gas up, oil the chain, and head down the freeway, then off, ang ling up the mountain. The road swoops and loops up toward the lake, running along the sheer canyon wall beside a rushing river. Traffic is heavy here, campers, cars, pickups, and b ikes - about 50-50 choppers and straight touring machines . We 're overhauling and passing everybody with ease, just running like a train, never really cornering hard enough to ground anything, passing with impunity anywhere there's a clear space. I'm finding that lack of ground clearance is really the Suzuki's only glaring weak point. For a stock Japanese road bike, the sus pension is amazingly firm an d well da mped, fron t and rear seem to work well together, and the machine tracks where it's p o in ted , ro ugh pavemen t o r not. It absolu tely doe. not wobble. Ever. There is one idi osyncracy . T he fro nt wheel has a tendency to pump up and down in resonance with the engine at certain speeds, usually around 45 ~IPH, part throttle. Feels weird, but doesn't make the bike do anything nasty. Braking is t hree fi nge rs at the front and easy on the rear, all with excellent control. With a whole hand you can lock the front wheel straight up, and the cable operated rear is relatively chatter-free, even on the verge of loc king. The engine and six-speed gearbox hook up well together: it's substantially quicker than a Honda 350F, not as quick as a Yamaha RD350. What it would do with 100 pounds less I crawl out of my sleeping bag in full dayligh t and my leg almost crumples under me. It's a good thing the two-stroke Suzuki is an easy, one kick starter (Even when co ld, with the choke on. Odd bit, the en rich ment lever works directly on only two of the th ree carbs, with balance tubes to help even out the mixt ure. So mehow it works.) I have to gingerly balance on m y sore right leg and take a half-hearted stab with m y left, standing beside the bike. There's absolutely no traffic as we eu t down the back roads taking . ' advan tage of t he downslope and goi ng easy on the throttle. In the valleys it's top gear all the way. winging' comers placarded "45" at 65 to 70 with the engine just ticking over fast and the throttle almost closed. We're low on gas and beginning to worry abo ut the o il in the injector tank. Where are you goi ng to find Suzuki CCI on Labor Day in the hinterlands ? We gas up and oil the chain again at mileage 331. Back u p into the mountains, this time through a national forest, and at my first sight of one of those trees, I must have let the Suzuki drift to a near standstill with my mouth gaping, because a forest ranger in a passing tr uck ye lled, "Don't stop here, that's just one of the little ones!" Lunch is another breakfast square and more coffee in the clear fragrant air at 6,000 feet. I've procrastinated too long; it's time to do so mething abou t the oil, even if it's wrong. Good news: Chevron sells a dual-purpose two-stroke oil that works perfectly in the Suzuki. It's even red like CCI. It's nice to know you're not a slave to a proprietary brand-name lubricant. Back down the mountain, now I want to make for the coas t high way , a broad valley and a mountain away. An old boy pumping gas tells me of a shortcut. The way leads out among the wide, flat vegetable plots, arrow straigh t roads and air pungent with the scent of green onions. If I were in a car, I'd fall asleep. As it is, I try to forget about lI}Y leg. It really only hurts on two occasions : Every time I get off the bike, and every time I get back on . Mostly I stayon. The "Ram Air" cooling shroud must be working as advertised, because the temperature's pushing 100, yet the engine has shown no sign o f overheating - not even as we attack the lo ng grades lead ing out of the valley. Now the road gets interesting again. It had been wal l-to-wall fuzz, but now we're away where a brief 11 0 MPH bu rst

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