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As you eIIn see with the blw photos, the DR370 has a yellow paint job.
Handling is fairly agile, steady and predictable below 40 mph.
By Tod Rafferty
. Photos by Phred Potts
When the Suzuki DR and SP370 four-stroke
singles appeared a year ago, they were met with
a generally lukewarm reception by the motorcycle press. The complaints were lack of power,
IAbove) The airbox. toolbox and exhaust plumbing share space beneath the
aeat.IBelow) The airbox looks well sealed against the elements.
8
especially the shortage of torque
in the low-rev range ; a snatchy
drivelin e ilia t p rod u ced an a~oy.
.
mg lurch m the power deli very
and a suspension system barely
adequate for the demands of fast trail
rid ing.
.
On the other side of the ledger , th e
machines were relatively light (28 1
pounds for the street legal SP , and 271
for its knobby-tired counterpart the
DR ). They handled reasonably well,
far more agile than the Yamaha 500 ,
for example. And their mechanical,
simplicity made them easy to
maintain. Plus they looked real spiffy,
with a tank/seat/fender line reminiscent of the now sem i-legendary Ossa
Stiletto.
,
Unfortunately, the 1979 models have arrived without any correction of
the aforementioned deficiencies . What
we have is a medium -displacement
bike that could be made a lot better
with a little fiddling and another few
hundred bucks.
The DR gets a new yellow paint job
this' year, and the headlight has
changed from round to squarish. The
~riveline
lurch seems l~ ~ro~ounced
the ne~er .m <.>del , but It IS sull the~e
and remains rrrttant enough to make It
our mos t important criticism of th e
machine. You can live with it , bu t you
shouldn't hav e to .
The SP and DR Suzukis share the
same 369cc engine, with bore and
stroke dimensions of 85 X 65.2mm
that put it decidedly oversquare. It
likes to spin. The compression ratio is
8.9 :I , and the combustion chamber is
fed by a 32mm Mikuni . The interplay
be tween this carburetor and the
camshaft/compression arrangement is
not quite right in the low-rpm range.
Snap the throttle open with the revs
down , and the engine coughs and dies .
With the engine turning over 3000
rpm , the throttle response is predictably smooth and progressive.
The powerplant is of straightforward design . There is no counterbalancing system riding on the crank shaft, but engine vibration is not
especially annoying. The wet sump
oiling system , with a capacity of 1.7
quarts, lubricates both ends of die
engine and the transmission and all
the oil passages are internal. A small
In
