VOL. 51 ISSUE 2 JANUARY 13, 2015 P71
To be fair, Tony Salt had warned
me about that, so I was ready
for having to squeeze very hard
to make them work not very
well when cold. Taking a leaf
from the carbon brake operation
manual, I held the lever on lightly
as I completed the first lap, after
which they worked well enough
to stop the Suzuki at the end
of the 800 meter-long back
straight, but even after they'd
warmed up they seemed rather
wooden, which is something
I also complained of back in
my 1985 test of the bike, so
this wasn't a case of modern
expectations of 30 year-old
hardware. The Suzuki just didn't
stop as well as I'd expected with
those 10mm bigger Brembo
discs than standard, and it also
required a pretty high lever effort,
and thinking back I remember
this was an issue when Brembo
swapped not long before the
Suzuki raced from cast iron to
stainless steel material for their
discs, so maybe that was the
reason. At least the Superstock
GSX-R stayed on line and didn't
sit up under braking when
cranked over, as I remember
from my Snetterton test its
unruly-handling race-framed TT1
counterpart had done.
The GSX-R Superstock motor
has a high idle speed of 2500
rpm, a favorite trick of Suzuki
in particular back then in those
pre-slipper clutch days aimed
at preventing engine braking
upsetting the handling. That's
why Frankie Chili's Alstare
Corona GSX-R750 Superbike
had the same high idle not 15
years ago. This meant I didn't
have to worry about chattering
the rear wheel anchoring up
from high speed for Killarney's
second-gear hairpins (first gear
on the Gixxer is just for getting
off the line) and it also helped
overcome that fierce pickup
from a closed throttle via the
combo of the flatslides and
heavy springs. Thirty years on,
the great sounding Superstock
motor is still a lovely engine to
ride, pulling smoothly from low
down with no flat spot caused by
the race pipe that was probably
developed by Yoshimura, having
been lifted off a factory-built TT1
racer. The untuned engine has
good midrange torque, although
the effect of the open pipe and
carburation changes have been
to make the power delivery
quite a bit peakier. There's
usable poke only from 5000
rpm onwards, but the real kick
doesn't come until 7,000 revs,
giving a relatively narrow usable
powerband for a four-stroke
750cc roadster. That's before
the 10,500 rpm revlimiter kicks
in on the stock igniter box Tony
Salt has now fitted, instead of
the higher-revving ringer used
by Grant. But the ratios on the
standard six-speed gearbox are
so well matched that it's easy to
keep the engine driving, though
I found it difficult to change up
smoothly every time without
using the clutch. Although the
race-pattern right-foot gear
change felt reasonably precise
and clean, there's a fair bit of
crankshaft inertia in spite of the
much lighter crank than the old
air-cooled GSX750, so fanning
the clutch lever to get smoother
upward changes didn't result in
any dramatic loss of revs.
When it was first launched the
GSX-R750 acquired a reputation as a
rewarding if demanding streetbike.
