The Cafe Caper
The Cafe Caper
A Sports/Touring Sampler For the Longterm Suzuki GS550
Shortly after the initial report on our CW longterm Suzuki GS550, a GS550 owner called to swap impressions and tuning tips. Some of his experience paralleled ours (front forks are too soft for spirited riding) and some didn’t (he’d removed the airbox top; on ours it made the mixture too lean at full power) and we enjoyed the conversation.
Especially a suggestion. Why not, he asked, do a series of tests, complementary evaluations of add-on parts that would work together? In, say, the cafe line?
Good idea. Cafe equipment is based on and derived from road racing equipment. Some of the items offered in the past have been too extreme for the highway, as in clip-ons, and some have been more for looks than function, witness bikini fairings good only for keeping bugs off your belt buckle. Even so, road racers know how to build comfort and control into long hours of sporting riding. It follows that a sports/ touring middleweight like the GS550 could benefit from some cafe-based changes.
Ours did.
DUNSTALL SEMI-SPORTS FAIRING
Dunstall equipment needs little introduction. It’s an English firm, famous for racing wins and modifications now doing business in the U.S. as an add-on sporting goods store with exhaust systems, engine parts, rearsets and a complete line of fairings.
The fairings have been of considerable interest. We’ve been fitting every likely example we can find, working toward a sports fairing that offers good looks, light weight and some wind and weather protection. The handlebar Laminar Sport fairing shown in the September issue was a good example; close, but not yet perfect.
Dunstall’s Semi-Sports is a frame mount, with a race style front, headlight and two permanent lower panels that shield the upper legs without quite being lowers in the touring sense. The windscreen is tightly curved and notched, just like GP bikes have.
Installation went smoothly. The headlight and shell come off, along with the shell mounting pieces and the front turn signals. An upper bracket clamps to the front of the steering head. A lower bracket, with sub-bracket for the signal stalks, goes on the front downtubes. Not only were all the pieces in the sack, they all fitted the first time. And by luck the lower hardware didn't interfere with the Lockhart oil cooler installed on the 550.
The fairing itself bolts to a T-shaped bar atop the top bracket, just in front of the bars. The side panels bolt to the lower brackets, all three mounts being cushioned with rubber biscuits. A new shell goes inside the fairing, the stock headlight bulb fastens to the shell, you plug the wires back in and it’s done.
In this case, not quite. The Dunstall fairing is designed to fit a variety of bikes, with hardware for each model. The design calls for retention of the stock bars. Current Suzukis, though, use high bars and because we never have liked the stock bars much and wanted to experiment there, we swapped the GS bars for bars off a Kawasaki KZ750. They have less bend and are an inch lower. Didn’t quite work. The bars shown are still a bit high and the righthand mirror bumps the screen before full lock. On the left, a lock restrictor was supplied with the Dunstall kit. The mirror doesn’t hit. We have lost some steering lock on both sides, and that gave us a couple dodgy moments in the parking lot until the GS riders got used to the change. You can still get in and out of the garage. It just takes planning.
The finish on the plastic sections and the hardware was excellent, although the black paint goes a bit grey when polished. The black doesn’t match the dark maroon of tank and bodywork but the colors are close enough to allow the fairing to look like part of the machine, rather than something bolted on later. >
In appearance, the Dunstall gets 10 out of 10. Super Fast when sitting still and all that sort of thing, just the look a sports tourer should have.
In function. 7 out of 10. The competition style screen is a few inches too low to protect the rider’s face. Headwinds are less bother, but they can be felt. Ditto bugs and
gravel from dump trucks. Dunstall offers a taller screen but it’s nearly straight up and down and looks, we think, dull. Outmoded. A screen with a general curve like the one shown, but higher and with perhaps a reverse lip at the top. would be better. Or we may install a spacer for the top bracket and raise the entire fairing.
Meanwhile, the Dunstall's looks and function are good enough that this unit will stay in place until the full test is completed.
Retail price is $167.50. Write to Dunstall. 27402 Camino Capistrano, Ste. 206, Laguna Niguel. Calif. 92677. for a dealer near you.
ONTARIO MOTO TECH CORP. REARSETS
These are a straight racing item, from a company founded by Kazuo Yoshima, builder of incredibly-quick 500cc CB400F Hondas and other road racers.
Moving the pegs back is a standard racing modification. Most pegs are positioned so the rider feels comfortable sitting up. the way one does on a ride around the block, or behind high bars. At speed, though, or with lower bars the rider crouches forward and the stock pegs cramp the legs, w hether on the track or an all-day ride.
These rearsets are a complete package; machined aluminum brackets, folding pegs with rubber boots, a new and shorter brake lever and a shorter shift lever with Heim joints and adjustable linkage.
All the pieces are nicely made. Perhaps because the set shown was a prototype, loaned by Yoshima because we asked for them, the inner portions of the legs needed to be trimmed and the stock bolts replaced with shorter ones before the brackets were snug on their mounting points.
And because these were intended for racing, that is, to improve ground clearance as well as posture, they are one inch rearward of stock and one inch higher.
Since the installation, the GS550 has been on several two-day trips, 1000 miles or more each time. The rearsets are a benefit. They do allow' straighter legs and better balance. When this bike was ridden on the racetrack for the oil cooler project (see our December issue for details), we couldn’t ground the pegs. They work on the track w ithout flaw. For the road, if they were ours w e'd redrill the brackets and see if the pegs could be another inch lower. Either way, we like the rearsets better than the stock pegs.
The retail price is $75, from Ontario Moto Tech. Corp., 6850 Vineland Ave., Unit 16, North Hollywood, CA 91605. >
KERKER EXHAUST
Progress rears its head in odd places. In the previous chapter the GS550 had been fitted with an RC collector system. Bolted right on, didn't need rejetting, improved the useful power and was a bit louder than some of the staff cared for. Further, there are some states which prohibit exhaust notes louder than stock, not to mention the social issue.
Kerker, which has earned a good reputation in racing, has come up with an answer in the form of exhaust systems that meet legal restrictions and. they claimed, improve performance without requiring carb changes, a vital point now that motorcycles must be certified for emissions and carbs are not supposed to be fiddled with. (Although in some states the owner is allowed to make his own adjustments.)
Worth trying. The Kerker system is basically like most such equipment on the market, with four primary pipes of a length (26 in. in this case) matched to the engine’s power peak, a collector and a single muffler. On the Kerker, pipes and collector are welded together. The muffler slips onto the exit pipe and is clamped, and
the muffler contains a replaceable core.
That’s the prime selling point. The Kerker system comes w ith a choice of three cores. There’s the Standard, which at this writing is sold for competition use only; the DBA. legal for road use through 1980. and the DBA-E, the E standing for emissions and signifying that the system can legally be used under the proposed emissions standards for 1982. The last two cores are built with packing that’s certified not to deteriorate, which a muffler cannot do if it’s to meet the newr rules.
It was a convincing test.The Kerker bolted to the GS in half an hour. No problems with stands or oil filter or the oil cooler or the fairing. The muffler-to-colleetor clamp looks a bit bulky, we don’t much like the rear mounting strap hanging down from the upper right shock mount, and the muffler drags enough to threaten lifting the rear wheel oft’ the ground—with disturbing slides the result—when the bike is thrown into hard righthanders at speed.
Main thing is. the Kerker works. With 9.000 miles on the GS550. dragstrip time with the Kerker was 13.40 sec. at 96.98 mph. an improvement of half a second over stock. (We can’t compare the stock
system w ith 9.000 miles to the RC because the pieces disappeared into the jungle w'e call our shop.)
Curiously, the quietest Kerker, the DBAE model, produced the best quarter mile times and the highest top speed. Kerker representatives explained that different carb jetting would improve times with the less restrictive cores but that would be tampering as defined by The Govt. For the record, the standard Kerker was nearly as quick with 13.43 sec. at 96.98 mph. the EPA Kerker time was 13.44 sec. at 97.08 mph and the racing baffle yielded a time of 13.57 sec. at 95.84 mph. the result of incorrect jetting with the low-restriction core.
Our version of the standard noise test showed sound level readings of 84 dB(A) w ith the certified core, or as close to stock as our test can come. No rejetting was needed.
Best of all. the Kerker sounds great. Quiet in traffic, sporting when desired. Sort of like fighting City Hall, and winning. w hile City Halls root for you.
From Kerker dealers. $173.45.
