Why all the hate on the Suzuki GS500?

[Waaarrrggghhh]

So I'm riding my Yamaha YBR 125 for nearly 3 months now (on CBT) and intend on doing the direct access as soon as I turn 24 this coming May.

I've been looking quite a lot on gumtree and autotrader to see what the market for 2nd hand bikes is like, and it looks to me like GS500s are a bargain. They typically go for around £1000 which seems like amazing price, and to tel you the truth I am just looking for a bigger, more powerful version of my YBR: something that is good for commuting, filtering, quite comfortable but has that oomph so that I'm not being a bit of a nuisance on A roads and can handle the motorway no problem.

I did a forum search on here to read up about threads on the GS500 and you all seem to hate this thing. What gives? It's Suzuki, it's a naked, it's not a complete monster of a big bike to start on, sounds ideal for me.

[J4mes]

You can have my Thundercat for less than that.

[wr6133]

They are shit.

If you pay a grand for one you are a mug.

[MarJay]

They have some of the worst Suzuki build quality, which is REALLY saying something. They have an engine which was old when the bike was introduced in the mid eighties and they don't handle all that well. If you pay a grand you're a fool. You could get a CB500 or GPZ500S for less, and it would be a miles better bike.

I'd say there isn't hate in the sense that we don't 'hate on it' but it's just not a great bike especially compared to bikes that can be had for similar money. If the owner of an ancient BSA bantam rode one they'd be impressed, otherwise they are the very bottom of the motorcycling food chain.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[P.]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Hopefully nuff said

GS500s should be obliterated and crushed.

[Itchy]

[redeem ouzzer]

I think the frame is pre rusted before it sees paint. One that gets ridden all year round will rot like a trawler. Engine is a breathed on GS400 lump with the biggest crank case of any 500 twin ever, it's about 3ft long! The only plus is that they are easy to modify, GSXR front and rear ends fit straight on if you are perverse enough.
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Be a REAL MAN!

[Itchy]

[Beehive Bedlam]

I rode one on my 'conversion lesson' not by choice the 'conversion lesson' that is it was mandatory to prove I could ride even though I had a full A1 at the time. Lasted all of five minutes with the CBT fags in the playground before the instuctor recognised I was hot shit and decided the time would be better spent on the road assessing my road craft.

Anyway as above they are horrible in every possible way. I was glad to get back on my Varadero it was like an arm chair in comparison.

Also I paid a grand for my FZS600 much better bike.

[Waaarrrggghhh]

So they are crap ok

Lots of Yamaha Fazers going around near me for around £1000 too, would that be a better buy?

I've had nothing but good experiences on my current little Yamaha, but then it is a 2010 YBR, whereas some of these Fazers are kind of old (90s)

[MarJay]

[Beehive Bedlam]

[Rogerborg]

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

[ThatDippyTwat]

[RhynoCZ]

I'm going to give you an unbiased answer. GS 500 motorcycles are cheap, having less power than the rest of the 500cc paraler twin cylinder gang. They were decent motorcycles, as decent as a Suzuki can be. The GS engine desing is old, very old, I'm not worried to say very early 80's/late 70's, which is nothing wrong on its own, but in comparison with the rest of the class, an aircooled 33kW engine is just not enough. If you think about the money people ask for a GS and the fuel economy and other aspects, only a fool would buy one, as the same money got you, and still gets you, far better motorcycles of far better build quality.

The alternatives were
CB500 - indestructable engine, 44kW on the Brembo brakes model (the rear drum brake model is not bad, I suppose, but I would avoid it);
ER-5 - not my cup of tea, never fancied one, drum rear brake with not so rigid tubular frame;
GPZ500 - the best of them all, I'd say. The early version still had a rear drum brake, but the engine had a bit more kW than the ER-5 and, and that is important, the GPZ had a ''modern'' rigid frame. The later models had 3 disc brakes.

Now, I've never been in your situation, going from a 125 to the big leagues. I started on a in-line 4 cylinder and from that point on found all the ''modern'' parallel twin cylinder motorcycles inferior. The ignorance is a bliss, in your case, meaning you could go for a ''modern'' paraler twin cylinder engine motorcycle and still have a plenty of fun and high speed thrills without thinking, that with the same, or even better, MPG and initial cost you could go double the speed on something a bit more powerful.

In-line 4 cylinders:
I must agree with the lads here saying a Hornet is better than a Bandit. I did my licence on a Bandit 600 and it was alright at first, but the moment I got my licence and started to test other motorcycles, I found out very soon enough, that Bandit was not the best motorcycle out there, at the same budget. Again, some might say otherwise, but those are Suzuki fanboys and their opinion is heavily biased.

At £1000, there should be a nice motorcycle, that will suit your needs and desires. Do not limit yourself just to naked commuters. I'm not quite certain about the UK market, but here you can still get a nice CBR600F and ZZR600, if you look for them properly.

Shame, that all the 400cc pocket rockets are lemons nowadays. There still might be a nice exemplar, but at £1k, it'd be nothing short of a miracle. I liked my CB-1, a small motorcycle, reasonably quick, with all the bells and whistles of the bikes of proper displacement engines. Going flat out, with all the noise and gear shifting, yet still being around ''just'' 100mph, nothing you could experience on a liter bike that often.

Anyway OP, buy whatever catches your eye. Having no prior experience, it's hard to tell what you are looking for in a motorcycle, what do you want it to do and be. So, even if you buy a GS500 (please do not waste £1k on that), it will give you an idea of what you are looking for. You may sell your motorcycle any time and buy something that does fulfil your hopes and dreams.
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[J.M.]

Out of the bikes that I've owned, the GS500 is the bike that I wouldn't buy again.

For less money than I bought my GS500, I bought a Thundercat, which was a much better bike. The Thundercat is quicker, but it's not stupidly quick. It's an old and heavy bike, which will match the fuel consumption of the GS500, whilst potentially sounding decent.

I certainly wouldn't pay £1k for a GS500 again. I would limit myself to £500 tops, and not be upset if I couldn't get one for that.
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2004 R1 & 2018 XSR900

[chickenstrip]

I can only echo most of what has been said above. Funnily enough, a few years ago, when one of my bikes was in for some repairs, I got to borrow both a GS500 and a Fazer 600. The GS seemed like it was barely a step up from a 125. Gutless, crap handling, bland. It got me from A to B, but that was all that could be said for it. I couldn't give it back quickly enough. While I had the Fazer, I was much happier that my own bike wouldn't be road ready for a while. Don't buy a GS500, you'll regret it.
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[lilredmachine]

I just bought a GSX750F for 300 wigwams.

It's rough, loud, matt black, "streetfightered" (Including Dommies!) but is mechanically good with a few hours of fiddling and a 5ers worth of exhaust gaskets. Went straight through MOT on Tuesday.

It makes a GS500 look like a pushbike. It will also make the rides in winter good fun rather than worrying about ruining something nice.

If you want a bigger YBR125 you are missing the point, big bikes are cheap due to there being a lot of choice. Jap 125s are expensive. I just paid 225 for a TW125 with a snapped exhaust valve, but the bike is in good nick. I know that with dropping the motor, a new valve, head gasket and rocker assembly (50ish quid) the bike will be good and it'll get a good clean and go in the classifieds for a grand aiming to get 900. Three times what I just paid for the 750...

Get looking, aim yourself at a jap 4 pot around the 700 mark. ZZR600s, T-cats, Fazers, GSXs and the like. GO!
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Bikes: too many, too much for one man to maintain anyway.

[Teflon-Mike]

The GS500 was never a particularly bad bike, it was just never a particularly great one.

In it's day, it was beloved of bike schools, as they were cheap and pretty robust, and reletively easy to maintain.
As such many DAS Newbs bought them, that was what they had done thier training on, and as a first big bike / commuter they were pretty useful; and with ex school bikes swelling numbers and depressing priced even more they were often something of a bargain 2nd hand.
the 'trouble' with them, is that they were built down to a price; and as they aged they fell into that bargain basement very early, where they were rarely likely to get much love and attension.

Range between good and bad has been pretty wide too; many have lived hard lives as oft dropped school bikes, subsequently sold on to 33bhp restricted newbs who were never going to keep them none too long, to drop some more, neglect as much as possible and punt off as soon as restriction lapsed for whatever they really wanted; to Middle-Aged DAS Newbs brand new first big-bike; dealer serviced like the company car, only used on sunny sundays for gentle tootling about the lanes and the odd commute in the better weather, sold on when the novelty has worn off and a couple of MOT's have shown only the mileage to and from the test center between them!

In the sub £1500 price range... CONDITION IS ALL... and I would NOT dismiss GS500's from the look at list, so commonly dismissed as 'boring' and 'fragile' or 'finikity', you could get lucky and find that gem example no one else bothers to go look at. But, plenty else in the same frame; Kawasaki ER5, CB500 and the venerable Suzuki SV650, Bandit 600's and Old faithful XJ600 diversions.

To all extents and purposes, its a mine field market, in which you have to temper ideas of reliability with bangernomical 'disposeability'... most of this sort of stuff takes £200 a pair tyres, £100+ C&S kits, and has three brake calipers; an MOT that finds the thing need a damn good service, and a longer list of service spares, let alone any probably quite 'minor', but all, compared to the market value of the bike, 'expensive' spares, can easily render one 'beyond ecconomic repair'.

If you are handy or prepared to be handy with the spanners, you can string a lot of extra service life out of many these things; BUT, soon as you add water cooling, mechanics become more involved; soon as you start covering the engine with plastic, mechanics get more involved; soon as you add three or four cylinders, mechanics become much more involved, and the risks of it being harder to live with amplify in proportion.....

If you aren't handy or so keen to get handy with spanners, then what tends to make a bike more difficult to live with as a DIY mechanic MUCH more rapidly makes them into a money-pit if you have to pay someone else to do anything, even basic service work, like changing spark plugs!!

On that basis; I would probably much more readily spend £1500 on a 'better' example of something more humble, like a GS500 or ER5, than I would £1000 on something that bit more 'exiting' like a VFR750 or ZX6-R.... but at around the £500 mark? I would likely not be much bothered either way, as it's essentially disposable!

Suggestion you are hoping to find a YBR125 'with balls' is to some degree unfortunately unlikely. YBR is a great learner-commuter, and I have many times before described it as the accountant's choice. Trouble is, soon as you step up from 125, the market diversifies and specialises markedly, and 'utility/economy' motorcycles dont figure very prominently amongst them... few folk who can ride 'more' than a 125, want that sort of 'useful if unexciting'. The popular School DAS bike, commuter twins, remain about as close as there is; the GS is the oldest of them; but even the ER5 and CB500 have been out of the listings a long while, and the newer 650's are still commanding a bit of a premium and few seem to be much of a bargain.

Bottom line, you pays your money and takes your chances.... and lower down the market you go looking more chances you are going to be taking, but CONDITION IS ALL, sod what the reviews may have said when the bike was new, or even nearly new; its what the one infront of you looks like that matters...

And remember, there's rarely such a thing as a free lunch, and bigger bikes usually always cost bigger money; if it's not on the purchase price, then it will be there somewhere in what it costs to live with, one way or another.

Also recalibrate your notions of 'old' and or high miles; 125 learner bikes tend to live hard lives and are build down to a price and grade; they have an expected service life of about seven years and 40,ooo miles or so. Big bikes? Are almost all built to specialist market needs, and are sold more as sporting goods like fishing rods and multi gyms, than 'utility appliances' like washing machines or cars.

A lot of folk buy bikes and keep them pretty much as garage trophies; they seldom get taken out in the rain; they get polished more than they are ridden, and after initial enthusiasm for the pass time has worn off, can languish in the garage for years never even ridden at all.

Other folk, buy a bike, and get carried away with the enthusiasm, and crank up big miles, riding them to and from work every day, and taking the long way home for fun, before spending all weekend heading off on leisure rides, where, its easy to crank up 1000 miles in a week-end...

Now... some bikes are more or less well suited to either type of use... so you could come across a Honda Goldwing, a big lusty whirlitzer on wheels 'touring bike' that is built to cross continents; that could crank up car like mileages without needing an oil change... which has sat in the shed for 51 weeks of the year for the last five years... (actually I know of at least one!) and is twenty years old and barely run in.... OR you could come across a Ducati 916, that is a highly strung Italian thoroughbred, best suited to garage trophy service, that has an over enthusiastic owner, who has used it as an every day commuter; done half a dozen track days a season on it, as many club weekends as possible, and used it to tour northern Italy each summer... that might only just be due its first MOT, but cranked up enough miles and seen enough service that its pretty much in need of a full ground up restoration!!

So, even in the higher price brackets, condition is STILL all..

But, the point is, stop applying 'car' thinking; bikes aint cars; they are 'leisure goods'. If you were going to look at a second hand multigym advertised on ebay, it dont have a number plate to tell you what year it was made, or an oddometer to tell you how many weight lifts had been done on it.. you would judge it purely on the condition of what you saw when you got there, and THAT is how you have to weigh up the worth of motorbikes. and there are plenty of 'old' bikes with a lot of useful life left in them out there, and a lot of younger ones, that have been thrashed to within an n'th of thier life ready to be a money pit.

Decide on your budget; and go look and judge for yourself of what is actually on offer in your budget what you think may or may not better suit; and DON'T be too swayed by what the mags say or reputation suggests.. weigh each up on individual merit. the variability in the bike world is just too large to do other wise.
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[Wobbling Dog]

if you can resist fitting a top box and god forbid handlebar muffs,i think the gs500 is a cool looking bike,it counts for quite a lot when you pick a bike. bit like a good looking mrs that's shit at cooking.you won't starve but you woudn't mind been seen holding her hand in the street.

[ThatDippyTwat]

[Alpineandy]

If I needed a bike to commute around London (and the ULEZ thing wasn't going to happen) and decent condition GS500 came up for £500+/- then I'd be happy to run it into the ground for a year or two.
But paying any more than that or the condition being poor would make me look elsewhere.
That would only be used for Commuting and I'd be looking for another bike for fun riding.
I think Tef summed the bike up pretty well. Built to a budget, not interesting but can do a job.

I should add that an NVT is the same but better built and rides a bit better...
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The above comment isn't necessarily the truth and anyone that says it is, is only correct if it's the truth or they're bigger than me.

[NJD]

You've got the choice of anything on the UK market, budget permitting, and you've inquired about the GS, oh dear. Well, it's rich coming from because I made a thread about the GS 500's and then asked again but that's because A2 license and in truth if it wasn't for the A2 license I probably would never have looked more than once so in your case I wouldn't. I'm jumping on the bandwagon of the no party because there's better out there on the market for the money and the proof I think that I agree to that is the fact that I've not really put offers in one that was local for around £800-£900 and then one that's currently available for around the same price from a dealer in the next city with a years M.O.T. I can't help but think that's it a carbed 125 with a bit more poke. I don't see it as a better investment and instead £800 more to end up in the same place I already am but only with a heavier and slightly more powerful bike.

My mates advice, in person, was that he got one for £500 for a family member but wouldn't go much higher than that on the "E" model, the older. As for the K1,K2,K3's he said about a grand but in truth I don't recall anything majorly different about the two and would rather go £500 on an E model. People are asking £1000-£2000 for GS 500's but fudge knows where they get their figures from.

I was asked during my DAS what I thought of the GS 500 I rode and said besides my adjustment to going 60-70mph rather than 30-40mph at a push on the tiddler I said that the GS needed to go through the box far more than I thought on NSL and beyond. It's more than fine around town but on the open fast roads it takes some getting to the limit. I'd use it as a town bike but then when my 125 does the same thing for far less in expenses why would I?

Just look at what you're getting, nothing exciting. Bikes are enjoyable and therefore I wouldn't voluntary, again, invest in one that doesn't float my boat. I've, maybe, got another year on a tiddler before I do my A license but that's only because alternatives like the old GS and other older bikes that fit in the license aren't really doing it for me compared to what I could have for the same money on an A license allowing me to buy anything at all. To me the GS is the bare basics. Fine on my tiddler as an entry into biking but when you're talking bigger bikes maybe it's not the one to look for.

In truth if I could get used to it after 3, maybe 3 1/2 or 4 (i fail to forget how many days training I did) during DAS then think how boring that would get even for a year. You've basically exploited all its ability during those hours of training.

Plus it seems even my tiddler does a better job of cold starting during winter than the reviews on the GS say so. Save yerself the headache.
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The do it all, T̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶,̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶i̶g̶ ̶l̶u̶m̶p̶,̶ ̶C̶h̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶N̶o̶o̶d̶l̶e̶

[Azoth]

It might seem as if I'm treading on people's toes a little here, but I can assure you it isn't my intention. It appears to me that many members of this forum have owned a Kawasaki 500 parallel twin. These bikes are fairly similar to each other, and share similar problems and quirks. Mostly, the GPZ500S seems to have been a popular choice. However, I don't share a high opinion of these bikes (GPZ500, ER5, KLE500 and the rarer EN500).

My perspective is that these bikes seem to have been used as a mode of transport for many people, and as learner bikes for some, and they clearly weren't up to that task. There is a litany of major problems associated with these bikes. I can't see how they can be recommended to anyone over a Honda or Suzuki 500. Human memory is fallible, and influenced by factors independent of the object in recollection at any one time. For example, that CG125 or SR125 you had as a learner never gave you any problems, but you felt frustrated as a learner because of the lack of power and the L-plates, so it sours your recollection of those bikes and you forget how solid and economical they were.

How to get around this problem? You could devise a questionnaire for past bikes owned, with closed questions. For example,

1) When you had a [insert bike here], did you ever have a head gasket failure?
2) When you had a [insert bike here], how long did your brake pads last?
3) When you had a [insert bike here], could you adjust the tappets by yourself or did you use a mechanic?
4) How much does a factory/OEM radiator cap cost for [insert bike here]?

etc.

This would, I believe, give you a much more sympathetic impression of the GS500, and a more negative one for the Kawasakis. However, I might be wrong about that. I've never ridden a GS500. The only thing I'm certain of is that these subjective opinions about particular bikes are completely unreliable. For one man, who wants to order a Bonneville Bobber to accelerate and stop in straight lines while looking at his reflection in artificially aged leather, with no interest in cornering, the GS500 is a useless, crap bike, because it doesn't get off the lights as fast as the other 500s. For another, who likes speed and fast rides on his superbike, the GS500 is useless because his superbike is very good for controlled acceleration in higher gears - he uses its engine like a high performance car, while, say, he's never ridden a tiddler or a two-stroke, and is unfamiliar with that style of riding.

In summary, I'm fairly sure all or most of these bikes will need intensive care by now, because of their age and because they were used as transport and not properly maintained. But if you can keep them running and know how to get the most out of them they will be great bikes.
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Safety in numbers