Description
Suzuki GSXR 1100
Recent US import
Currently being registered
Stunning condition
Original exhausts (immaculate)
Beautiful paintwork
Brand new tyres
Fully serviced
Investment grade motorcycle
The GSXR1100 is regarded as one of the great superbikes of the early 90's and is more than capable of keeping up with modern machinery - if your that brave / talented. The earlu 90's are now becoming the target for bike collectors and this bike if well maintained should accrue in value and looks fabulous
It came to us from the US in good cosmetic condition but required a lot of work to get it running as good as it looks.
from BIKE SOCIAL
History is written by the winners and when the sports bike victors of biking Britain get nostalgic they see the original Suzuki GSX-R750 as some kind of sales-busting high watermark in motorcycling. Those of us who were there don’t quite remember it like that. Back then how a bike handled was interesting… if you had an Italian bike, but not half as important as how fast it went. All bikes went round corners somehow, we just didn’t know then how much better it could be.
So, while the GSX-R750 was interesting, it was also expensive and still, ‘only a 750’. The hard men in my town still wanted bigger bikes with the mostest horsepower because, clearly they were faster. It was when Suzuki announced the GSX-R1100 at the end of 1985 that motorcycling really pricked up its ears. We were still too stupid in 1986 to understand that it was the lack of weight that mattered more than the claimed 120bhp, but at least the new bike had enough power to be credible at the pub (because back then we were also stupid enough to ride to the pub and drink beer).
The all-new GSX-R1100 claimed 10bhp more than Suzuki’s existing GSX1100EF, but it also weighed a humungous 41kg less and had a wheelbase 90mm shorter. The new engine was powerful, quick-revving and a world away in its delivery from the old GSX motor, but it was still flexible and torquey because the race-ready flat-slide carbs on the 750 had been replaced with road-friendly CV units.
As on the 750 the new engine avoided the extra faff of water-cooling by using the added faff of oil-assisted air-cooling. Essentially this meant the GSX-R had an enormous oil cooler and powerful oil pump that shoved the lube around the engine and through the cooler at a much higher rate than a conventional motor. A whole load of extra oilways sprayed more oil over more places in the engine more efficiently and this removed the need for water-cooling.
On the open road it was astonishing. Fast and torquey like nothing else I’d ridden, but nimble too, feeling like what I imagined a proper race bike would as it flicked from left to right on the smallest of rider inputs. The fairing was big enough to fit a fishtank between the clocks and those huge – but desperately ineffective - headlights meaning three-figure speeds became scarily common. My average time from home to work; 13 miles of rush-hour lunacy on the traffic-light splattered Leeds Ring Road dropped from 30 minutes to well under 20 minutes, which was ridiculous.
The GSX-R’s performance obliterated every other bike I’d ridden. Everything about it was OTT. The acceleration was terrifying, brakes were incredible (but in comparison to my previous bikes they didn’t have much weight to stop), the suspension felt sophisticated, controlled and had some high-tech electric anti-dive function that I didn’t really understand. The built-in steering damper promised to make up for the missing 90mm of wheelbase without making the steering feel too sticky and the 150 section rear tyre looked like it’d block out the sun.
For the first few weeks I got stopped roughly once a week and told to get rid of the offensively noisy V&H race pipe. I bought a secondhand standard system from a racer. Fitting it required removal (and breakage) of the enormous oil cooler so I needed a secondhand one of those too. Ten miles from my work was the biking playground of the Yorkshire Dales and at 5pm, instead of heading home I’d go north, for a couple of hours riding far beyond my limits.
