Classics on the cheap
ridden in the midst of winter, then parked up. Although a battery started the engine up with fresh petrol, everything else was seized. I had to jump up and down on the pillion seat to free the shock linkage (it didn’t free it, just compressed it, but made it easier for Kirsty to get her feet on the ground), you could only change gear with a mallet as the gear selector shaft was seized in the aluminium sprocket cover (so we stayed in first), the forks were leaking and the brakes were terrible. What an introduction to the wonders of motorcycling…
Somehow, she loved it and took a shine to the barely-mobile Suzuki. Hopefully that early foray helped with clutch control and getting used to the larger bike.
After passing her test first time, we were talking about bike choice as she wanted a classic bike. Then the GS500 came up again – after all, it is an air-cooled 500cc parallel twin, albeit in a modern frame. But that frame is steel, hence easily modified, so some fag-packet designs were hatched to make a new, lower, narrower subframe to make it fit Kirsty’s size and hopefully look a little less modern. This meant stripping the bike.
The engine had a knock which sounded a little like
