Suzuki GN125 | First build

Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

This thread scares me.

We have a rider who has legislation on the speed he can ride a bike but wants to make it go faster? Put bar end mirrors on? Drop the front 3"?

This is all severly bad stuff to do in my opinion for a new ride. The bike should have been left alone in all honesty and learn to ride it first and then progress to something else.

You said these bikes sell for $1500 all day long? Why not get yourself some riding time and experience and in a year sell it for more money and invest in something bigger and better?

But .. have fun! I'm just playing the devils advocate.
 
Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

firebane said:
This thread scares me.

We have a rider who has legislation on the speed he can ride a bike but wants to make it go faster? Put bar end mirrors on? Drop the front 3"?

This is all severly bad stuff to do in my opinion for a new ride. The bike should have been left alone in all honesty and learn to ride it first and then progress to something else.

You said these bikes sell for $1500 all day long? Why not get yourself some riding time and experience and in a year sell it for more money and invest in something bigger and better?

But .. have fun! I'm just playing the devils advocate.
Click to expand...
To (hopefully) ease your mind a bit:
[list type=decimal]
[*]The legislation is threefold: maximum of 125cc displacement, 11kW of power and 0,1 kW per kilo. With my 124.9cc's I'm pushing the limits on the first but the data sheet says my bike should have 9 kW when brand new from the factory which is probably closer to 7 kW at the moment, so I'm well within the limits of the 2nd and 3rd which have been put up mostly for 2-strokes. The title of the thread is a jab at the performance of this tiny bike and I really don't expect nor want this thing to change into some race monster.
[*]Mirrors are pretty much the only thing I still haven't ordered because all bar-end mirrors seem so tiny, the bar-end mirrors will probably come eventually but not unless I'm sure they will suffice.
[*]I haven't dropped the front yet because the current bars don't allow for fork tubes past the triple tree, once my new bars are in I'll be dropping the front gradually and see how far I want to go.
[*]Keeping the bike in one piece would have been the more reasonable option and although safety has high priority in the stuff I'm doing to this bike it won't stop me from doing things to the bike. :)
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Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

Passed my driving exam so 2 more weeks of bureaucratic fun and I'll be able to ride! :) Which gives me a bit of a deadline, although I'm not sure if my parts will have arrived by then. Buying a cleaning and polishing kit for a Dremel later today, will be pretty tedious with the tiny wheels and the finish probably won't be stellar, but if it's clean and somewhat shiny I'm happy.
 
Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

Tijmen, the bar end mirrors look small but usually have a concave(vex)? mirror that actually allows you to see more than a flat mirror does. also they are past your shoulders so really are bettter then standard mirrors, but there is one bad point, they are easy as hell to break off LOL. Cheers and good luck. congrats on the pass!
 
Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

Thanks, the guys who'll be doing the welding have a small cafe racer web shop too, so I'll try out some mirrors when I'm there.


Things are going pretty fast now, seat arrived and it looks gorgeous, can't recommend Viet enough. Will take some pics in daylight tomorrow. The rearsets will require some work for the linkage but I've mostly figured it out. There were two issues:


The rod the shifter pedal attaches to is pretty far recessed into the frame, so the linkage supplied can't reach it. I will use the stock pedal cut of the peg and attach the linkage to that, it will require some cutting in the sprocket cover, but it's by far the best option. http://i.imgur.com/d9EqSzC.jpg


t4M6nJq.jpg



I'm not sure if the second problem is actually a problem, the rear linkage is currently set up to go to the underside of the hub, like this. With the new rearsets that will be very hard to reproduce, I can just flip the thing connecting to the rod, and connect it like this. But where the rod currently rotates clockwise when I use the brake the new setup will make it turn counter-clockwise. My understanding of the drum brake is kinda limited, but I think that should work, but I'm not sure?


Still waiting for the bars to arrive, will finish wiring as soon as they're here. Then I'll clean up the carbs, install the new filter and mess around with the jets.
 
Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.


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Completely stripped; an empty canvas begging to be painted and more importantly to be ridden!


All out of grinding wheels so I'll be picking some up tomorrow so I hope I can get the welding done early this week, rearhoop, mounting tabs for the seat and battery box and mounting tabs for the rearset in the little triangle for the passenger pegs. Those couple of cm's are a night and day difference for both comfort and linkage.


By that time the bars should have arrived, then I can finish the wiring, jet the carb for the new filter and be out and about somewhere soon.
 
Re: The Suzuki GN125 is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

Bars arrived, off to welding tomorrow, quick mock-up:


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Not as much progress as I wanted, mainly because I wasted a lot of time sitting on it with a stupid grin making vroom vroom noises. But progress nonetheless, getting the wiring in the headlight bucket was a pain in the ass, but it worked out in the end. Minor set-backs; didn't think about the brake cable hose way too long but it's a good reason for a braided steel hose, so not too much of a problem. Flasher relay is toasted, new one is on the way and will have to jury-rig an old blinker in the wiring to get the required mass on the relay.


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More pics: http://imgur.com/a/R5cqz
 
Thanks! The welder Laska is great by the way. He'll definitely be able to sort your triple tree out. Charges €50-ish an hour.
 
Mock-ups are what keeps the world spinning:
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[/size]I can have one of the mufflers of my dad's XS650 (here it is putting my scooter to shame http://imgur.com/ujrOWJd ) because he finds them too loud, I don't think I'll mind that one bit. 8)
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[/size]Not sure if I like the look, but it's free and it'll give me some time to look for something I like.


I want to have everything bolted up tomorrow, so that means:


  • Battery box mounts.
  • Fender mounts.
  • Exhaust mount.
  • Seat mounts.
  • Bolt to keep the rear brake pedal in place.
  • Light mounts on the rear fender.
  • And mounts for the CDI, solenoid and reg/rec.
So should be a fun day of drilling and grinding, ordered some black VHT Engine Enamel so if I have some time to spare I might already start preparing everything I ground off and welded on for painting. Probably won't be the prettiest of jobs, but powder will have to wait until winter at least.
 
Got most of it done, starting to look pretty cool. Raining now so I installed my make-shift velocity stack. Got 3 inches of PVC plumbing pipe in roughly the right size and melted it onto the carb, should smooth out the airflow for the CV carb. Will give it a lick of black paint when I'm doing the frame, but should be good for now.


6GtuzIX.jpg



There's this place nearby where you can media blast for 7 bucks per 15 minutes all inclusive. Might just blast the carbs there, will definitely blast the side covers there when I take them off. I pulled a helicoil out of the engine case when I put the stator cover back, leaks the tiniest drip of oil per three days, so not really a big deal but definitely something I want fixed soon-ish.
 
If you blast your carbs, use soda cause beads/sand could cause you issues if they all don't get flushed out. soda completely disolves in fluids so won't wreck your motor some gets missed.
 
Good one! Wondered why everyone used soda and just figured sand or something else would be too abrasive for the alloy used for carbs, but this makes a lot more sense.
 
Fuck me, exhaust pipe is 35 not 45 mm. That's a dickload of spacers I don't have and I already cut the pipe. Could have had it running tomorrow, but nope. Most important lessons I'm taking away from this build are that you should always have at least one working motorcycle and I will double check my caliper and write everything down. Oh well, at least the weather will suck for the next couple of days.
 
That is turning out to be a cool little ride! My advice? Get it out on the road and enjoy the heck out of it.

Don't go over the top with changing the geometry. It might look cool, but will not necessarily improve the handling... Dropping the forks an inch (or a bit more) won't hurt, but keep it sensible.

Other than that, thumbs up!
 
Thanks! I definitely will, I want to get the battery box sorted somewhat quickly because the battery and wires too exposed for parking it in the city for any extended amount of time. But until that's been done I'll just tie the battery down with a strap and be done with. And for the suspension, I might just get it back up for a couple of days just to see how it changes my handling. I didn't get any serious quality time before taking it down so it'll be useful to see how things change when messing around with fork height and perhaps shock length.


Clutch issues seem have been a false alarm so I should have her running tomorrow! ;D
 
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