Lets see the 500 customs

[Suzukidave]

Nice " Old School " 500 Old Racer .. is it just the side angle or is bike fitted with a really short swingarm ?

[old racer]

I think it may be an optical illusion,
There is a Ali side plate about 3"longe that the spindle goes through,
It makes the tube look short.Having said that it's not the longest swingarm i've ever seen.

[titan performance]

I have owned this bike since 1977, but set about this build in March this year, with the aim of taking with me to the TT at the end of May.
I'm pleased to say, it all got done, and I used it on the Isle of Man for 2 weeks....and loved every minute of it. The bike was very well received, and much photographed.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/suzuki_gt ... otostream/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tz375]

PAul,

Looks good. I particularly like the rubber mounted (insulated) rear fender tucked in unobtrusively. Not so wild about teh oil tanks but we all have different tastes. It came out very well.

[jabcb]

Looks really nice!
Any pics of the left side?

Does Titan Performance have a solution to T500 fork spring sag?

[titan performance]

Thank you for your comments guys.
It seems I have taken a whole bunch of pictures of the bike, but not one from the left side. I was so pleased how well the pipes turned out, I guess I have focused totally on the right side.
As for the fork sag Jab......what are the symptoms? My bike may have it but I just ride it oblivious. In my opinion, the bike handles very well. It's positive, and really quite confidence inspiring. I did very little to the forks, they were originally on my other 500 back in the 70s, which had been used on the track, and handled extremely well. The front always sat down kind of squat looking, and I really liked the look, the springs looked standard to me, so I'm not sure why it looked so low at the front....and on the rear, I fitted NJB shocks, 30mm over size. I wanted to create a bulldog kind of look, with flat bars, low at the front and slightly tall at the back.....I'm delighted with the result, and it rides really well.

[jabcb]

My 71 T350 had the wrong fork springs when I got it.
The combo of the short wheelbase + really bad sag made the handling feel a bit like a bicycle.

There's also the concern about not having much travel left for dealing with bad Pennsylvania potholes.

Suzuki might have used different spring vendors, which could explain why some bikes are reasonably ok & other have bad sag.

Triumph also used external springs in the early 1970s.
They had much more reasonable spring rates & they offered different spring stiffnesses (solo & dual rider).
Service manuals had info on when to replace the fork springs due to sag.
New springs are still available for the Triumphs.

But on the other hand, lowering kits are available for a lot of modern bikes.
We can't update the T-series forks to get modern damping + spring rates.
So maybe a bit of sag can be ok given how high the T-series spring rates were.