85 mph speed restriction in early '80's bikes?

[KGB]

My 82 GS1100E has an 85mph speedo, it's useless after 3/rd gear

Same hold for the 80 GS1000S, 85mph buried in 3/rd gear

Useless speedo.........

[pntrdave]

My '82 GS750T has the 85 mph speedo, if I want to go faster than 85 I just shift out of third. My brother in law has a Kawazaki with the 140 mph speedo, I shut my GS down at 120. Like to go fast but not stupid. and 120 is more than fast enough for me. Guess I'm just getting old.
:?

[joeadams]

I have a 83 750 T and I replied last time I saw this discussion. In mid september this year I had mine up to 100 mph, it was about 7000rpm and I decided that was fast enough and let off. Its possible the 85mph thing was fixed though since the bike's been around a while. I also checked my speedometer against a radar sign that tells you your speed and it was dead on at 60mph so I have decent confidence that the 100mph I observed was accurate enough to say that I was indeed going 85mph or more.

[robinjo]

Allmost forgot to tell this, the bike was not restricted.
After retorquing the head I have had it up to about 110/115 or so guessing by the way I was passing cars. Speedo did stop because of the little needle that gets in its way, maybe that was why the owner was thinking it.

[KGB]

Like Pavlov's dogs?

Saw the 85 and called it a day???

Allmost forgot to tell this, the bike was not restricted.
After retorquing the head I have had it up to about 110/115 or so guessing by the way I was passing cars. Speedo did stop because of the little needle that gets in its way, maybe that was why the owner was thinking it.

[Jeff Tate]

My 1100 also has the 85mph speedo. I just figured that if I wanted to know approx speed after 85 all you had to to was run your bike to half of redline and devide by 2. Then half of that and so on. What you're after is speed per thousand Any hooo on a stock geared 1100E it works out to like 15.5 mph per 1000rpm. So 9000 rpm equals approx 139.5
1x15.5=15
2x15.5=31
3x15.5=46.5
4x15.5=62
5x15.5=77.5
6x15.5=93
7x15.5=108.5
8x15.5=124
9x15.5=139.5 MPH
Remember, these are all approx speeds while in 5th gear. But it gets you more than in theball park. I had my 1100 up to 8500 RPM or so and figured that to be about 130mph

[mcycle-nut]

Here in Canada, our bikes never came with that silliness, but our cars did.

[Anonymous]

I once heard someone with an 85 mph speedo on a modified 1982 750 EZ

did a little over redline (9500 rpm) and calculated that every 1000 rpm in 5th gear was about worth 12 miles per hour.

Reliable calculation put the bike at around 128 mph. Heh heh.

[renobruce]

I used to have a GS850GL. I took the speedo apart and pulled the little peg out. I could wrap it around to say I was going 15 mph 8)