gs1000g mild cafe build

[Chuck78]

Had a wind storm today and the gate blew down.. the gs is perfect for holding the gate so the pup doesn't get out haha

Brandon, I hate to be the bad guy, but your "Cafe Racer stance" is purely cosmetic and detracts substantially from the handling potential of the bike with the front end dropped so low & yielding a severely compromised racer lean angle when riding aggressively through corners.

You lost a ton of cornering clearance, and you are going to destroy those beautiful pipes that you put a lot of work into the first time you go over a speed bump or a even moderately slightly steep driveway/parking lot approach.

You put a fantastic set of forks on that bike, but they were shorter than stock, and then you lowered them a couple of inches beyond that!!!!
At minimum you need to raise the front back up a lot, & make a weld on or clamp on pipe protector for the lower two head pipes where they are nearest the ground before the collector, for their entire lowest horizontal portion. Sooooo many headers get totally bashed in there on bikes with stock springs that are not even lowered substantially like yours.

The triples you are running on that bike are intended for a bike with a 25 degree or so rake and a 17 inch front wheel. Running a 19 inch ft wheel on a frame that was 28 degrees rake stock will make it steer it like a dump truck due to adding an extreme amount of steering trail to the geometry, even slower than a Harley cruiser. not a track bike whatsoever, more like a drag racer that looks like a "cafe racer"

the best thing to do here is add 1" longer than stock rear shocks or get some extended lower clevis mounts made got those Chinese RFY shocks (will probably cost more than the shocks new, best to run a better damping shock anyway), & bring the front end back up a fair amount. This will make it handle like a semi-sporty racer if you put on an 18" front wheel from an 85-87 GSXR (looks just like a later GS1100/1150 wheel), instead of the typical limited ridability non-raceable "Cafe Racer art bike" that is so commonly found these days - bikes that to an amateur "look" like a "sporty racer" but actually have very little cornering clearance and often steer like a harley/dump truck when modern forks and modern TRIPLES of the wrong offset are swapped on. If you want to have a lot of fun at deep lean angles in corners (half the reason I ride!!!), I'd bring the front back up at least 70% of what you have it dropped, & add 1/2" to 1" longer rear shocks than stock (somewhere around 335mm iirc for the chain drives at least).

Just tryin' to look put for ya while it's still in the build phase. Lookin' out for those pipes and the stator cover especially! And YOUR SAFETY!!!!!

Good luck. Hit me up any time for brake/suspension/geometry/tire size advice. I've done a whole lot of researching throughout the years on these topics in order to unleash the most potent sporty handling potential possible on GS's... I'm not trying to be a pretentious prick, but these are some very fundamental and serious flaws in your garage engineering (i.e. cosmetic stance mods and zero engineering)

[Chuck78]

By the way, it TOTALLY sucks when you're on a long road trip riding incredible back roads all day, & you get up to a stop sign in a remote rural area and you are waiting for your friends who you saw in your rearview mirror just a few S-turns back 45 seconds before, & 90 seconds later, they still haven't caught up...

So I u-turned and found my buddy standing over his prized $$$$ '77 KZ1000 which was backwards and leaning towards the upside-down orientation in the ditch on the opposite side of the road in the middle of the S-turns...

I had been telling him for some time now that his fork springs and his 1.5" lowering of the triples on the stanchions was a HORRIBLE and DANGEROUS idea... He liked the "aggressive stance" that actually creates the opposite - very cautious mellow riding limitations...

He scraped hard parts on the pavement while having some fun chasing me through the twisties - BECAUSE HIS FRONT END WAS LOWERED SUBSTANTIALLY FROM STOCK.... This unweighted his front tire a bit and caused him to break traction and lose control and slide out and lay it down across the opposite lane... luckily it was a very remote Appalachian area of Southeast Ohio with no oncoming traffic, or things could have been a real life changer (or ender).
Please take this seriously unless you never plan to ride aggressively through corners and only intend to ride that fast bike fast in a drag racing straight line fashion...
that bike has a lot of potential to be unleashed. Plenty of time for improvement.

How long can you run those RFY's out to if they have adjustable length lower eyes???

[Chuck78]

By the way, the 83 GS1100G runs a shafty 17" rear wheel. I'm still hunting for the front wheel solution in a 17" or 18" that is the same width or narrower. The 3rd style of GS mag came in an 18" front, & Dan aka Salty Monk had one of these. I want to say it was off of an 850 or maybe 650. The 18" GSXR is a 2.75" width, likely wider than that 17" rear. Sticking stock rear wheel aND that 18" front wheel, extended length of the shocks, & raising the front end back up a lot will be a great start to rehabbing the front back to practical sport geometry. Some longer offset triples would seriously help cure all. 93+ VMX12 (VMAX 1200) triples are 50mm offset and 43mm fork tubes. Pricey but would make this steer like a dream with an 18" or 19" front wheel and the proper ride height adjustments front and rear. You have to add a large spacer under the lower bearing to make the upper bearing position work, or swap stems. I'm looking at swapping a turned down aluminum Hayabusa / GSXR stem into VMAX lower triples. Rake and trail are very critical and typically very overlooked by people that unintentionally worsen the handling of their bike when trying to do the exact opposite.

A 17" front wheel in conjunction with much taller rear shocks would bring your steering geometry back to sporty feeling parameters, or a triple clamp with more offset to counteract the large amount of trail generated by a 19" front wheel .

Your bike will be incapable of this kind of fun in its current setup:


Basically the point of all of this is that the minimal offset on those triples in conjunction with the 28 degree rake of the stock frame and a very large diameter front wheel ruin the handling (triple offset is very incorrect for this bike setup unless you are only riding in a straight line), as well as the minimal ground clearance ruining your safe cornering ability. Just think if you hit a dip in the road in a turn, or a bump that causes the suspension to compress mid-turn, instant scraping of hard parts, & very likely instant crash. I hope you don't take this as too much of a personal attack on you, I'm just trying to look out for you and help you out, even though you may be offended and call me some objectional names.

[thebrandonbeezy]

Brandon, I hate to be the bad guy, but your "Cafe Racer stance" is purely cosmetic and detracts substantially from the handling potential of the bike with the front end dropped so low & yielding a severely compromised racer lean angle when riding aggressively through corners.

'You lost a ton of cornering clearance, and you are going to destroy those beautiful pipes that you put a lot of work into the first time you go over a speed bump or a even moderately slightly steep driveway/parking lot approach.

You put a fantastic set of forks on that bike, but they were shorter than stock, and then you lowered them a couple of inches beyond that!!!!
At minimum you need to raise the front back up a lot, & make a weld on or clamp on pipe protector for the lower two head pipes where they are nearest the ground before the collector, for their entire lowest horizontal portion. Sooooo many headers get totally bashed in there on bikes with stock springs that are not even lowered substantially like yours.

The triples you are running on that bike are intended for a bike with a 25 degree or so rake and a 17 inch front wheel. Running a 19 inch ft wheel on a frame that was 28 degrees rake stock will make it steer it like a dump truck due to adding an extreme amount of steering trail to the geometry, even slower than a Harley cruiser. not a track bike whatsoever, more like a drag racer that looks like a "cafe racer"

the best thing to do here is add 1" longer than stock rear shocks or get some extended lower clevis mounts made got those Chinese RFY shocks (will probably cost more than the shocks new, best to run a better damping shock anyway), & bring the front end back up a fair amount. This will make it handle like a semi-sporty racer if you put on an 18" front wheel from an 85-87 GSXR (looks just like a later GS1100/1150 wheel), instead of the typical limited ridability non-raceable "Cafe Racer art bike" that is so commonly found these days - bikes that to an amateur "look" like a "sporty racer" but actually have very little cornering clearance and often steer like a harley/dump truck when modern forks and modern TRIPLES of the wrong offset are swapped on. If you want to have a lot of fun at deep lean angles in corners (half the reason I ride!!!), I'd bring the front back up at least 70% of what you have it dropped, & add 1/2" to 1" longer rear shocks than stock (somewhere around 335mm iirc for the chain drives at least).

Just tryin' to look put for ya while it's still in the build phase. Lookin' out for those pipes and the stator cover especially! And YOUR SAFETY!!!!!

Good luck. Hit me up any time for brake/suspension/geometry/tire size advice. I've done a whole lot of researching throughout the years on these topics in order to unleash the most potent sporty handling potential possible on GS's... I'm not trying to be a pretentious prick, but these are some very fundamental and serious flaws in your garage engineering (i.e. cosmetic stance mods and zero engineering)

its funny you mention the forks being lowered, I actually raised them back up last night. the rear shocks have about 1 and 1/16 inch of adjustment before the witness mark doesn't show threads on the lower clevis, so I had planned to adjust them, I just wasn't sure how much I needed haha. as for the wheel... I had the 3" wide kat 17 on it for a bit and I loved the look... but on the one curvy road we have in this cookie cuter straight line town, I noticed that the rear felt as if it would lean lower than the front.. lol well being a 2.75 wide I think rim obviously wouldn't handle correctly. though research I have found that the gsx1100g 17 rear is 3.5 wide and with rough measurement it should fit with minimal clearancing.. mostly for the tire, as the rim will bolt right on. if I went that rout I could run the kat 17 front and fix a lot of the messed up geometry (which is something that has been bugging the crap out of me) and run the 4 piston calipers that came on the cat..

[Chuck78]

Glad to hear these things are already on your radar.

[thebrandonbeezy]

Just finding the time/budget for things like that has been hard lately

[thebrandonbeezy]

stretched her legs going around the block today at lunch

[thebrandonbeezy]

Raising the front up and flipping the bars back has made it super flickable... found myself trying to wheelie it haha

[Chuck78]

****Try running it up above 6500rpm in 1st, then close the throttle & engine brake decelerate down to no less than 5500 & hammer the throttle on those CV carbs & hold on!!!! If your tires are good sticky high performance quality, it shouldn't take much. The decelerating stance then transferring into to the acceleration squat already gets the front end coming up motion started, & that is the rpm range where the engine roughly makes the most torque, so this makes for some wild acceleration wheelies / power wheelies...This lofts the front end up on my 750 unpredictably!

I'm not one to ask about popping the clutch just right to induce a wheelie, I have no comments on that technique, & don't plan to learn it myself. Maybe on a lighter bike. I like faster racer riding, not so much street bike stunt riding.


****Doing this may be of grave consequence to your general health and well being, as well as to those around you... Practice in a closed area and at your own risk!

[Chuck78]

If that doesn't induce a wheelie, you either have ****ty old hard or highway mileage tires (i.e. rear tire just spins), or your carb jetting is way off...
Or your clutches could be glazed over and the springs are weak so clutch slippage occurs.

[thebrandonbeezy]

Lol, i tried a clutch up 2 or 3 times but i was only going 30ish in i think 4th i cant remember wrong rpm and gear haha but i have lofted it up a few times coming through intersections haha. Its kinda scary such a huge bike coming up like that

[Chuck78]

Mine randomly lofts the front end toward the sky when the tire decides it's warmed up enough to hook real well...and yes, it is sometimes quite frightening! Especially when the back tire is spinning and fishtailing, & then the tire suddenly starts to bite while the rear end has drifted sideways.... Avon RoadRiders are overrated in my opinion. I'll go with a 4,000mi life expectancy tire like a Pirelli Sport Demon / Shinko SR741 / Shinko 230 or 5000mi expectancy Battlax BT45V if I want real serious grip from now on. Those Avon's scared me a few too many times.

[thebrandonbeezy]

after doing a little, and I mean little research ive found that the vx800 wheel uses the same set up as well.. so on an impulse I bought a rear wheel and rotor combo.. the good is that the vx rear wheel is a 3.5x17 like my 97 kat rear is. and even uses the same tire. so ill be able to use the kat 17 up front with the 4 pot calipers YAY.. the rim its self should drop in but the brake stay and swing arm will have to be clearanced.. I actually think the brake stay will need more work than the swinger tube.. we will see. also I'm almost willing to bet the rear caliper mount will work unmodified.. the good part is that it was only 60 dollars the bad is that I accidentally sent it to my ex's house...

[thebrandonbeezy]

Not an exact matchto the kat 17 but the spokes ar that same twisted fat to thin thing lol theres just 2 more haha, aughta look pretty cool when done

[thebrandonbeezy]

Ohh also the vx800 rear tire is the same as the 97 kat 600 rear 150/70r17