| One from the archives |
 Back in the day, when men were men and nearly all leather jackets sported mandarin collars, road warriors roamed the countryside on bare-naked 550s and 650s.They traveled far and wide on those used machines. Occasionally, said bikes would go treads up because of engine-room disasters. You're looking at one. This pristine, lime-green Suzuki GT550 died on M-50, just short of Monroe after a trip to Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. The left wrist-pin bearing gave up its life. That's a Yamaha 650 rider eyeballing the soon-to-be trailer queen in disgust. That bike started life new as an old man's mount. It wound up under young man's butt for the princely sum of $725. Before the Internet and online motorcycle junkyards, you had to physically travel to junk yards and hope your year bike, with the right part, was somewhere out there in the dirt. Several different junkyards had GT550s. Those were two-stroke, Ram-air-cooled triples. All had their left jugs missing — indicating that wrist-pin failure in the left jug must have been common. blog comments powered by Disqus |