I figured that will be the best time to start working on my old 2002 Suzuki GSX R600 aka Leatherface. I’m going to breathe through this Suzuki GSX R600 bike I want to get this bike back on the road. It’s been a long time since I probably been in loo years since I’ve even ridden the bike and at least a year and a half since I’ve even started the bike. Actually the bike hasn’t even been started for about a year and a half.
The 2002 Suzuki GSXR 600 is my very first street motorcycle and it’s been through a lot. I think I got like maybe thirty-five thousand miles. This bike has really never given too many major problems. The only thing I’ve really changed on the bike is the basic maintenance stuff. It’s always fired up and has been pretty much okay. During my first five years in Arizona I use this bike for my main source of transportation by a daily driver at the time. I had a Cadillac it was broke down and this is pretty much what I rode so over the 11 plus years I’ve been riding this bike.
This bike has really had a chance to really rest and chill. I’ve always wanted to do certain things to the bike but I never got around to doing them because I was on it every single day. I was riding every single day but I’ll go over a few of the small things I have done to the bike. I’m starting from the back alright my first probably a few weeks I had it the first thing. There’s just like my dr650 I just pretty much it was a little fender stock all the way down.
I just pretty much chopped that off and I always wanted the under tail kit. I just never got around to getting the largest tip. I just chop this off I got these LED turn signals from cycle gear which they actually worked out pretty good. This one’s broken because it’s been kicked so many times just getting on off the bike. I always wanted the under tail kit but I never got it over the years because I never want to cut these hooks off. I used these hooks on a daily basis because I had like a little bungee cord net. I would strap stuff to the back on the back seat of my motors higher because I was usually for the academic drivers.
I didn’t have anything else I never want to get rid of the hook so I never got to undertake. The main problem with the bike and the reason why I stopped riding the bike a couple of years ago is because of this damn sprocket. I’m listening to a guy at work a cycle gear I end up getting a vertex a little sprocket in the front. We can’t change up the teeth in the sprocket to wear overall it will give me a quicker takeoff. A little bit quicker acceleration than stop but what he didn’t tell me is the aluminum sprockets. It only lasts about 5,000 miles because the aluminum sprocket on the steel chain the teeth of the sprockets are all worn down.It had a chain slipping the original reason why I stopped riding this bike.
I end up getting dr650 so it just kind of fells the wayside so I luckily though I kept my stock sprockets and that’s going to be the first goal of getting this bike back on the road. This bike is first I got to get it running right again denotes where I could actually ride it. I’ll start focusing more on the looks and the cosmetics. The first step of this will be changing outputting the front pocket in the back sprocket. Putting the stock sprockets back on it the vortex pocket was cool and you can actually definitely gave me a little bit takeoff speed. By the end of the day you know only getting five thousand miles out of it it’s not acceptable. I was using the bike for the daily rider so I’m gonna go back to the stock stuff. I did these mods back when I only have one bike so if I want to quick acceleration I’ll just get a quicker bike. I was happy with the stock which is not Willy wasn’t that much of a difference. It was a little bit different you can barely feel it. The chain is always rusty from neglect and basically just years of oil to it.
After that all the other jobs I had after that wasn’t an option and pretty much my motorcycle would sit outside in the parking lot. After many years about the blazing areas on the sun is taking its toll on the bike. The back seat over here is all cracked up and disintegrated its pretty much shot. I don’t even know how this happened this is my corporate seat this is one thing I didn’t add over the years. This Corbin corporate seat is great I’ll get into full details on it later. That’s another project I’m going to do later on in the future. I don’t know what happened to this corporate seat. I don’t know whether if I did it but the kind of the threads tore right there. I could have got it to fix at the warranty because at the time I was riding the bike every day.
I’ve contacted Corbin they’re not going to fix it. This one little thing for free because the warranties ran out but what they will do for me is they can recover the whole seat for a fraction. I pay for this seat so it’s not gonna cost that much to get the whole seat recovered. I’ll probably ship this back to Corbin and have them recover this whole seat. I’ll probably ditch this yellow piping because most likely why change the looks of the bike it won’t be black and yellow anymore. I used to be a black carbon fiber tank pad I got from cycling gear but that’s all worn down. These grips right here I got on eBay I thought these were the coolest looking grips. They were cheap in price and then, later on, I found out they were also cheap and quality.
It’s hard to tell what these are but each little thing has a bunch of little skull. These got to go for some reason on this bike. I always lose his bar in and probably been through four different bar hands. Moving down there’s a little gap right there keeps moving down. This is pretty worn to have that wore down pretty quickly when we knew they look cool. They’re all these little things dots were all skull heads and it was rubber grip it looked pretty cool on eBay so I went ahead and got them. Definitely cheap grips for sure but let me show you how cheap it is from the other side. Let me tell you how disappointed I was these grips it didn’t really last too long and it’s been definitely a cheap pair of grips.
They split open I guess because the bike set the Sun for so long. The grips got real like rubbery and almost melted and the grips split open. Right here so just leaves almost like the hot rubber on your hands if you grab it with your hands. It is a melted grip where we’re all in your hands on this bar. For some reason this is the most important side and like I said this distance ID that wore out real quick. Basically a throttle lock control comes in real handy we’re on the freeway. Going on this a long distance it’s lots of throbble and you’re going constantly got your wrist print down in a certain area. I recommend this right here for anybody that rides there they could make them for cruisers also small bikes.
