2003 GSX-R1000: Dis Be De One, Huck - Motorcycle.com
DATELINE PHILLIP ISLAND, VICTORIA, OZ: Is it February, mate? Next time I start going off on how nobody needs anything bigger than a 600 sportybike, will somebody please just smack me and tell me to shut up. I've come to my senses again. You need at least 1000cc at Phillip Island's fabricatedly fast GP circuit; otherwise you've got no real chance to emulate the Suzuki and Ducati GP teams that just finished testing before the GSX-R1000 press launch came to town, leaving all sorts of nice black stripes out of the corners.
After the little downhill right called Lukey's Heights, there are two lefts that lead onto the main Gardner Straight; the first one's a little slower
As a matter of fact, as engine man Norihiru "No Relation" Suzuki points out, this year's GSX R1000 has even more urge than last year's bike--the one that soundly thrashed the Yamaha R1 and Honda 954RR at Fontana and on the dyno, the bike we mentioned would rip your tits off on its way to winning last year's comparo. More efficient combustion sounds innocent enough. What we've got are pressurized intake ducts which have each moved 20mm closer to the bike's centerline, thanks to the new stacked headlights, which
Expelling all that is now more efficiently handled by a muffler expanded all the way from 4900 to 6900cc, which greatly relieves the GSX-R's "small-muffler" anxiety from last year. The whole urethral system is now titanium and lighter--except for the aluminum muffler shell, which Suzuki claims is actually lighter than its ti equivalent. We've also got four new 35mm vent holes between cylinders to reduce pumping losses, which Suzuki says increases torque by two percent at high rpm. Our camshafts are now rifle-drilled by a one millimeter larger bit, resulting in a weight reduction of 45g for the intake and 35g for the exhaust -- and reaming out the counterbalancer with a 2mm-bigger bit removed 30g from it. Otherwise, Norihiru says, things are same-same in the engine. To me, it feels like somebody threw in titanium rods and added about a point of compression.
An dat goes double fo de Kayaba shock out back; piston and rod diameter remain the same, but de internal changes, Suzuki says, reduce friction by 60 percent. That reduction in friction is said to improve the rider's sense of what his contact patches are up to.
I think it's true. Hauling the flapping editorial fundament into Phillip
Do it steer a little quicker? I think it do, but I also think Phillip Island is a hard place to make that call. According to Suzuki again, trail is down from 96 to 91mm, with 23.5 degrees rake instead of 24. Confusingly, they also say there's less weight on the front patch now--51.1 percent instead of 51.8? Could it be the 160 grams we lost by downsizing the front discs to 300mm, and the 100g-lighter calipers? Hmmmmm?
Anyhow, that's sort of the nature of the liter-bike beast. In exchange for super-quick handling, you get monstrous drive off corners and really-big-gyro steadiness mic-corner, which is nice and reassuring at places with big, long, smooth corners--and I don't know if an R1 might be a little more nimble, but I do think this GSX-R will smoke it even worse in the roll-open-the-throttle places. In fact after I had a look at the video, I began circulating many parts of the track a gear higher and, I think, picked up a little speed; there's monstrous upper-midrange to go with the 150-or so horsepower top end--and the new "double-barrel" throttle bodies and four-hole injectors feed it in nice and smooth alla time.
Ya think?
What more can I say? Haven't you had enough? We at MO were not overwhelmed by the looks of last year's GSX-R when it was parked next to the R1 and 954 Honda, but the new bike really does look more the purposeful animal it is this year--in its ominous black frame, sleeker/pointier fairing, and John Holmsian exhaust can.
The ti mid-pipe turns a nice blue--much nicer than the flat-black sewer pipe of yore. Did I mention the thing runs like a bat out of hell? I will go so far as to use an exclamation point! A thing I shun! If cars have gotten this much better in the last 30 years, I may have to look into getting rid of the Jagrolet.
I know what you're thinking: When will the MO open-class shootout happen? I know not; right now we're still rounding up 600's. All I can tell you is that the liter-bike comparo has already taken place in the wide open spaces between my ears, and the clear winner is this here tire-spinnin,' front-wheel wagglin,' big-dicked!! Suzuki GSX-R1000! You can keep all your 600's and your exotic twins and suddenly I'm over my Buell XB-9S. This thing is for me. Stock for stock, it parts the cheeks of every other sportbike I have ridden to date. (But that's just my opinion...)
More by John Burns
Comments
Join the conversation