For a long time I was completely nuts about bikes, but following the sale of my beloved Exup (which I just couldn’t ride any more due to pain in my knees), a rotten experience buying a new Honda (something I will blog about another day), and a completely useless summer, my enthusiasm for motorcycling had waned somewhat.
At the end of July this year I rode my Suzuki TL1000S up to Bristol and got caught in a typical British summer monsoon. The rain did the bike no favours and it was a truly miserable experience, made even worse when the rear damper failed leaving me with a very springy back end for the 40 mile ride home. I shoved the TL into a corner of my garage in disgust and there it remained until a few weeks ago. I finally got a replacement damper unit and with the help of a friend who is a mechanic, got the old one out and a new one in. I washed the bike and set off for a quick spin and duly came back a couple of hours later with a massive grin on my face and a re-ignited passion for motorcycling.
Why should the TL1000S be the igniter of such passion, when it is a bike widely regarded as being deficient. It has something of a (probably well earned) reputation for being a “widow maker”, and it can be a complete swine to ride. Let’s analyze the bike for a few moments…
Looks
The way a bike looks is a huge factor in how much you enjoy a machine. I had a SV650S as my first bike, which was a fabulous ride, but it looked horrible and I could never get past that. The TL is not quite so ugly as its newer little brother, but it’s no Ducati 1098! So, it’s probably not the look of the machine that excites, though mine is the rarer green colour, has the fairing lowers, beautiful gold and silver wheels and blue titanium cans, all of which adds up to a good looking bike.
Costs & Reliability
The TL is a complete pain in the wallet. It’ll barely scrape 100 miles on a full tank, and due to the savage torque, it munches through rear tyres and drive chains for a pastime. I have had the thing apart more times than I care to remember, but oddly I think this has a lot to do with it. When you have sweated over the machine like I have, you and it become entwined in a strange human – machine love affair.
Handling
The handling is woeful. The heavy steering damper (retro-fitted by Suzuki after a large number of TL riders complained about how dead they were after nasty tank slappers) makes the steering feel anything but nimble, and the 190 section rear tyre doesn’t help. It certainly doesn’t handle anything like as good as my Exup did, but for me this is half the fun! Where’s the challenge in riding a bike that just goes where you point it? If there’s no challenge, then there’s no sense of reward. My Honda CB1300 is eminently capable, but I don’t get off it feeling invigorated at all. With the TL, you have to hang your arse over the side of the bike and wrestle it around tight bends, and that is huge fun!
Engine
Here’s the main attraction. Never has Suzuki built a more exciting engine. This is a snarling beast with savage acceleration and ludicrous amounts of torque. Breathing through some aftermarket cans as my TL does, the noise is a fairly close approximation of the commencement of Armageddon. A good twist of throttle in any gear sees you heading for the horizon as though your life depended upon it. No other bike I have owned or ridden has the same instant response. There’s no hanging about for 4 cylinder wind up to peak power, just an immediate kick up the backside. In fact, despite the power figures of the 90 degree v-twin seeming rather modest in comparison to modern sports bikes, the reality is that it’s all about the way the power is delivered. The Suzuki TL delivers its power much like a girder swung in the face, and I’m not convinced there’s many bikes that could match it on the road.
Conclusion
There’s nothing like the feeling of imminent death to keep a ride exciting, but whilst the TL delivers that feeling in spades, you also know that it is a competent machine and providing you stick within sensible limits, you’ll be going home in one piece every time.
Basically, this is a flawed bike. It always was, and Suzuki knew that, but in building something with flaws they inadvertently bestowed something else upon the bike: soul and character. The TL feels like a living, breathing thing. It’s not perfect and it doesn’t always work the way it should. It’s a complete git to ride in slow moving traffic and it’s pretty damn uncomfortable, but all this can be forgiven it, because when you open that throttle and slingshot towards the vanishing point in a melee of noise and vibration, you will be smiling from ear to ear, feeling truly alive.
That’s why the TL1000S is the perfect bike to re-discover your love for motorcycling.
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