Modern Vespa

I've been yearning for a pseudo vintage bike (perhaps a cafe racer) - I found on CL an 81 suzuki 450gs which after some research would be a perfect bike to race out.

Seller says it runs and all that jazz.


Very intriguing price at least good enough to drive 40 mins to check out the bike and to bring cash with me if it actually does run and matches what seller posted.

Worth while? Man I've wanted a cafe racer style bike for a while now (the dualism between the "mod" of a scooter and the "rocker" of the racer.

I love irony.

The Suzuki 450gs is a low power commuter bike. It is in no way shape or form a race bike.
And once you get 10 years or older it's starts getting hard to find parts too.

I didn't mean racer as in actual racing bike (sorry)

I meant as in Cafe Racer (the style of the bike, even if it isn't super fast- I have no intention on actually racing or going very fast - high way speeds is all.)

the wiki link shows pretty much what I would like to get at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_racer

or just leave it stock.


I do have intentions on driving it for say 500 miles on back roads/highways in a weekend and then letting it sit for a week.


So I guess let me re-vamp for something to do say 250 miles highway speeds and 250 miles country road speeds every week is that overkill on a bike like this? or just use it as an urban commuter?

I say go for it. If it meets your expectations when you see the bike and everything why not. The suzuki GS 450's are a dependable motor. and parts can be had pretty reasonable for them.

You can't do that to a GS 450.

It's never been done before.

Perhaps you just should just buy the new Ducati Cafe racer thing.

There aren't a thousand websites like caferacer.net, dotheton.com, and benjiescaferacer.com to look at for information and support

bikebandit.com, partsnmore.com, oldbikebarn.com and cheapcycleparts.com don't support old bikes like that. NOS and used parts never show on fleabay either.

Too bad there aren't places like airtech-streamlining.com to supply generic cafe parts to help with the transformation.

I don't think they made enough of those bikes, or shared that many parts among other Suzuki models so that there are heaps of them in junkyards if you need something challenging.

Just give up and try your hand at a really expensive and desirable model that will cost a ton of $$ to initially buy and that, heck, you may not even like doing it, and decide to just leave it rotting in the barn.

You probably don't really need an evening project to keep your mind occupied - that's what TV and Cheetos are for.









While it's not the BEST choice - who are we to say? Your money - your time. Honda CB's are the 'budgetier' bike of choice BTW but they're prices have shot up since they're also the choice for rat, bobbers, and cafe folks

I can easily give up the cafe racer idea. Not too attached to the idea of a project bike. But from what I'm reading the 450gs is reliable...but I'm getting conflicting advice on parts availabiltiy

I guess for 300 bucks, I'll jump on it if its running well and in decent shape (I'd prefer it to look ugly but not too ugly - I love a scraped up bike that does not look like its brand new - so much character to be had.

Worse comes to worse, Sell it for $500 as parts bikes on CL go for a minimum of 500 (and sometimes they are missing quite some very needed parts like wheels, or carbs, or handlebars)

I'll post pics if I buy.

Can you wrench it yourself? If so, i say go for it.

Just remember, $300 bikes can quickly turn into $3000 bikes . . .

OH I know the 300 into 3000 story. I wrench my own lx50 and I used to have an old blue badge which ran...kinda but did all my own work on that and it went from almost running to running kinda (big difference) but it just needed too much work and the winter hit so I sold it for exactly what I bought it for.

So I figure if its running when I pick it up and it runs well keep it and worse comes to worse, sell it if things go for south (and what did I loose? A day at the DMV to register it and maybe 100 bucks to have a toy for a couple months.)