97 GSF600S Bandit

[bear]

My first bike after getting my full licence, what a great thing to get off 250's.
The Bandit seems to brake well, and has good low end torque. Heavy (202kg), but the throttle helps right it after a turn nicely. Bit annoyed about the range, 20l tank, but only get about 130 miles before I hit the reserve.
Had the missus on the back quite a bit, she's a good pillion, and no problems with the extra load.
Happy with the fairly upright riding position - plan to do a bit of touring, so should be a bit more comfortable.

[Cajun]

My first bike after getting my full licence, what a great thing to get off 250's.
The Bandit seems to brake well, and has good low end torque. Heavy (202kg), but the throttle helps right it after a turn nicely. Bit annoyed about the range, 20l tank, but only get about 130 miles before I hit the reserve.
Had the missus on the back quite a bit, she's a good pillion, and no problems with the extra load.
Happy with the fairly upright riding position - plan to do a bit of touring, so should be a bit more comfortable.

bandit is a great we have an 00 model last of the orginal shape, got it brand new, everyone in family loves to ride it cause its a bit of a hoons sorta bike, we have put an aftermarket kerker pipe, it makes the bike rather loud we can hear it from a good 3 kms away but makes it fun to ride cause you can thrash it a bit, and you are not doing total insane speeds, i have taken our bandit 600 around taupo went bloody well. I think it puts out about 79hp rw

We replaced the stock tires after they were stuffed with a set of bridgestone 010, damn what a difference they thing just turns and handles like a dream, the stock tires were great but these are another step away. We stiffed up the braking by putting HH pads all around. Ours is also set up with a ventura pack rack with givi side boxes, for touring.

Awsome bike for touring communting, good weekend thrash bike. Yes it likes to eat the gas, you gotta have some problems.

[F5 Dave]

Well likely I can fix your reserve problem.

Take a real small gas can with you when you are close to running onto reserve & when you do change take note or reset the odo. Ride.

& ride & ride till you run out, take note, put gas in & refill.

My RF900 had a miserable range of 250kms to reserve (was 225 but I changed the thermostat to a 90 degree one & that helped).

Either way the reserve had 85km on it! Sheesh, that’s just a waste.

Turn the tank upside down & pull the tap out (two 10mm bolts). There is a long brass tube with a filter on the end. Slide the filter off & cut the tube shorter. Slide the filter back on (carefully it wil stretch ok).

I cut mine in half (tank gets smaller near bottom so don’t go crazy) which gave me another 50k useable range & I still have 35k on reserve which should be fine & as much as I’ve had on previous bikes.

A friend's Bandit 1200 seems to leave 4.5 litres in reserve which should be about the same as the RF so the 600 is likely as maligned

[bear]

Yeah, from reading the specs, the reserve is about 4.5l. Good tip on increasing mileage before you hit the reserve.

[F5 Dave]

Yeah my friend is quite funny (for a short while), he religiously calculates & writes down the mileage so he knows exactly the economy & how much is on main tank & like a train spotter knows the tank size so we worked out how much is left & with his calculations how far it would get him, but he still steadfastly pulls into a service station if he gets closed to going on reserve,
because,

well I don’t know why, but it makes it bloody annoying waiting when all he is doing is carrying around 4-5 litres that will never get used.

My fuel warning light came on super early too. I adjusted it by unscrewing the large hex (think the 1200 has one, not sure on 600) on the bottom of the tank & resoldering the sender about an inch lower). Again this is for the RF & [ahem] results may vary.

[bear]

Yeah, once it gets around 100 miles I'm looking for a gas station. Working out the mileage isn't too bad, then I hassle my mates in the cages and how much they pay to fuel up.
One friend has a 01 Skyline GT-T, and we were comparing specs, 0-100 GT-T 5.3 Bandit 5.5, 1/4 mile GT-T around 14 Bandit 12.3. Although there are some advantages to cars, on performance he paid a whole lot more for his hardware.

[Bonez]

I'd be interesting to see how the Bandit goes long term. If I ever get rid of the Integra it will be a 600-750 class bike.

[FROSTY:Me]

Bear --are you still running your bike in? Ive been riding baby B's bandit 600 around and it gets better fuel economy than that--and even my gsx1100g gets like 220km from $20 worth of gas.
Come to think of it -I took the bandit to Pukie -rode it all day at a track day then rode it home and I think I only put in about 5 litres more gas.
I'd just check how many litres you're putting in when the bike runs onto reserve.If its only about 10 litres then go down the track of--hmm fuel tap needs work.

[bear]

Cheers, it's a 97 and has 24,000 miles on it, so no running in required. When it got down to the reserve I put in about 13 litres. Seems to run about 6-6.5 litres per 100 km.