Had the hayabusa for a week, its now got over 1000kms on its dials now, and about to head in for its first service next week.
This bike is an interesting machine to ride, with 1340cc motor its meant to putting around 199hp, which equals something aroudn 175hp @ rw, weighing in at 220kgs dry, time you full all the liquards in be heavy, espially with a 21 litre tank, which be easy let you reach 300km between refills, So its not a lite weight race rep bike, but with its big tank, longer wheel base, extra weight, makes it a awsome high speed mile muncher, and makes it stable thru corners with help of the longer wheelbase and weight.
This bike is same motor that is also powering the b-king which i reviewed couple weeks back. It doesn't seam to pull as good as it did on the b-king under 160km/h even tho it has 10 more hp, but i think some of that is due to the gearing between these two bikes, due to it is designed for higher speed rides. And like the b-king this motor feels so much smoother and refined than the previous model(even tho it is the same sump), it does still seam to have the same vibration at around 4,500-5,000rpm that you can feel thru the pegs, that the previous model had also.
None the less still one rapid bike at 100km in top gear you are sitting at 3,500rpm, and at 160km in 6th it still only sitting at 5,000rpm, readline is something around 11,000rpm. So at normal road legal speeds I found i perfered to sit in 3-4th gear (gear interactor on dash is handy). Even cracking open the throttle in 6th at any rpms sees the bike take off, and before you know it you are nudging 200km/h+. Pouring the power on out of corners, sees the bike rear start spinning, or start leaving black lines. Be interesting to see how it goes once it has a full exhaust system and a pc3.
In stock form the euro 3 control pipes are far to quiet, but at least the roar from the air induction more than makes up for it.
The gearbox is normal slick smooth suzuki, with no noises from 1-6 even with clutchless up/down shifts, the clutch is a smooth with being a tad heavy nothing to bad, if you take in account its a big cc bike, with alot of torque and are common drag bikes. So need to be a bit heavy.
The fit and finish on this bike is awsome, would say on par with honda standards. and everything is in same place as all the other big J brands. The dash shows all the normal type of stuff, dual trip meters, odo, gear interactor, A/B/C mode, time, all on the lcd section, with analog dials for the fuel, engine temp, speedo, rev counter.
One thing i didn't really like about the bike were the brakes, they felt wooden with no real feel thru the lever, they stoped you quick enough, but felt like they were either on or off sort of deal, maybe a change of pads will correct this.
The suspension setup on this bike is a bit strange, in normal suzuki fashion, front is a bit soft and rear is hard, in factory settings, and this model seams to run wide coming out of corners more so in right hand corners, by having a look at the settings they don't seam to be even, so correcting these i think would solve the issue. Nothing out of the orindary all it needs is a bit of tweaking and evening the front/rear together would greatly improve the handling/feeling.
Seating position seams fine, for me who is 6"2, amble reace to the bars, and pegs, with good view of the speedo/rev counter, couldn't see the top idiot lights due to the screen tho(interactors) the seat started getting a bit hard after a couple of hours in the saddle, but that will be getting corrected next week.
The Styling isn't anyone cup of tea, front end is all in all good, just the rear end doesn't seam to best, it looks alot better in the flesh than the photos, this model has had the rear fender removed to help with the styling. What some peopel don;'t really relise is the rear end is designed to look simlar to the front end, since the tail light is same shape as the headlight.
All in all, some people look at the new 08 hayabusa as a new model, but really its more of update, since the rear swingarm seams the same(our hugger from previous model fits), main frame, is same, rear motor sump is the same(early model exhaust systems fit), so all it really is is some fancy electonic parts, new brakes, and redesigned fairing.
Would i own one? No i would not, its not my type of bike, but its still a great bike to take for a spin from time to time. when you want a bike that pull like a little school boy and keeps pulling until that school boy has bigger balls than you, and you chicken out.
Cajun
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Originally Posted by marty
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