[neil.jericho]

voyageur, congratulations on the SV650S. While most enthusiasts on this forum might crave the more famous faired GSX R1000 / 750 or naked S750, the SV650 is a gem of a motorcycle in the Suzuki lineup. As you mentioned in the opening lines, it can be anything that you want it to be. An intermediate bike before you step up to the bigger capacity bikes, a track bike, a weekend morning coffee bike, a bike to step down to from the bigger capacity bikes and everything in between. IIRC a ton of them are raced in UK in the super twin race series. I look forward to more updates from you once your winter season is over and you get back to riding. What sort of mileage do you get on the SV650S ?

I absolutely love the looks of the understated but elegant looks of the newer naked SV650 twins. The blue chassis and wheels look delicious.

[voyageur]

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

voyageur, congratulations on the SV650S. While most enthusiasts on this forum might crave the more famous faired GSX R1000 / 750 or naked S750, the SV650 is a gem of a motorcycle in the Suzuki lineup. As you mentioned in the opening lines, it can be anything that you want it to be. An intermediate bike before you step up to the bigger capacity bikes, a track bike, a weekend morning coffee bike, a bike to step down to from the bigger capacity bikes and everything in between. IIRC a ton of them are raced in UK in the super twin race series. I look forward to more updates from you once your winter season is over and you get back to riding. What sort of mileage do you get on the SV650S ?

I absolutely love the looks of the understated but elegant looks of the newer naked SV650 twins. The blue chassis and wheels look delicious.

Hi Neil,

I would have been one of them if not for the insurance. Been dreaming of supersport motorcycles since my childhood. GSX goes cheaper than one would expect it to be because most of them are abused and rev bombed in various parking lots, ridden on 1st, 2nd gear rev limits in the city by teenagers and guys/gals in their 20s lol.

But to your point, these are great bikes. I'm just amazed by some of the customizations done to this bike, especially the naked versions.

The below image (taken from Google) reminds me a lot of my 1st bike (Pulsar 1st gen), but these are more potent



So I get around 20-25 kpl. The owner's manual states that I use regular fuel, and I use regular fuel normally. The premium fuel slightly increases the fuel efficiency from what I have noticed. I haven't done the math yet to see if it really makes sense to fill premium and pay the difference, but from what I have seen it's not much of a difference in fuel efficiency. I think this is also something I want to look into for the next year when I start riding.

Many forums have posted somewhere between 40-60 mpg as normally what the bike returns. So I feel I may be getting decent fuel efficiency based on that data but then I also don't push the bike too much while commuting or during daily riding.

[voyageur]

As the bike is now hibernating, I took a quick photo of the odometer reading and a couple of pictures of the tires. Almost 13k km in 6 months is insane even by my standards. The bike had only seen 14k km when I picked it up and it's already done its entire life's running in 6 months.

That also gives me a late realization that I can actually use this thread to put down some of the beautiful roads I have ridden on and some routes for people who love reading about trips. I honestly don't know if it was the genuine love for riding motorcycles or it was for the want of exploring more that I put on so many km on my bike. Something I will never know.





I wasn't planning on changing the tires but these tires look a bit worn out. The rear one has squared off though the tread looks okay. The front one looks fairly decent. But not sure what condition they were stored in by the previous owners. These tires are 5 years old and I'm sure some of you are going to say that I shouldn't be using a tire for more than 3 years. I think age is not the only factor to consider but other things like condition, storage, tread depth, etc. I'm going to ponder a bit whether or not I should change the tires. What do you guys think?

As far as the winter storage procedure went, I followed most of the processes I mentioned in my previous reply except polishing the panels.

The motorcycle is definitely going to look and feel different next year as I have plans of doing some mods over winter. Fingers crossed!

[silvr]

Nice to hear about Sv650 on this forum, I recently got myself a 2nd gen, and though I faced initial hiccups, it's has lately entertained me.

[bf1983]

Originally Posted by silvr

Nice to hear about Sv650 on this forum, I recently got myself a 2nd gen, and though I faced initial hiccups, it's has lately entertained me.

Wow I never knew there even existed a Suzuki SV650 in India! I don't think it was ever sold here in India. How did you get your hands on one?

[silvr]

Originally Posted by bf1983

Wow I never knew there even existed a Suzuki SV650 in India! I don't think it was ever sold here in India. How did you get your hands on one?

Thanks, it was a pure stroke of luck, I got it through a friend from biking community who had shared the details as soon as it turned up for sale.

[voyageur]

Originally Posted by bf1983

Wow I never knew there even existed a Suzuki SV650 in India! I don't think it was ever sold here in India. How did you get your hands on one?

Likewise, I never knew SVs were sold in India. That was a big reason for me to start this thread. Otherwise the laziness in me would have never allowed that

@silvr: How're you finding it? Do you have a side view image of the bike? Wondering if has the bikini fairings or full fairings?

This season has been slow. I rode the bike for less than 1000 km in 3 months. Last year this time, the bike had over 4k-5k km by this time. The only time I used the bike is to commute.

My major concern was the tires, I thought it was 5 years old but I was wrong. It was close to 10 years old - hardened like wood. Also, I didn't want to ride it stock anymore. My usual issue with things that are working perfectly fine, I need to customize them and break my bank. So, here goes...

[voyageur]

I always try to stay within a price point for most things in life but somehow cars/bikes/racing exempt themselves from this idea. I'm saying this because I was just going through the thread and came across my post #6. what a joke, you'll see!

Over the winter and even now, I did a bunch of things to the bike (got someone to do it)- mostly regular maintenance and some performance updates. I'll start with tires because that's the easiest. Ask anyone who enjoys driving, tires make a world of difference. I can confirm that from my previous experiences. So I shortlisted a few tires but then narrowed it down to the below 3 tires:

1. Michelin Pilot Road 4/5/6 - website
2. Bridgestone Battalax T32 - website
3. Dunlop Sportmax Q3/Q3+ - website

Based on the internet, forums and personal opinions of the riders - Michelins are the most liked tires. For sport touring, they offer great wet weather grip and most riders swear by their performance. Looking at the siping of the tires assures me that Michelins will perform better than their competitors in the wet. Track riders swap these tires when it's raining and that's how good these tires are. So, a no-brainer to pick up Road 4s or Road 5s I guess?

The only reason I was considering the other 2 tires was because of the price point. Road series is an expensive set and if I could get marginally decent performance from one of the two above without breaking the bank, then why not!

Bridgestone was running a spring promotion - a $60 rebate on a set and they were $40-50 cheaper for a set compared to Michelins. That's $100 in savings. The Battalax T32 had good reviews too.

Dunlop Q3/Q3+ was kind of a street/track tire. The wet weather performance was good but not great (from what I read and heard). The max mileage anyone has got out of these tires was 7k-10k km. When you do a cost-to-mileage ratio, it turns out to be expensive. Michelins on the other hand can run from 18-20k km. So, it was not a hard decision to drop Q3/Q3+.

Michelin had stopped the production of Road 4. It was replaced by Road 6 (Road 5s are also available but I have heard Road 6 is closer to Road 4s in terms of handling/performance). I found a distributor selling Road 4s in the neighboring province. What if it is the last time I can order Road 4? From what I have heard, these tires were legendary...

Out goes:




In comes:


AT AN EXTRA $100!

[voyageur]

Quite a bit happened this season, but that didn't really involve a lot of riding. Upgrades and more upgrades. Some images to tell the story...

The SV looked like this before I started:






Obviously, the windscreen needed to be changed. So picked one up from Amazon.


Not as great as OEM in terms of fit, but will do for now.


Then I started commuting on it...Tires were shot, jeez and as I had posted above - I got the road 4s.


Once that was installed, visited the Windows XP wallpaper tree somewhere in the middle of nowhere.



Not just the tires - the M4 slip-ons are now gone. In comes Yoshi full exhaust (street legal). I wasn't planning on this but someone was selling it for an extremely good price. I convinced myself not to pick it up for 3 days but couldn't resist it. Another challenge with installing a full exhaust is fueling. The two options to deal with this were a piggyback system like Power Commander or a custom ECU tune on a dyno.



Went some more.



Visited Canola farms. A week before, tourists had flocked the private property to take pics so much so that the owners had to call the cops. While I stopped to take a pic or two, a cop stopped on the other side of the road to check what I'm up to. I moved on but not without taking a couple of pics.



Almost there, I had picked up an OEM fairing from a person selling it used. What a nightmare this was! More about it later on.





Some more rides. I thought my bike was fast...until I rode the GSX-R. Broke my heart. GSXR is a proper super sport. Great Suspensions, great sound, great handling, great everything. The only letdown was me as a rider - I don't think I had the skill level to match that bike's potential. I'm glad, I'm self-aware. So SV650 will do for now. Glad to have experienced it though.



One of the issues with the fairing was that it was touching the forks. Reason: This is an SV1000 fairing. 99% of parts are shared between SV650 and SV1000. The lower fairings fall under the other 1%. SV1000s have a wider frame due to the larger engine, so the fairings are not shared between the two bikes. As you see, it is a make-do project - but I was hoping for plug-and-play. After all the money spent on the fairing and the installation, I was wondering if this was worth it. I couldn't look at the bike semi-faired but then this must have been one of the most expensive fairing installs.



More details about the upgrades in a later post. The front and the rear suspensions are now upgraded. That didn't go as planned. Also, will write a bit about the Power Commander and fairings as well, which also didn't go as planned. So, basically - nothing went as planned. I guess that's what you get for messing up a perfectly good bike.

Cheers!

[voyageur]

Let's start with Power Commander. Before we start - I was told by the mechanic that you probably didn't need it. But I figured if I'm making a change to the intake or exhaust, I'm better off getting the fuelling right.

The best option here is to dyno-tune your ECU and create a custom map. If you're in the US this option is accessible/decently priced but with the pricing here, I didn't bother with that.

I was looking for one on eBay as the newer Power Commander 5s are expensive and this is not a race bike. So, I really didn't need the latest tech (Quick Shifter mods, etc.) and I would be okay with PC3 which is the older, discontinued version of it.

Last winter was spent reading forums after forums, and while doing that I realized that there are 2 PCs that fit the SV650. One was made for 2003-2006 and the other one was 2007-2009. In the US, SV650 was stopped in 2009 and you won't find any parts that are labelled for post-2009 models but it's the same bike. Whenever I search, I use 2009 instead of 2013. With the realization that I need to get a different PC3 series which was rare.

PC3 - 2003-2006 - 313-411
PC3 - 2007 - 2009 - 337 -411



Looking through the internet daily for almost a month and a half, I finally came across a brand new PC3 that the owner bought and never used. He was letting it go for $250 (US). I ended up buying it.

When it came to installation, I thought what could go wrong - it's just removing injector plugs and plugging these in. Well, the first step to removing injector plugs is to find them. Unfortunately, the cable management on my bike was less than desirable (previous owner). With some help from a riding friend, I pulled out the airbox and located the injector plugs.

First, I thought this is one of the plugs - nope.



These are the plugs, hidden under the airbox. A few things have to be removed and the airbox needs to be pulled out to access.



Another thing is that it's almost impossible to pull the injector plug with bare hands. Ask me how I know

So a curved plier or something similar is needed in order to get it out. Long story short, I had to assemble everything and pull everything back out at least 5 times before I could get this thing out. Most of it comes down to my skill level or lack of it.

Removing the plugs gave me the feel of owning a cat. Scratched up hands. Gloves weren't an option as I wanted to feel where the lock of the plugs were while I used the pliers.


The grey plugs go into the respective 1st and 2nd cylinders. It's important to connect them correctly, or else the motorcycle won't start and more work.



Good news and bad news.

The good news is that the PC3 works.



Bad news - I knocked the TPS (Throttle Position Sensor) while wrestling with the injector plugs. It is indicated by the dash displayed below the centre line. The c17 error is just me forgetting to connect a sensor to the airbox.



Here is an image of the TPS. I rode around a bit with the TPS position off before I fixed it. The throttle application is extremely choppy with power cutting off at around 3K rpm and then coming back on suddenly. But when the PC3 started working and I slightly pushed the TPS to the other side, I noticed that choppiness had disappeared. Thanks to the PC3 or the TPS going back to its original position.



Like it should look:

[akshayhonda]

Hi voyageur,

Please check the direction of rotation of your front tyre. I think its incorrect. Do give it a check

[voyageur]

Originally Posted by akshayhonda

Hi voyageur,

Please check the direction of rotation of your front tyre. I think its incorrect. Do give it a check

Hey buddy,

It sure looks that way but it's mounted the right way. The Pilot Road series and Pilot Powers for some reason have front and rear treads facing opposite directions. The only reason I can think of is that front is tailored for braking and the rear one for propelling.

I know it's hard to believe