[dbrown]

How many of you have higher milage older bikes? I purchased an 1988 Intruder with 23000 miles in November. About three weeks ago it started knocking quite solidly, probably a rod. What has amazed me is nobody wants to touch it to repair and parts are not readily available. Is this usual? Maybe an old Suzuki is not a good purchase? The Intruder is sure a bear to do any major work on, you have to pull the motor out of the frame.

 

[DrBob]

Just about any full-frame motorcycle needs the motor pulled to do any major engine work, so the Intruder is no worse than any other bike in that respect. Parts for your 750 are readily available, but only from the dealer. Some are listed as discontinued, but they have all been superseeded with a part from the 800 motor that is the same except for the part number. Aftermarket companies don't make parts for it because it was only in production for four years, so there is a very limited demand. In addition, most people just toss out an older metric bike when the motor blows, or they swap in a used motor, so there is even less of a market for new engine parts. I mean lets face it, a 17 year old Japanese motorcycle isn't worth putting $2000-3000 worth of engine work into, as you could buy another used Intruder for that. I picked up a 1993 Intruder 800 with 7000 original miles for less than $2500 bucks back in October.
Finding someone to swap a motor is easy, but no one wants to pull your motor apart bacause a rod knock usually means the crankcase and probably the crankshaft are damaged, so they don't want to spend a lot of time on something that can't be fixed anyway. Shops get burned all the time on thsi: when they tell an owner, "sorry, can't be fixed, that will be $500", what do you think their chances of getting paid are? I bought a used, low miles 800 motor out of a wreck for $400 last week, a better choice than trying to tear down and rebuild the old one at $50 an hour plus parts. I have seen running 750 and 800cc Intruder motors on EBAY go for as little as $250.
Old intruders are great bikes for the money. My 1993 now has 22,000 trouble-free miles on it and is just now getting broken in, and my 1996 Intruder 800 went 132,000 before the motor finally went. I know several folks with well over 100,000 on thier Intruders. Intruders are known for being bulletproof, so if your's tossed a rod at only 24,000 miles, I'm guessing the previous owner was not real good about changing the oil, or the bike was run out of oil at some point and the bearings were trashed.

 

[dbrown]

Thanks for the encouragement. Prior to buying this bike, the word was the Intruders were solid bikes. This is my third Suzuki, having had an X6 Hustler and a GT550, both which were very reliable.

I have been looking and calling and the scarcity of parts certainly tells me there are not tons of them just waiting to be purchased. But I will continue to look and keep my eyes open for another bike, sure do like the Intruder style.

I do appreciate your help in locating something. Thanks again.

 

[jol]

Uh just for your information I had a 1982 Yamaha XJ750J and needed some parts for it somewhere somehow somebody sent me to this site http://oldbikebarn.com/ and seems to have a ton of parts.............

 

[SUZUKIGT550]

Do you know where one might find some carbs for a gt550, 1972?

Thanks-

 

[Jay_Mack]

I'm not really familiar with an Intruder. What and when, basically, was an Intruder?

 

[slozomby]

I'm not really familiar with an Intruder. What and when, basically, was an Intruder?

the intruder had the VS designation from suzuki. the S40 and S50 are the only models still produced ( us market there might be some others overseas). they are lumped in with all cruisers in the boulevard designation. they dropped the names around 2003 or so

for reference the marauder (vz) became the M series and the volusia (VL) became the C series.

 

[slozomby]

Do you know where one might find some carbs for a gt550, 1972?

Thanks-

while a 7 year old post about a different bike is probably not the best place to ask this question,

you can check ebay and oldbikebarn. if you have the original carb you can feed its model number into google and get some hits as well.