Suzuki TL1000S
This is the view, most street riders see.
My TL is the easiest bike I have to wheelie. It's effortless. Even easier than the more powerful R1. While I'm sure torque is one of the main reasons, the other reason is throttle control seems very easy to pick up on this bike. I'll do my best to explain it.
Ok, so I know all about all the recalls that this bike has had. And truth be told, its still a little finicky about starting, and not as smooth as most carburated 4 cylinder sport bikes. But… If you want to do a controlled rear wheel slide, this bike is the easiest to control. I love riding it in the rain, and sliding it all over the place. You can keep the RPM's at 4000-6000 rpm, and be at half throttle, sliding the rear, and control it! It's a hoot.
Same thing with wheelies, once you get way up their, keeping the bike balanced is very easy, the powerband is so linear, it never threatens to toss you over the top. You just twist your desired elevation with your right hand. (Ok, maybe it is a little more complicated than that, but not much).
However, I'd never feel comfortable racing the thing. The rear shock gets to wallowing, its an unusual rotary design that is very expensive to do anything about. And the bike just doesn't feel stable at very extreen lean angles. (When I mean extreem, I mean just short of the front end pushing). But at 90%, the bike feels awesome. More stable than my GSXR-600.
This is the bike, that if I want to venture down a road I've never been on before, I'm the most comfortable on. You can hardly do anything wrong.
Ohh yeah, and about the nasty tank slappers. I never encountered them, except when the front wheel would come off the ground in 2nd gear going around turns. I'm still a little skeptical that there is a geometry problem here. But the steering damper that was put on in the recall works just fine, even if you set the front wheel not quite straight down.
Oh yeah. I've got Indigo pipes on mine, click on the icon to see the dyno graph of before and after. I get 114 peak HP out of mine.
View the HP/RPM Graph.
The TL registry and all sorts of cool TL stuff can be found at http://www.best.com/~jsweeney/TLlist.html
If you own a TL you MUST check out this site. It’s the end all, be all of TL info.
