Suzuki GS650 Is Newman’s Own

FALLS VILLAGE, CT – It was seven years ago that Pete Newman of Granby, CT acquired his 1981 Suzuki GS650. So why’s he only been riding it for three years? The answer is that it took four years to take a stock bike and make it a lot more eye-popping.

“I got it off a friend of mine. It was basically a project bike. The motor was in it, but the transmission was bad,” he said this morning, recalling during a conversation at Toymaker’s Café in Falls Village, CT that the bike was stock at that point and “all original.”

Step one? “I stripped it down; tore the motor out of it, cleaned and painted the frame, rebuilt the forks, new bearings, basically everything it needed to be freshened up,” Newman said. “The fuel tanks was all rusted underneath, so that had be welded – after it caught fire in the driveway.”

How’s that? It seems the bottom of the tank was leaking gas. “It backfired and that’s all it took,” he said before itemizing the damage. “It melted a little bit of the plastic. It melted a couple of wires.”

Presumably that was after he installed the new motor that he found at Pete’s Cycle Parts in Wolcott, CT. “Then the search started for parts (to customize the bike). eBay became a close friend. It took four years to get it to the point where you could actually ride it,” he said.

Not surprisingly, Newman said his modified GS650 is a fun ride. “I don’t ride it in the rain because there’s no fenders,” he said. Today, being sunny and warm, was a perfect day to show off his creation.