Quote:
Originally Posted by earthtodan
Hello,
I'm probably going to buy a 2001 or 2002 SV650S in the next couple days. This is going to be my first bike, so I'm getting something that will be easy to ride on the street and good to learn on (hence, no gixxer), while still being sporty enough to take twisties. Now here's the issue:
Yesterday I test-rode a 2002. It seemed to be showing signs of age (shifting was difficult at a stop), but mostly it seemed well kept. However, it felt so soft, I was afraid the tires were low. It seemed to perform okay, it just gave zero road feedback. I even asked the owner about the tires and he says they're always inflated. The rear shock collar was rotated to the second-hardest setting, and I weigh 170 lbs, so not much room for improvement there. Maybe it's because I rode a gixxer that morning, which gave excellent road feedback, but I was left wondering if the SV can easily be tuned to feel more like a sportbike without dumping money into it.
What do you think?
Dan
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When I first rode my SV I felt like it cornered on rails in comparison to the pos bikes I had previously, then I improved it and made it better. Then I started doing trackdays on it and realised I wasn't using a fraction of what it could do!
The SV is a fantastic fun bike, great as a first bike as it is easy to ride without being scary yet capable of being b***dy quick in the right hands.
The only problem is that it is a cheap bike and built to a budget, the main issue being the forks which are a bit poo as stock. You can fairly easily swap the forks for gixxer ones along with the rear shock which makes a world of difference. Alternately you can fit emulators and new springs but that'll cost you more (when you figure selling the original forks etc when you swap them).
Next is the weight, it's not a very heavy bike but all the little brackets & frames that would be alloy in a gixxer or similar are heavy steel, again these all can be replaced along with the very heavy std exhaust to lose a lot of weight (after that just go on a diet
). Again if you do it right you can recoup some of the cost.
So yes you can make it more like a sports bike and especially if you are prepared to do the work yourself can be done quite cheaply (with the help of ebay), if on the otherhand you don't know the difference between a torque wrench and a left-handed wrench then it can end up very expensive.
Druid