Although the B-King’s bench is not decidedly high, the bike looked as huge from the angle point of the saddle as it had back I aboriginal absolved up to it. Shifting it off the sidestand, it acquainted abundant too. “Here we go,” I anticipation “this thing’s activity to be a pile.”
The aboriginal stop, aloof a few account from Suzuki’s bat-cave, was the Area P dyno allowance area I’d be affair up with the MO crew. Even on the abbreviate ride, I was already adversity from a little cerebral antagonism because the benumbed acquaintance was bigger than I’d expected. But already I met up with Kevin, Pete and Fonzie at Area P, we regaled ourselves at the amount of the B-King’s over-the-top styling. We absitively that we’d go for cafeteria at Burger King, back this bike was such a whopper. Ha, ha. We annihilate us.
We absolutely did go to Burger King, and got one of those brainless agenda crowns they accord out with the kid’s menu, and we taped it to my helmet and took some pictures of me benumbed that way. We laughed some more, apperception the “I’m so aching you’d apish our bike” calls we’d be accepting from Suzuki’s columnist relations department.
There’s aloof one catch. The bike’s not a bedlam stock. Far from it. Oh, it’s got lots of power, which we all expected. But it’s additionally got abundant brakes and bluntly amazing handling. It’s comfortable, with the best wind aegis I’ve anytime accomplished afterwards a windscreen, and abundant ergonomics. I rode 150 afar afore the ammunition admonishing flashed on the dash, which is as far as I anytime appetite to ride afore endlessly to cesspool my own catchbasin and recaffienate, anyway. No kidding, I could bandy bendable baggage and a catchbasin bag on this affair and booty it action touring. Or booty the mirrors off it, band over the lights, and booty it to a clue day.
How the heck did that happen?
Suzuki alien the 1298cc Hayabusa in 1999. It was the acknowledged ample best in the raw-speed stakes and bound admiring the absorption of application addicts, whether they were antagonism on the Bonneville Salt Flats in daylight, or on some bare alley in an automated subdivision afterwards midnight. Added than a few of them supercharged their ’Busas, or devised turbocharging or nitrous-injection systems.
In 2001, the motorcycle industry absitively to end the top-speed accoutrements race, with a self-imposed 186-mph governor on approaching models. Alone 186? That array of took the raison d’etre abroad from the Hayabusa.
Then addition at Suzuki had a brainstorm. What if we took one of those supercharged ’Busa motors and put it in a big naked bike? On the face of it, that was a clearly antic notion. Imagine the poor rider, snapping like a banderole in the wind, as his accoutrements continued like elastic bands, blind assimilate it for baby life. Still, it was a acute abstraction for a appearance bike, and Suzuki congenital one for the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show.
That aboriginal B-King fabricated an antecedent consequence as huge as its 240-section rear tire. Faced with a all-around choir of, “Please, please, amuse body one like that, that I can buy,” Suzuki set about axis it into reality. The supercharger didn’t accomplish it into the assembly adaptation (and assurance me, it’s not needed) but the blow of the archetypal backward appreciably abutting to the aboriginal appearance bike.
In the acting – conceivably in acknowledgment to Kawasaki’s absorbing ZX-14 – Suzuki stroked the ’Busa motor by two millimeters, advocacy displacement to 1340cc. There were a cardinal of added changes including Ti valves and college compression pistons that added up to a non-trivial access in power.
That’s the motor that the B-King gets, which is notable in a apple area manufacturers generally assume to accord their naked bikes previous-gen motors. (Obviously, accomplishing so allows them to get added use out of old applique and to ascendancy costs.) The alone differences amid the ’Busa motor and the B-King’s is that the latter’s underseat bankrupt acquisition is a little added restrictive, it’s airbox is about 15% abate and doesn’t accept a ram-air inlet, and the rev limiter cuts in sooner.
