Budget Bruiser

Fast Bikes reader Rich talks us through his K5 purchase, and how he’s made it a keeper.

I had a Suzuki GSX-R1000 years and years ago and loved it – it was one of those bikes that I regretted selling as soon as it went, and ever since it did go I’ve said I’ll have another one. I bought this one about four years ago, it cost me £4,000 and was advertised as having no service history but when I got it home and opened an envelope with all the documents in, there it was, a full service history, so I don’t know what the fella was smoking when he sold it to me.

Anyway, the bike sat in my garage with a duvet over it for the first year as it was a little bit of a dog and I just didn’t have time to do anything with it. While it sat in my garage, I came up with my master plan for the Gixer – I know it’s an old bike but I thought, with the right upgrades, I might be able to make it every bit as good as a modern litre sportsbike. When I did eventually take it out for its first proper blast, it was before I did anything to it at all and it was actually better than I thought it would be. It was a little bit soft and the brakes weren’t up to much but apart from that it was actually a dream to ride and really comfortable. The best thing about it though was definitely the motor. It wasn’t quite as rev happy as I remembered my old Gixer being, but it had so much grunt that it easily made up for it.