Soo.. some tracks, as part of track requirements, say you have to have a "belly pan" on your bike.
Does the thingie on the bottom of a stock gs500F, count as one? or is something else needed?
I can't speak to your area, but here in CA, a bellypan is required for racing, but not for most trackdays. Check the rules carefully, to see if this is the case for you.
The bellypan requirement is specifically about fluid containment (oil, coolant, etc) The specific requirement from my race organization is that the bellypan has to be able to contain 4 liters of fluid, or the entire capacity of the engine sump, whichever is less. The thing at the bottom of the stock GS500F does not meet those requirements, as it will not contain any fluids. You may however, be able to fab up an insert that can go into the stock bodywork, or screw some sort of a pan to the lower fairing.
Lol. I'm IN CA :D but southern?
All the track days I looked at, specify bellypan. Unless you go there in some type of class.
A quick googlie for off-the-shelf solutions, pull up some annoyingly expensive stuff:
$200+? for a plastic thingie?
http://www.whaccessories.com/GS500Accessories.htm
Anyone got better(cheaper!) suggestions that are pre-made?
Those belly pans are cosmetic. Those do not hold any fluids.
Usually, the equipment requirements are set by the track-day provider, not the track. TrackTactics runs trackdays in Socal, and I'm pretty sure they don't require a bellypan. What providers are you looking at?
Oh wow.. I feel silly. I totally misunderstood track days.
The couple of times I looked into them previously, I hunted up racetracks near me online. Some of them had "track day" info on them, so I looked them up, and at that time, most of them required belly pans. It seemed to be on the racetrack's own site, so I thought it was a requirement of the racetrack itself!
wierd.
even more wierd is.. now that I try to go back and find an example... I cant find any! Sigh...
It can get weird. E.g. Buttonwillow hosts it's own trackday events before AFM race weekends, and the equipment rules for those events pretty much match the requirements of the AFM (E.g. extremely strict.) But, when you attend a buttonwillow event with a 3rd party provider, everything is run by 3rd party rules.
BTW... If you do need a belly-pan, you can do what I did... Buy an old, rashed up race belly pan from a different bike. Cut it down to size, and rivet some straps of aluminum to the pan. I found that the lower rearset bolts make nice mount points; up front, I looped a strip of aluminum around the engine cradle, and bolted that to another strip that is riveted to the bellypan. Cut a hole in the side of the pan to access the bolt, and done. Bellypan made it through a season of racing and at least one crash, no problem.
i bought old R-6 upper and lower and fabbed it to fit GS.... instant belly pan and flairings to boot