Hi Everyone,

I captured the moment when odometer ticked over to a line of zeros - 100000 ks.
It's a stock 2007 GS500 that does about 16000 ks per year of everyday commuting and longer weekend trips.
Just a little more evidence that these bike thrive on oil changes and use.

Here's a YouTube clip of the moment -

Happy days. 

Congrats, Mike.  Can you give us any notes on the maintenance steps you took to get it that far?  How is the valve recession doing, and do you keep your exhaust clearances at the high end of the range?  How are the exhaust header bolts holding out?  How is the rust and corrosion on the bike?

That is soooooo awesome!!! I love this post, thank you for sharing!

wow. your GS must be fast! look how fast it got to 80mph. 

gsjack'd be proud!

I always wonder how long mine will last. I do look after it, but with my commute involving mostly high-speed roads and lots of tight filtering, I feel like I'm pretty hard on it whilst it's still cold. I try to keep the revs below 6000, but merging onto the motorway can easily take me to 8000 for a few moments. Hopefully it will follow the example set by your bike.

Quote from: MaxD on August 21, 2018, 08:25:45 PM
Congrats, Mike.  Can you give us any notes on the maintenance steps you took to get it that far?  How is the valve recession doing, and do you keep your exhaust clearances at the high end of the range?  How are the exhaust header bolts holding out?  How is the rust and corrosion on the bike?

Hey MaxD, thanks for the questions.
All the maintenance I do on the bike is timed to oil changes. I know it's a little excessive but I do an oil change every 4000ks. And, not wanting to start yet another 'oil thread', I'm one of the diesel brigade.
My wife bought the bike with about 10000 ks on it and it had always been run on diesel oil - it came from seriously agricultural part to the state. Currently I use Penrite-HPR DIESEL 5 - 5W40 - it's a semi-synthetic. It's comparatively cheap, I buy it in bulk, it meets all the Suzuki specs and has a high zinc count. To be honest, I think the interval is more important than the oil.

I've only checked the valves twice - once at about 35000 ks and the next time (its tenth birthday) at about 80000 ks. On both occasions the measurements were the same -
Left Exhaust - 0.07 - 0.08 and Left Intake - 0.06 - 0.07 || Right Exhaust - 0.04 - 0.05 and Right Intake - 0.05 - 0.06.
I won't both looking again for at least another 20000 ks. If they were out of spec and I had to replace shims, I would run the exhaust valve at or beyond the top of the spec.

For that birthday present I removed and replaced the header bolts and gaskets. Although the bolt heads looked really cruddy, no problems - undid them with a simple Allen key.
I too went through the debate about anti-seize / thread-lock etc. In the end I did use a small amount of aluminium based anti-seize and reduced the torque setting by about 10%. They only need 7 foot-pounds. I used the aluminium based stuff because I didn't want to introduce yet another metal, like copper anti-seize, between Suzuki's plated steel bolt and the aluminium head. If this does cause a problem, I'll find out in two or three years time.

Where I live in Australia, Newcastle NSW, I ride all year round. We have a temperate climate so I don't have to deal with the ravages of salty or grit covered roads in winter. Newcastle is on the coast and is the biggest coal port in the world, so we get coal dust and when it gets wet it can form a weak carbonic acid. This can make exposed parts look less than pretty. The bike doesn't have anything but cosmetic rust issues.

All the best - stay safe.

Quote from: J_Walker on August 22, 2018, 08:45:18 AM
wow. your GS must be fast! look how fast it got to 80mph. 

Hey Walker.
Yep, well spotted. All of that raw, white knuckled, neck wrenching acceleration is hard to deal with! 

Quote from: ShowBizWolf on August 22, 2018, 01:06:48 AM
That is soooooo awesome!!! I love this post, thank you for sharing!

Hey ShowBizWolf.
Thank you. Coming from someone with your level of experience and expertise, I truly appreciate it.

Mike, sounds like your bike is doing stellar without having to put out too much trouble on the maintenance.  I'm impressed with how little valve recession you are seeing.  A lot of guys are reporting they are getting to the minimum at lower miles than your machine.   

I'm a relatively new owner and only in the last couple of weeks did I do any commenting here, mostly seeking to understand the short 4000 mile valve adjustment interval, and then how to handle the issue of the bad head bolt corrosion that Sledge warned about.   

From gsJack we had a log of valve recession vs spacing, and like you he evolved to keeping the exhaust clearance at the high end of the range or a little over.  Then we went into the issue of whether the cheap K&L shims were safe to use, which seems so from conversations with their tech support.  They had a little problem in 2014 that gave them a bad rep, but they have since cleared it up.

On the header bolts, getting something much better than the high corrosion and breakage risk on the cheap zinc plated stock bolts has been surprisingly tricky.  A lot of guys like the idea of going to stainless steel studs with Loctite, but it has been unclear if the Loctite 272 could take the heat.  Their tech support basically says "sort of, but you're on your own", so I'm going that way myself.  For guys that don't like that uncertainty, stainless steel bolts will do better than stock.  The below excellent engineering article on exhaust system materials concludes stainless is best for most exhaust system components.  The word "zinc" does not appear in it.  I guessing that Suzuki used zinc plating just to save a little money, with the idea that owners could replace those bolts if they did not want to worry about breaking them off.       

http://dergipark.gov.tr/download/article-file/318350

Congrats! I have one parts bike with 76K...rear cam chain guide broke in half....was pissed thought it would make it to 100k...now I need to start over with another bike

I was probably wrong about stainless steel header bolts.  See separate post "Suzuki knew what they were doing after all". 

 

Not to rain on the parade, but 100,000 kilometers is only 62,000 miles. That's not incredible by any stretch. Seems like most GS500s with reasonable maintenance start having serious problems between 80,000 and 100,000 miles. I think we have yet to see one hit 110,000?

Quote from: Bluesmudge on August 23, 2018, 07:46:42 AM
Not to rain on the parade, but 100,000 kilometers is only 62,000 miles. That's not incredible by any stretch. Seems like most GS500s with reasonable maintenance start having serious problems between 80,000 and 100,000 miles. I think we have yet to see one hit 110,000?

It's still a notable milestone.  I know exactly where I was when my F150 rolled over 666,000 miles, and 186,000 miles (one light second).

Congrats, Michael!

http://yewemmgee.blogspot.com/2011/12/suzuki-gs500e.html

Magic that you caught it    Congrats - you get to set some new odo readings now!!:

http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=60448.0

might revive that thread?

5W40 seems a bit unnecessary in Australia, and especially for Newcastle, you're never going to encounter 0 degrees C let alone minus 30!

I use the Penrite Diesel 10 which is a 10W40 semi synth, but I might go for the Penrite Gas 10 in the summer which is a 10W50 semi synth. Although the 10W40 seemed fine. But hey, it got you to 100k km.