Hello everyone, I am the proud new owner of a 2003 500e with 17000 km on the clock. She seems to be in a pretty good overall state. Everything is stock, no dings, no rust etc. I put a new battery into her and changed the oil, valve shims, and spark plugs. Starts up...kinda fine - ish. Seems to want stall at the start of warm up so I have to give her a little throttle. I hear...maybe a little bit of a ticking sound, but maybe not. It's subtle and I don't know anything about this engine, so maybe that's normal. There was an odd very rapid buzzing sound coming from what seemed like the cluster when wringing it out, but not at any specific speed or RPM's and seemed random. I greased the Speedo and hope that was it. The RPM needle bounces a bit at idle and when I rev it, it doesn't drop down quickly...it kinda hangs for a tiny bit then comes down slowly and sometimes below the idle and then back up. It seems oddly hard to rev match. Lets see, Where would any of you experts begin making her pur again? I have never worked on Carbs (shocker!) but I'm guessing that is a good place to start. Parts seem a bit hard to find as my model year seems to be an oddball...? I am pretty sure I need new outlets from the airbox to the carbs but parts are tricky to suss out. Are parts getting hard to find now? Thanks for any thoughts.  OH! I had to do a kickstand switch delete as it was doing what those things do. But I'll probably not bother tracking down a new used one.

are you in Canada? US didn't get the 2003, so its super rare 😁. My 2003 rocks and rolls with almost 60'000 KM on it. I've done everything on mine so I can give help on most things. As for as parts go its almost identical to the 203 model except for carb jets and maybe air filters. But it was made in spain rather than Japan.

The ticking is cam walk, live with it, its no problem for the engine. Hanging revs are probably air leaks. You might need to to change the orings on the intake into the engine, but maybe take the seat and the airbox out, check everythign is neat and tidy, tune the carb when hot, and put it back and ride it. Let me know if you need the e-manuals.

This is a good place to check for parts (if not to buy from) :

https://www.cmsnl.com/en-ch/suzuki-gs500-2002-k2-usa-e03_model34225/partslist/

I bought form these guys, but that was 10 years ago when I was in canada and tarrifs were (still) stupid.
ronayers.com and Rockey mountain ATV. A little known fact is that Suzuki are REALLY good at making parts for their old bikes.

Josh wrote the book on getting carbs sorted.


https://joshkarnes.blogspot.com/2017/09/fixing-common-gs500-carburetor-issues.html?m=1

Ahhhh, man! Sorry for the late response. After a couple of weeks of no responses, I kinda figured this was a dead corner of the forum world and forgot to check back. Thanks for the response and the info. Yes, I'm in Canada. I tracked down an actual shop manual that I can hold in my hand, and that has been a great thing to have. I've not really messed with anything too much...bad form, I know...but I just want to ride it! Put new tires on her a few days ago. I invented many new cuss words but managed to get it done. (as luck would have it, they balanced perfectly with the existing weights, so I was able to not fight that battle) Winter snow is just a few short weeks away here, so I'll have plenty of time to pull things apart and make a dog's breakfast of it!

I'll check those links. Thanks!

The Josh Karnes carb link is GOLD! thanks.

Ahhh, the old Canadian snow season , how I don't miss it 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I must make a plan to get Josh's page saved somewhere in case he ever takes it down