The big Suzuki was never built to win a 1/4 mile drag race, never a top-end race, and was one of the heaviest motorcycles out of Japan for the time. The GT750 engines were Water-Cooled 2-Strokes yet among the quietest engines ever installed in a motorcycle. The water-cooling allowed for closer tolerances between the pistons and cylinders plus the thick water jackets in the head and cylinder bank (one piece) made them almost sound-proof.
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Suzuki 1974 GT750 Grand Tourismo
12991420 • Jan 21, 2016
Water Temperature and Gear Position
The Suzuki GT750 Triple is probably one of history’s most confusing models of motorcycles ever sold to consumers. Some don’t know that it even existed, others do remember it and are still confused, but many of us know and Love these bikes as the Wonderful and Reliable bikes they were. The Suzuki GT750’s were built from 1972 to 1978. They were all large-displacement, 3-cyclinder, 2-Strokes built for Highway Touring, hence the name Grand Tourismo (GT750). They were not performance machines – Kawasaki‘s S1, S2, and the notorious H1’s/H2’s had that covered.
These bikes came standard with Electric Start, Dual Front Brakes (1972 models had 4 shoe drums while 73 – up had dual disc), Transmission Gear Indicator, Water Temperature Gauge, and 4 brilliantly designed Chrome Exhaust that gave the bike it’s Fully Tailored looks and kept the 2-stroke exhaust notes to a minimum. Suzuki even engineered the exhaust to be connected just below the exhaust ports to improve the bottom-end delivery of torque/power for slow-speed cruising.
In fact, the Suzuki GT750 was so refined as a Touring Bike, that the 1973 Shootout of performance motorcycles did not include the Suzuki GT750 even though it was Suzuki’s largest displacement model.
The terms Touring, 2-Stroke, Quiet, Water-Cooled, and Reliable just did not fit what everyone else was doing. Being different caused these to be the most misunderstood of all motorcycle at the time, and had nothing to do with how well they performed within the designed goals.
Both of these bikes are the 1974 GT750L model. The one fitted with luggage is my friend Allen’s with over 117,000 miles. The other bike is my Cinderella bike that I bought on eBay and spent 1 year restoring. All photos of before/afters are of this restoration project.
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