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"The RG500 is a hand grenade with the pin pulled."
How faithful was the RG500 streetbike to its Grand Prix lineage?
RG owner Scott Baldwin remembers:
"I knew Pat Hennen before he went to Europe. I used to hang with the
Ron Grant / Art Baumann crowd that Pat ran with. Great guy. Ran into
him after he came back. He got all excited when I told him I had an
RG500. He came over for a visit.
We spent an hour in the garage checking out my bike. We went from one end to the other several times, pointing at parts and talking about them. Pat kept saying "That's better than my bike". I finally said "But you were beating Kenny Roberts and winning GPs!" He replied "Yeah, but with this bike I would have won more.”
Before leaving, Pat gave me a Penthouse magazine sticker of him wheelieing his Penthouse sponsored RG500 race bike. He said visiting the Penthouse club in London had been a disappointing experience. Apparently, the girls looked much more delectable in the magazine than in real life. Nice sticker, though 8-)
He also told me to change my transmission oil “all the time.”
When the bike hit showrooms, it was a sensation.
When the bike hit racetracks, it was an absolute weapon.
Here's a trip down memory lane with some top tuners, on the RG500's arrival.
When Suzuki put a GP bike on the road
RG500 thorough tech overview
Cycle Canada Feb 1985 RG500 tech overview
Greatest Road Test Ever Written (Dec 1985)
Cycle Magazine RG500 Gamma road Test
Sales Brochure for the RG500. Why oh Why didn't we all take ten??
Of course, the initial bikes that made their way into tester's hands had been warmed up a bit.... Then again, it was nothing an owner couldn't easily do - and probably would, in short order. Why test the box-stock bike and pass judgement, when that was not at all representative of what people would be riding? The mental, wheelying animals that they tested were PRECISELY what many wound up with in our garages. After a bit of tuning, that is. ;-)
Matt Oxley:
When the test bike arrived in the UK we got a mean speed of 144 mph out of it, just one mph slower than the GSXR750. I was really excited by the 500s..... Not long after Suzuki started selling the RG500 we started getting phone calls from owners complaining that their bikes weren't performing like the bike we'd run in MCN. No one could get them to rev beyond 9000. Suzuki had tuned their press bikes.
Martyn Ogbourne:
Only one RG did 150 mph. To do that speed it was different. The secret was that it had different exhaust port timing. The cylinders were slightly different with raised exhaust ports, it was easy to do, and they jetted them differently too, leaner, which made a night-and-day difference. That's the only time I know that Suzuki provided a different test bike that was different to what they sold. They don't do it anymore, it's too risky.
Stan Stephens:
The press bikes were tuned, very much so. I remember when they brought out the Mk3 RG250 Gamma they bored the engine 2mm oversize, modded the carbs and fitted special expansion chambers. ... A good stock RG500 made 74 bhp at the back wheel, 20 less than suzuki were claiming.
Oxley:
It was a con, no doubt about it. The thing is that tuning 2 strokes is easy, so when the bike arrived at Suzuki GB it seems they just couldn't help themselves getting out the riffler files. OR maybe it was done in Japan. It's a problem with test bikes, you rely on the manufacturers to be honest...
A few months after riding the stocker, Stan Stephens loaned us a tuned RG streetbike. IT made sense to us, why buy a two-stroke unless it's had the nuts tuned off? Stan's dyno sheet said it made more than 110 HP. It was mad, one of the few test bikes I really remember. It felt like a proper racebike, lifting the front wheel in all kinds of places where other bikes couldn't. We got more than 150 mph from it at the MRA test circuit, which was hideously dangerous. We used to do top speed tests on two parallel mile straights linked by long, looped corners at either end, zero runoff, just tarmac, then Armco. We were really stupid.
I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the RZ500 or NSR400. The RG500 is simply, inarguably, a closer relative to the GP bike that spawned it. Yamaha tried to make the RZ500 into a fully-capable and civilized streebike, with a nod to the 500GP bikes they had built. Honda did their usual Honda thing and out-guessed themselves, making the NSR into an under-sized underdog in a 500cc war. The RG500, howeber, lost very little in the translation from racer to streetbike - the essence of the racer comes through.
What about the Suter MMX? Well, not to split hairs, but the RG500 won numerous 500cc races, championships, and propelled Suzuki to multiple manufacturer's titles. Sheene, Uncini, and Luccinelli won titles on the RG500. Obviously the Suter is in a completely different performance category than the 30+ year-old Gamma... but the RG500 has a vast pedigree of successful racing heritage. 10,000 happy guys (and ladies!) had a crack at the RG500. Any enthusiast could buy an RG, can you imagine!! Hard to beat that.
"Being extremely light and driven by a potent two-stroke powerplant, the Gamma is a loose cannon, with a high, narrow power band and a throttle that acts like a light switch. An experienced rider on the proper roads will find the Gamma capable of tremendous speeds, but a novice will seldom be able to tap the potential.
There was no indication of what was in store until the rev meter hit 7000rpm and all hell let loose.
The RG500 is a hand grenade with the pin pulled."
The best 500GP replica
The Penthouse/Rizla sticker given to Scott by Pat Hennen. click to enlarge