Watch: This 1979 Suzuki GS850 Get An “Ultimate”’ Restoration

Bay City Restorations rebuilt and restored this GS850 into a café racer.

22:08

Earl Davidson

By: Earl Davidson

Jun 6, 2023 at 11:50am ET

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Here we have a 1979 Suzuki GS850 in a timelapse video, by Bay City Restorations. The bike is and has undergone a, you guessed it, restoration that took quite some time.

Similar to how many people end up with project bikes, the Suzuki came from Facebook Marketplace, after seeing thousands of miles on the road, and a few decades under its belt. The history of the bike spanned two owners, both of which kept outstanding service records and were on top of their maintenance schedules. With the fear of neglect out of the way, Bay City Restorations got to work stripping everything off the bike piece by piece, restoring everything, and then repainting the pieces in a BMW Isle of Man Green (C4G).

Equipped with a four-cylinder, a traditional universal Japanese motorcycle layout, and a stated top speed (back in the day) of 119 miles per hour, the GS 850 was no slouch back in 1979. Subsequent updates kept this nameplate fresh. When it was new, it had about 77 horsepower, but all that might have gone by the wayside over time, luckily enough, an experienced hand was working on it in this video to restore it to its former glory.

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The custom restoration job first goes to a walkaround of the bike, detailing a few of the more interesting things on it like the single seat, and the red paint job.

Following the little tour, it was off to the shop to strip out all the parts and put in clean custom or restored pieces. From red and yellow, the bike turned green, got all of its parts back, and was given a proper sound check, and it was glorious. Chronologically speaking, it’s only fitting that the last clip is of the bike running on the road, now back to its former glory, but now in café racer clothing. If you have about 20 minutes to spare for this, I definitely recommend you stay until the end (or skip to the end) to hear that vintage four-banger roar.

Source: youTube - Bay City Restorations