Here is my take on what a GT550 may have looked like if they still made them into 1983. Kinda cheating here as I am simply (not really) dropping the GT motor into a 83' GS750ES chassis. This idea started about 4 years ago with the thought of crossing a 2 stroke triple with a more modern chassis. I have always like the smoothness of the suzuki triples and the looks of the mid 80's street bikes. I first ran across a GT550 that had sat outside for many years, but supposedly "ran when parked" that I picked up for $75. After a little work cleaning everything up motor wise, it actually did start up and ran fairly well. the rest of the bike was pretty much junk, due to rust and crash damage, so I had my donor engine. Next was the GS750ES. Came across this about 6 months later while looking for any ES model. This was perfect for me as the motor was blown, but the paint and bodywork were in very good shape. Purchased that for $250. Managed to strip both bikes to the point it was ready for the swap, then got sidetracked on car projects and pushed the bike into the shed for the last 3 years. Finally, about 2 weeks ago, I decided it's time to try and make this work. Rolled everything into the garage and tried dropping the motor into the cradle. Not going to work, as the motor is a fair amount longer than the GS lump. Took a deep breath and broke out the sawzall and cut off the cradle from just below the headstock to a point roughly where the kickstand bolts on. Put the engine back in and started lining everything up to start making new mounts. Here is where the pics start.
Cut off the original rear lower tabs and made new ones to match the engine locaton, then wleded them on. One note, while it can't be seen at this point, the engine actually is offset about 5/8" to the left, so as to have the countershaft line up with the rear wheel. I figured the little bit of offset would not affect anything, and I would not have to deal with offsetting the sprockets to match the centered engine.
Right rear upper.
Engine sitting in the frame with strap holding front at this point.
In this shot, you can see where I will need to make the new cradle attach. Going to be a tight fit.
And because I have a short attention span (
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
), especially when I hit a roadblock, I decided to try and fit the GT guage cluster to the GS upper triple. I think it came out reasonably good.
That's it for now. Need to work on the cradle and front mounts now.
Mark