A 1977 Suzuki TL1000S. Picture taken soon after I picked it up from Alan at John Peace Motorcycles in Chelmsford.

996cc liquid-cooled 90-degree V-twin engine. It had 103Nm of torque and 125BHP and weighed apx. 187kg.

Very unusual looking bike for the time and a lot of fun to ride. But did have some major drawbacks and earned its title of one of motorcycles 'Widow Makers'.

The major issues I found related to the way the engine injection settings were mapped, the 'twitchy' front end and the 'quirky' Rotary Damper Suspension it had at the back.

These engines are fantastic and are used in the Cagiva Raptors I own today. They purr at low revs and howl when you open them up. The TL1000S was great in on straight-ish and not too bumpy roads.

However it was not so easy on shape corners or bends. It took and Art that I never really conquered trying to get the best out of it. The engine had huge breaking power when just closing the throttle, which is good, but if you tried to then feed the power in to drive round the bend it all came in far too shapely which, combined with the rear Damper issues, pushed the bike wide (as in very wide) on exit. There was no finesse in how the power came in, it was more like and on/off switch and spoiled the ride. You'd have to back off power earlier and try not to move the throttle at all until you were upright and through the corners.

These characteristics also meant it wasn’t fun to use on wet roads and had a number of slides because of the way it was setup.

It wasn't as quick as I thought it was going to be and certainly felt my Yamaha 1000 EXUP was faster in just about all aspects than the TL.

But that 996 engine was, in mine and may other's opinion, far better than the 996 Ducati were producing at the time. Indeed Suzuki went on to use the engine in the later TL series, the V-Storm and their SV1000s, and Cagiva used it on some of theirs including the Raptors.

Picture taken in my usual biking gear.

A few pictures of the bike fitted with Microns and Seat Hump.

loved the look and sound of the bike but never really got to grips with its quirks.

I know people have remapped the ignitions and replaced rear dampers etc., but I didn't want to take on that kind of experimental work on this bike at that time as I already had a few projects in play.

Sold bike in 1999 to someone I worked with, a Ducati 996 owner, and he loved it.

Money in pocket, so off to the dealership to get an R1.