I thought it was a good idea to add another review here, so here goes:
I bought my GSX650F in april 2008, after some guy in a car tried to drive through my old Kawasaki ZZR600 in a traffic jam. That didn't really work so the ZZR got quite some damage, but the insurance money made a good start to buy a new bike
So far I have driven 36.245 km on the GSXF, most of them great ones. The majority of it is driving to work over the highway through traffic, but also a lot of random riding around, two trips to the Eifel in Germany, a day of tracktraining, a lap around the Nordschleife, 90 laps of the Zandvoort track, and about 30 laps of the Assen TT track.
I bought the GSXF mostly stock, with the only mods being blue rimstriping, and an Osco-chainoiler. After 3000km I dumped the ridiculous stock exhaust and had a custom-made carbon muffler from Superpole installed:
Not long after that I switched the tail-light & rear indicators for a set of integrated LEDs:
The other mods are an HID Xenon headlight, white lead parkinglights, loud Stebel horn and blue aluminium bar-ends. Sometime last year I had the fuelsystem recalibrated for the Superpole muffer at Hoegee Suzuki, their Dynobank told me I have 80bhp at the rear wheel now. That's quite nice for 85bhp at the crankshaft according to the specs
All the service has been quite cheap and predictable, nothing broke down yet. I moved the service-interval from 6000 to 7500 km, as my GSXF drives around a bit more than average. So far only the following has been done apart from the normal service (oil, liquids, sparkplugs, airfilter):
* front brake pads after somewhere around 20.000 km, switch to sintered pad which I installed myself
* chain + sprockets after around 32.000 km
* 3 sets of tyres
I've tried a couple of different tyres on it. In my opinion the stock BT020 & BT11 are rubbish, especially the BT020 rear tyre. As long as it's dry it's ok, but in the wet it starts sliding around quite quicky, and it didn't feel like I'm in control properly. It also locks up easily under heavy downshifting. The BT011 on the front started cupping heavily the last 5000 km or something, and it didn't wear down evenly. I also locked the front wheel once with a crappy executed emergency-stop at 100kph. After 13.000 kms I switched the Bridgetones for a set of Dunlop Roadsmarts, which were a lot better. nice even wearing, better grip in the dry and epsecially the wet, and I could slam on the brakes / downshift more agressively without them locking up. After 14.000 more they weren't completely gone yet, but I switched them for a set of Pirelli Diablo Rosso tyres, because I did 2 trackdays, a trip to the Eifel and a tracktraining. Those tyres are GREAT, but ofcourse they don't last nearly as long. I have done around 8000 km on them now, and they have just enough thread left for one last trackday.
Now for some generic stuff:
Handling & Stability
The GSXF handles quite well for a tour-bike. It's very stable when cruising in a straight line on the highway, and has no trouble with being thrown around corners. It's nimble enought to weave through heavy traffic, but I don't really like doing hairpins or other slow corners with it, bit heavy for that (no, I've never driven a cruiser or other >300kg bike, so for me this one is a bit heavy
). I was really surprised with how well it handles on the track, as long as we're not going in a straight line I can quite easily keep up with supersport-bikes with drivers of my own level. The suspension is way to soft for that kind of stuff though, this winter I'm going to see what I can do with the front suspension.
Braking
The stoppers are great, although it would have been nice if ABS was an option in 2008, I couldn't buy it with that. Especially since I've put it on proper tyres and installed the sintered pads it's really good at slowing down.
Engine
One of the main reasons I bought this bike is the smooth powerdelivery. The torque-graph is almost a straight line, there is no sudden jump or drop in power. You can just twist open the trottle from low revs, and it goes forward. Some more power would have been nice though, but if I wanted that I should've bought a GSX-R 600 or a Bandit 1250
I topped mine at 242 kph on the display by the way.
Comfort
It's a very comfortable bike, doing 200km nonstop is not a problem. On the road the seating position is just right, only on the track it would've been nice if the steps were a bit higher and the handlebars a bit lower, for better leaning in the corners. I have no problems with the seat being too soft or hard, but the Bandit-seat does feel a bit better (I got a 2008 bandit for a day a couple of times when the GSXF was in for service)
Costs
Ofcourse the GSXF was very cheap to buy for what you get for it, mine was only €6970 new. The service is not too expensive either, and so far nothing broke down yet. Fuel economy depends a bit on how you drive it. I think my average on my home-work trips is about 1:19, for 50km of highway with a lot of traffic jams. What is more surprising is that even on trackdays with a lot off full-trottle accelerating and hardly getting below 9000 rpm it's still doens't do less than 1:15
Well, that was it for this review, I hope it's usefull for someone
