The 750 nobody looks at twice

The 750 is the goldilocks bike and the forums have been right about that for twenty years: a 600's chassis with most of a liter bike's midrange, and Suzuki has barely touched it since 2011 — which means every part fits and everyone has already solved every problem you'll have. Mine is a 2013 with 18k miles, bought for $6,500 from a guy with a spreadsheet of its oil changes. The premise of the build: no wings, no stickers, black pipe, stock bodywork. It should look like a clean used GSX-R and go like something else.

The boring line items were the biggest change. Fork springs for my weight, fresh oil and seals, and a proper rear shock — because at 18k miles and 12 years, the stock damping was a memory. That money is invisible and it rebuilt the whole bike: it turns in like it did in the press launch photos and holds a line over the mid-corner junk that used to send it wide. Nobody at bike night has ever once asked me about my fork springs.

The M4 is the GSX-R exhaust and I make no apology — black GP can, quiet enough-ish, cheap enough that a track drop won't hurt twice. The flash plus the filter fixed the low-rpm fueling snatch this bike has had in every review since 2011, and the -1/+2 gearing woke the engine up more than the pipe did. Fair warning the forums undersell: gearing throws the speedometer off by a real margin — budget for a calibration box eventually, or learn to subtract.