Hello,
I received the following notice from an overseas contact who I bought some RG500 fork snap rings from.
The local-ish dealer here in Canada Snow City Cycle said they were EOL... and well they seem not so interested in sales online.
Here it is........
As you have bought from me before, I thought to drop you a line to let you know that according to my contact there, Suzuki Japan has decided to withdraw parts support for the older Suzuki models from the 70's and 80's, this includes the RG400/500 as well. In the past one month alone, 90% of the parts that were available for years, has suddenly made no longer available. Thought this information would help you decide to collect parts when and where you can find them. Hope this helps.
Thoughts?
Tony.
Suzuki and legacy MC parts - End of 60/70/80s parts?
Moderator: rztom
Re: Suzuki and legacy MC parts - End of 60/70/80s parts?
Get it from the horses mouth-sih...email the chap that set the Suzuki Vintage Parts programme up, Tim Davies.
He used to attend our local VJMC events but covid has put paid to that.
tim.davies@suzuki.co.uk
He used to attend our local VJMC events but covid has put paid to that.
tim.davies@suzuki.co.uk
Re: Suzuki and legacy MC parts - End of 60/70/80s parts?
@podman - Okay I emailed him.
Tony
Tony
Re: Suzuki and legacy MC parts - End of 60/70/80s parts?
Check out this detailed reply from Tim! Wish North America had one of him!!
Hi Tony
Thank you for contacting us over in the UK. The UK vintage scene has been a growing for the Japanese manufacturers over the last 10 years and Suzuki have been at the forefront of this. I devised the Vintage programme back in 2011 and launched it nationally in 2013 and never looked back.
We work very closely with the factory back in Japan and over the past 3 years we have actually had parts remanufactured by them which is something I never thought the factory would do but they are now seeing the benefits of this which is great news for all Suzuki Vintage owners.
What you have to understand is that when a motorcycle ceases to be in the model line up all manufacturers do what is called a final order for the parts mainly consisting of cranks, cases, heads and cylinders the parts that are specific for that model and parts that are not normally replaced or extremely infrequent anyway! This normally takes place between 5 and 10 years after the final production as ceased. So parts for the old models whether it be for a 2-stroke or 4-stroke will eventually be discontinued once stock has been sold out however, there are exceptions to the rules if one of those parts is still selling well then they will keep them in production for as long as there is still a reasonable call off for them. Unfortunately you find that quite a lot of parts that are from the older bikes like the RG400/500 didn’t sell very well until the bike became a desirable collectors model about 10 years ago and many of these parts would have already been discontinued and on final run out. Now we have a demand for them but much to late for a lot of these parts to be put back in production due to the tooling been disposed of and the original maker of the part that may not be around now. You will remember the Tsunami back in 2011 well the area that it hit was the region that did a huge amount of engineering and manufacturing of these very parts for all the Japanese manufacturers and they were all taken out by this and so much of the tooling for these parts disappeared over night and gone forever. To make new replacement tools for these parts has made it uneconomic to remanufacturer as the price would become so high. We experienced this when we were going to bring the exhaust back for the GSX-R750F and for an order of 300 we couldn’t get the price down below £3,000 (retail price) for one, before you say it we could do that cheaper we know but that would mean you would have to sell these parts at next to zero margin to make it attainable for the customers, a good version of the GSX-R750F sell for around £3,500 to £4,500 in the UK so you wouldn’t purchase the exhaust for £3,000!!
Anyway enough of that waffle and back to the point of parts for the RG’s yes there are parts been discontinued all the time but only once the stock has been used. Due to the bikes popularity these parts have been purchased quicker by the consumer than ever before. Just for the record I own an RG400, 2 x RGV250 VJ22, DR-Z400E and a zero mileage GSX-R750WN and my daily hack is a new DL1050XT.
I hope you find this information useful and given you some insight into the problem of these older parts.
Kind Regards
Tim Davies
Hi Tony
Thank you for contacting us over in the UK. The UK vintage scene has been a growing for the Japanese manufacturers over the last 10 years and Suzuki have been at the forefront of this. I devised the Vintage programme back in 2011 and launched it nationally in 2013 and never looked back.
We work very closely with the factory back in Japan and over the past 3 years we have actually had parts remanufactured by them which is something I never thought the factory would do but they are now seeing the benefits of this which is great news for all Suzuki Vintage owners.
What you have to understand is that when a motorcycle ceases to be in the model line up all manufacturers do what is called a final order for the parts mainly consisting of cranks, cases, heads and cylinders the parts that are specific for that model and parts that are not normally replaced or extremely infrequent anyway! This normally takes place between 5 and 10 years after the final production as ceased. So parts for the old models whether it be for a 2-stroke or 4-stroke will eventually be discontinued once stock has been sold out however, there are exceptions to the rules if one of those parts is still selling well then they will keep them in production for as long as there is still a reasonable call off for them. Unfortunately you find that quite a lot of parts that are from the older bikes like the RG400/500 didn’t sell very well until the bike became a desirable collectors model about 10 years ago and many of these parts would have already been discontinued and on final run out. Now we have a demand for them but much to late for a lot of these parts to be put back in production due to the tooling been disposed of and the original maker of the part that may not be around now. You will remember the Tsunami back in 2011 well the area that it hit was the region that did a huge amount of engineering and manufacturing of these very parts for all the Japanese manufacturers and they were all taken out by this and so much of the tooling for these parts disappeared over night and gone forever. To make new replacement tools for these parts has made it uneconomic to remanufacturer as the price would become so high. We experienced this when we were going to bring the exhaust back for the GSX-R750F and for an order of 300 we couldn’t get the price down below £3,000 (retail price) for one, before you say it we could do that cheaper we know but that would mean you would have to sell these parts at next to zero margin to make it attainable for the customers, a good version of the GSX-R750F sell for around £3,500 to £4,500 in the UK so you wouldn’t purchase the exhaust for £3,000!!
Anyway enough of that waffle and back to the point of parts for the RG’s yes there are parts been discontinued all the time but only once the stock has been used. Due to the bikes popularity these parts have been purchased quicker by the consumer than ever before. Just for the record I own an RG400, 2 x RGV250 VJ22, DR-Z400E and a zero mileage GSX-R750WN and my daily hack is a new DL1050XT.
I hope you find this information useful and given you some insight into the problem of these older parts.
Kind Regards
Tim Davies
Re: Suzuki and legacy MC parts - End of 60/70/80s parts?
And here is the Suzuki UK vintage bike URL.
https://shopvintage.suzuki.co.uk/bike-parts.html
https://shopvintage.suzuki.co.uk/bike-parts.html
Re: Suzuki and legacy MC parts - End of 60/70/80s parts?
There you have it...He's a lovely bloke, as the email highlights,shame re the parts situation...