I have purchased this bike four months back on 16th may 2010 from swargate Suzuki. I have completed 4000 km and two servicing from service center.
I am dividing review of bike in three sections 1. Before 1st Servicing 2. After 1st servicing 3. After 2nd Servicing 4. After 3rd servicing from local mechanic
- Before 1st servicing
This bike was real butter before 1st servicing. After purchasing the bike I have shown my bike to a local mechanic to whom I trust and asked comments from him ( as I believe he is expert ). He was very satisfied. NO engine sound at all ( bike was real silent ), gears were smooth (I must say smother than unicorn ) , balance was gr8 ( better that pulser, unicorn and but slightly less than apache), low speed pick was less but after crossing 30km/hr pickup dramatically become higher that most of 150 cc bikes.
NO vibration even at speed 100 km/hr ( this is the specialty of this bike, I don’t know how they managed it !! ), Suspension was good but not impressive, breaks were awesome ( some people might disagree with me but my experience was gr8 ), Millage 58 km/lt, No engine heating problem ( since no cracking noise heard from engine after long ride )
- After 1st servicing
Immediately after 1st servicing I started hearing knocking sound from engine. When I told service center guy about this, his reaction was, it’s usual knocking sound in GS150 and all GS bikes has this problem.
It was hard to accept for me.
I also found that gears started slipping mostly 2nd and 3rd gear were always having this problem,
engine started heating too much ( I was able to hear cracking sound from engine after ride ) ,
Millage reduced to 40 km/lr,
pick up reduced to very poor level,
knocking sound became louder when bike was completing 3000 km.
I told servicing center guy about this problem and he assured me that he will take care ( as usual :) )
- After 2nd servicing
Nothing changed ( even after hard try from servicing guy )
I have observed same things for 3-4 days after 2nd servicing and decided to go to local mechanic ( same one mentioned before )
He immediately examined bike and told me that they are using very bad quality engine oil.
Since I don’t want to loose warranty of my bike I went to my service center manager and asked him about oil. He told me that they use hero honda engine oil ( I don’t trust him since engine oil quality was worst ) and if you want to switch engine oil to some other brand then your warranty will be void. He tried to convince me that engine knocking is problem originated from suzuki itself and cannot be solved after changing engine oil, plus they were using best quality engine oil available in market ( for which they costs 250 rupees )
But this time I had made my mind to go to local mechanic and change engine oil. I had also asked him to clean oil filter, air filter and all other parts.
- After servicing from local mechanic
Guess what, immediately after changing oil nothing had changed !!!!
I was very nervous, But mechanic told me that you need to drive bike at least for 100 km to see the difference ( really specking I was not convinced with his statement and started believing that i’ll never get rid of this sound ). I took my bike ( paid 300 rs for Castrol power-1 engine oil ) and left with same engine knocking sound.
After 30km I found that knocking sound at low rpm (30-40 k ) had been vanished.
After 70km knocking sound up to 55k rpm had been vanished.
After 100km knocking sound had vanished up to almost 70%, gear slipping almost vanished.
After 150km knocking sound had vanished up to 90%, but still had engine heating problem.
After 200km engine heating problem got solved. pickup at low and high rpm improved dramatically
Following weekend I took my bike for long run and found that all problem got solved.
Now I got my old bike back.
Even though Suzuki creates good bikes they really don’t have any control over their dealers.According to Suzuki you have to service your bike from authorized dealer at least for two years to claim engine warranty but they don’t have any control over quality of engine oil and service being provided by dealers.
Now you can guess, why Suzuki’s bike are not selling even after having gr8 quality.Dealer guys cheat more to Suzuki than their customers. I hope Suzuki will understand this fact soon otherwise Suzuki is going to washed out from India.
I found that almost everyone who purchased bike from Swargate Suzuki has this problem ( just because poor servicing ). I am never going give my bike to service center people even though my warranty gets void.
If you are facing same problem then answer is simple , Use good engine oil.
Please let me know if your problem gets solved.
All the best.