I chose a GF beacuse of the styling and the high tech specification. Even now that I have a full motorcycle license and can legally ride anything, even a 300km/h+ Hayabusa, I have no plans to replace the GF.
The GF is powerful enough for me and out accelerates most cars. It's a little slow to take off, unless you want to be aggressive with the revs/clutch, but once over 7,000rpm it flies. At highway speeds (110km/h), it is doing about 7,000rpm in top, which gives good acceleration. You do need to go back a gear or two, though, if you are going up a hill and the wind is in the wrong direction. Speaking of highway riding, it is a great thrill to be in fifth gear doing about 10,000rpm and 140km/h and being able to accelerate very quickly in and out of traffic!
Around town the GF is good fun. Just cruising around at 60km/h in fifth gear requires a tiny amount of throttle. Regardless of the type of riding I can usually do 240km before hitting reserve.
I have done a bit of touring on the GF, twice from Sydney to the Philip Island Superbike races - about a 2,300km trip. The bike was fairly comfortable and reliable, although at the end of the last trip it was looking a little worse for wear, with oil weeping from the fork seal and a fairly bad engine oil leak.
I have had to change the left hand fork seal a few times now, probable due to the chrome coming off that fork leg. I also had an oil leak from the timing chain tensioner which was fairly easily fixed, although time consuming as to access that part the carbs need to be removed - a big job. Whilst fixing this I noticed that the tensioner was at the end of its adjustment meaning that the chain was well worn. There was also a fair amount of chain noise.
I ordered a timing chain which took a month or so as it had to come from Suzuki Japan. Fitting the chain was a bit of a chore, mainly as the carbs have to come out again, and it is difficult to put them back in again. Also, I lost the cam timing and had to redo the job a second time after testing the bike and discovering it had no power (it was remarkably quiet though). Fortunately the chain didn't need to be split to adjust the timing and everything was right the second time, and much quieter.
But what I didn't realise at the time was that the valve cover gasket had not aligned properly and was letting oil out of the engine. It took some time to find this as the cause of the problem but it was eventually fixed by replacing the gasket.
From the time I bought the bike, if I left it for a week or so, it would be very difficult to start. It wasn't until I had the carbs tuned by a local workshop that this problem has been virtually solved. They also replaced the broken choke cable. As seems to be the case with some other types of bikes that friends own, if you run the GF out of fuel or forget to turn the fuel on, it takes a long time to start again.
I have replaced the front tyre once and the rear tyre twice. I am still on the same set of brake pads that came with the bike.
I have had one 'incident' aboard the GF. A 50km/h lowside probably caused by poor road surface, front tyre and, of course, me! The good thing about the GF for a learner is that it doesn't have an expensive full fairing. After my accident all that had happened was a broken clutch lever, a damaged front indicator and some scratches on the engine cover. A call to a friend, brought a new clutch lever, straightened the gear lever and I was away again (but in a bit of discomfort for the next week).
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