Total Motorcycle Community Forums

We have one and its been a great bike. The Ninja looks like it's from the eighties, no change in 20 years.

The GS500F looks good!

I think the little Ninjas look a bit newer than any 80's model.

Also, the GS500F is fully faired, which may look better, but not as newb friendly. GS500E would be a better bet. I like both bikes..I would definitely take a GS500....but I'd rather have an Ex500...

Why is the F not newbie friendly because of the fairings?

If you drop it, they get scratched up. It's not going to reduce the re-sale price that much. Most people just want the 500 to learn on then sell it later.

Does anyone know where I can get a used GS500 in the Georgia/Florida area? I have been looking online but any suggestions would be great.

Also, does anyone know how much a used Honda CX 500 might go for, I'm looking to sell mine.

Thanks
Andrew

I bought an 06 GS500F about 3 weeks ago and have put around 700 miles on it already. I live in a hot and humid part of Texas and have experienced no overheating problems(of the bike anyway). Even in stop and go it seems to do perfectly fine.

Great bike tho. I love it

Shiv wrote:Why is the F not newbie friendly because of the fairings?

If you drop it, they get scratched up. It's not going to reduce the re-sale price that much. Most people just want the 500 to learn on then sell it later.

Perhaps "newb-friendly" wasn't the correct way of putting it but rather maintaining a bike that will not lower in value as much. I'd rather not worry about the pretty fairings and suzuki design of my first bike but rather focus more on riding my first bike.

But clearly the GS500F is great for beginners and the fairings do make it look nicer...as long as they're not scratched to hell because of a common newb mistake...

Right but what I'm saying is that most people, if they're just looking for a beginner's bike, won't really care if the fairings are scratched.

Or I wouldn't, so maybe I'm just making a sweeping generalization from one example. But everyone does that. Or at least I do.

After putting about 230k miles on 4 air cooled Hondas (CB400T, CB750K, CM400A, and CB650SC), I bought a 97 GS500E and it was totaled at 80k miles and replaced by my current 02 GS500 that now has 42k miles. Have about 120k miles on naked GS's.

The GS's have been the coolest running of the lot, never a heat problem with them. The four cylinder Hondas ran hotter than all the twins when bogged down in traffic and all of the Hondas ran a bit hot at sustained high highway speeds in hot weather. Not so with the GS's which I ran all day down I77 at indicated speeds of 75-80 mph a number of times doing 400 mile days.

Can't say for the new fully faired GS500F models, they did add an oil cooler on them which was not on the cool naked models. Must be they ran a little hotter with the bodywork than they did naked. The oil cooler would be most helpful at speed and of little help sitting in traffic and not moving. I had to add a oil cooler to my four cyl CB750K and it made a significant difference.

I like my GS'S naked.