Here’s how to recover a Suzuki Hayabusa smashed up on a remote trail
Recovering a Suzuki Hayabusa from anywhere is not exactly straightforward, but getting one out of the Moab desert takes that to the extreme
YouTuber Matt Spears is not averse to an odd challenge on an odd bike - from hillclimbing a Honda Gold Wing to trail riding on a Suzuki Hayabusa - and his latest adventure took him back to the scene of a recent failure.
The previous episode of Spears’ “let’s take bikes off-road that really shouldn’t go off-road” series saw him take a knobby-shod Suzuki Hayabusa with crash bars, a skid plate and a larger rear sprocket to the Utahan Moab desert. There, he found the infamous Hell’s Gate path and tried to ride the ‘Busa up it.
It did not go to plan, and the Japanese hyperbike looped out on a near-vertical part of Hell’s Gate. On (crash) landing, the motorcycle ripped its left handlebar off and decided it didn’t want to fire up anymore. Spears rode the bike back down the part of the trail he had crashed on, but could not get it out of the desert at the time.
This latest instalment sees Spears return to Hell’s Gate a day after the Hayabusa was looped to retrieve the stricken Suzuki.
Rather than simply towing the bike out, though, Spears got the bike fired up and the left bar re-attached for another go up the climb that claimed him the day before and then had to contend with that most desert-like condition: torrential rain. Finally, Spears returned to his truck, where he revealed that one of his previous fallen heroes was now once again ready to tackle the trails.
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Image credit: Matt Spears/YouTube.
Alex has been working in the motorcycle industry for as long as he has been at Visordown, which has been since March 2022 so we'll let you work it out from there. He's the new guy. He'd be fetching us all coffee 'round the clock if he wasn't based in the arse end of nowhere.
