A Comparison of the Suzuki SV650S and the Triumph Daytona 675

Once upon a time a reader of the TriumphRat.Net board was asking if anyone had experience with both the SV650S and the Daytona 675, as he was interested in replacing the former with the latter.

Since I own both I wrote up as complete a comparison as I could, and here it is (updated occasionally) for posterity. I also have a brief overview with some links to other professional reviews.

Historical Data

I've been riding an SV650S since 2001, and just bought a 675, so I suppose I'm just about your perfect reference. I'll throw out a bit of stream of consciousness comparison of the two. There is a lot of criticism here; both bikes have a number of quirks that I think are better to learn about before you drop your money, even though they are both very good bikes in various ways as well.

The SV650S done up as a sport-tourer

I bought the 675 at the end of March 2007 and as of this writing have put 2,000 miles on it, including almost daily commuting, some highway riding, a day of sport riding, several days of sport touring through awful weather, and a few days of tooling around with my daughter as pillion.

The Daytona 675, in "Graphite"

Ergonomics

The seat on the 675 is better than the SV650S's seat. The SVS gave me butt burn in an hour; four hours on the 675 and you'll know it's a hard seat but no burn. I think if you sit back on the seat (I sit way forward) the split foam might bug you, I can't tell.

I don't particularly like how high-friction the seat cover is, it's difficult to slide around. Depending on your riding style that might be a benefit but I find that it makes it harder for me to handle the bike when I stop since I have to slide over in order to get a good footing. I'd rather have the sides of the tank be sticky to brace my legs against, and the seat smooth to make it easier to slide around.

In terms of ride position the 675 has a very forward lean to it, more than the SV650S, and the bars are tighter. The end result is that it feels like you're sitting in the SVS, but perched on the 675. I get a whole lot more weight on my wrists with the 675, and more backward neck bend. The latter is particularly troublesome wearing an Aerostich and heated vest.

In spirited riding the 675 feels great but it is no fun on the highway. The wind protection from the windscreen is pretty good, which is nice most of the time but means you don't get the weight lift off the wrists like you do on the SVS.

The SVS isn't a great highway ride either, but it is easily improved with Helibars such that the result is a nice sport-tourer. I'm told that the Helibars make a huge difference on the 675 but I haven't seen them to decide for myself. Almost anything would be a massive improvement. The Helibars are also supposed to give more width to the bars, which should help a lot with ease of turn-in.

Peg position seems pretty similar between the two bikes. I don't find either to be a problem for a couple of hours on end, and I only feel cramped towards the end of a full day of riding, but I have short legs. If you're a long-legged rider I don't think either would be very comfortable. It is, of course, easy to get different rearsets for an SV650S; I looked around and other than full-on race gear aftermarket stuff for the 675 is pretty rare.

Durability

There's not a lot to talk about when it comes to the durability of the SVS. It's stereotypical Japanese engineering, tight and reliable. I had no durability issues at all with the stock equipment.

In the first six weeks or so of ownership of the 675 I had several durability issues worth mentioning.

The seat cover material on the 675 is very soft. I have managed to both tear a small hole in the pillion seat with some sharp part on my boot or leg of my suit (zipper, maybe?) and wear through to the cloth underside of the cover on the left front corner of the seat just riding it. I can't say I'm impressed by its durability at all, although I also managed to tear the SV650S's pillion seat in almost exactly the same place so that, at least, is my fault. The wear-through on the front was a huge surprise, it happened in just 250 miles. I had similar wear-through on a Corbin seat on the SV650S although in a different place (and 2000 miles or so rather than 250). It could be that the Aerostich Roadcrafter suit is particularly hard on seats. The Sargent seat I use now on the SV650S has been perfect for more than five years, though. (I am looking into having Sargent re-cover the 675's seat.) Triumph replaced the seat under warrantee and the replacement looks perfect after 1,200 additional miles so I guess I just got a dud.

The other durability issue I have already run into is that the paint on the 675's tank is pretty soft and I had visible scratches in both the rear of the tank and the side where my knees press after just one day of riding. This was a problem on the SVS too, but it took a little while (weeks) to become obvious. A tank bra fixed it on the SVS but I was unable to find anyone to sell me a tank bra for the 675. I opted for a Pro-Grip tank pad (the 5005) on the rear of the tank, which works ok, and I am still looking at some kind of sticker to protect the sides.

One small annoyance occurred at around 1,100 miles on the clock; the right bar-end weight fell off. The dealer said that this has happened to other owners as well. The design of the bar end mounting system allows them to rotate even when tight, making it difficult to check without a tool, and the bolt is a 3mm allen key that of course does not come in the "tool kit" (more on the bike's tools later). My recommendation is to remove and loctite the bar ends as soon as you get the bike home.

While I haven't seen it myself there have been multiple reports of the bolts on the steering damper backing out. If they come out far enough they can interfere with steering. This is extremely dangerous; you should loctite these bolts immediately as well, and check them periodically.

Agility

Both bikes are a lot of fun in corners, but the SVS feels lighter and is easier to turn in. I think a lot of that is due to the lower center of gravity, the 675 carries a lot of weight higher up and forward, but some of it might be from gyroscopic forces from the engine. I can't really tell which, but the effect is obvious. The 675's very tight handlebars also limit leverage quite a bit which may be exaggerating this effect. In tight confines the 675 is a handful, it has very little play lock-to-lock and it's a tight fit between bars and tank at full lock. It's difficult to U-turn the 675 on a narrow road, an issue made more serious by the top-heaviness of the bike and the perched-on-top riding position.

Once moving both bikes are liquid in motion going around corners. The SVS likes to be driven out on torque, and while the 675 can be ridden like that it prefers to be on the power. The SVS's throttle can be whacked open with wild abandon coming out of a corner with little to fear, but the 675 has considerably more power and it's not that hard to step out the rear.

Suspension

The SV650S's suspension is soft, under-damped, and highly susceptible to brake dive. The fork packs up in bumpy corners and you get push like crazy. On top of that the rear shock tends to pogo, getting the bike all out of sorts the first time you hit a significant bump leaned over. Originally I thought the frame was really flexy, but it turned out to be the rear suspension bobbing around. It's too bad Suzuki put so little money into the suspension because with minor suspension upgrades the SVS becomes a terror in the corners, it is no surprise to me that they're popular race bikes. The weak suspension is a glaring issue on what is otherwise a superb bike. Luckily the SV/SVS are amongst the most popular bikes on the planet and the aftermarket stepped up with many upgrades. I rebuilt my fork with RaceTech valves and the result was a massive improvement. Likewise a swap for a Penske shock calmed down the rear-end and made the bike rail corners.

The 675's suspension, in contrast, works nicely right out of the box although it's pretty firmly adjusted and kind of harsh on the street. There is a lot of adjustability, allowing for both compression and rebound damping adjustment as well as preload on both ends (compared to the SVS, which has only preload front and rear).

I found the compression damping on the front of the 675 to be a bit harsh and backed it off a turn; that made street riding considerably more pleasant. I may back it off even one more. Front preload seems right on the money for a 170lb rider although I haven't bothered to measure the sag yet.

Once I got the front to my liking the rear was definitely mismatched. It feels over-sprung to me, and while backing off preload two full turns improved it a lot I'm not sure I will be able to sort it out to my liking with the stock spring on there. RaceTech suggests a much softer spring than stock for my weight so I don't think my guesses are too far off the mark. Riding with my daughter on the pillion seat, which adds about 65lbs, really smooths out the rear.

Suspension tuning is still a work-in-progress but even straight out of the box it holds a line extremely well, you just get beat up over rough roads.

Engine

Both bikes have sweet, sweet engines, with lots of character.

The SVS's L-twin is very smooth and torquey, it loves to drive out of corners down low and it's very tractable around town. It thrives in tight twisties. Like a lot of twins, however, its power tends to fall off early -- by 9500rpm or so you're not going to get a lot more out of it. And it's kind of lazy under heavy throttle, taking its time to spin up. I have ridden a couple of Ducatis and they are much more willing to take off. The end result of this is that straight-line performance isn't great, and the top end of mine was around 120mph (more than enough for the road, but nowhere near supersport levels) in either fifth or sixth gear. I haven't ridden the fuel-injected version like your 2003; mine is caburated. I find the carburation to be poor down low, especially in cold weather. It's hard to smoothly control the throttle until you get into the midrange. From 4500 to 9500, though, it's a very nice package and above 6000 or so it sings.

The 675 ... if there's one place the Triumph completely outclasses the Japanese competition it's with that lovely triple. The sound just has to be heard to be believed. It's got a nice burble down low, and one of the best roars under hard acceleration I've ever heard. I know people replace the exhaust but you don't need to; the stocker lets the sound out just fine, while still taming it enough that your neighbors won't want to lynch you. I even love the bubbling noise under engine braking. When it comes to character this engine is second to none, and is a lot of why I fell in love with the bike.

I babied the engine for almost 1,000 miles, but the most amazing thing about this engine is the breadth of usable RPM. It pulls cleanly even below 3,000 RPM and remarkably it actually develops useful torque. During early break-in there was a lot of shifting keeping it between 3,000 and 5,000 RPM but it rode just fine; very much like the SVS and nothing at all like the small fours I've ridden, which tended to be gutless below 6,000 RPM.

The character of the engine is so similar to the SVS at lower RPMs that it has been difficult to adjust to the growing breadth of the RPM range as the engine broke in. Up to about 8,000 RPM it feels a lot like my old friend the SVS, but where my body is telling me that this bike is nearing the end of its power range, the engine is really just warming up. It will continue to add power relentlessly through 9,000, 10,000, 11,000, and 12,000. It's only beyond 12,000 RPM that it shows its first weaknesses as its strength starts to wane yet it continues to pull right through to the rev limiter around 14,000 RPM. At the upper reaches of the power spectrum, then, it feels a lot like a Japanese four.

It doesn't have the rocket fuel feel of the GSX-R 600, where power eases in during the midrange and builds in a crazy sing-song caucophony to an all-out orgy of a scream. Instead, the 675 just progresses with a smooth and quick competency of a high school principal, grabbing you by the arm, walking you down the hall, and shoving you out the door with inexorable force.

Now, I've ridden engines with some of those characteristics before. The small twins have useful torque while barely spinning, and the fours have crazy power when wound up. But this engine blends the two very nicely, providing a whopping 9,000 RPM useful rev range. You could pick a gear, say third, and basically ride it all day; it will pull in 3rd from almost a dead stop and run the bike up to triple digits. Tremendous flexibility, and done in a package barely wider than a twin.

But more than the power breadth is how it's delivered. The engine is smooth with just enough vibration to remind you it is there. The fuel injection is exceptionally well-sorted. It usually feels like a carburated bike in its smoothness, although if you jiggle the throttle going over bumps you'll get a little notchiness out of it. It is to date the smoothest fuel-injected system I have ever ridden.

This gives the 675 a kind of Jekyll and Hyde character. At the lower RPMs it's a quiet, confident sportbike. But wick it up and it becomes precocious, playful, and strong. It's an utterly astounding achievement that you have to try to believe.

One downside is that, aside from the beautiful throaty noises the 675 puts out, its valvetrain makes a bit of noise too, almost like a jet-engine whine. It's kind of cool and high-tech sounding, but I suppose it could be irritating to some people.

Transmission

One place, besides basic ergonomics, that the 675 is not as well sorted as the SVS is the transmission. Neutral is not as easy to find, the throw is pretty long, and the shift from one to two is pretty clunky. Two to six is smooth as silk, though, and going down from six to two feels as nice as anything I've ever ridden. Two to one is again a clunk; I'd guess that first's gears are cut differently than the rest of the gears, especially since they sound completely different.

The 675 has a light clutch pull, lighter than the SVS, although both of them are good. The 675 has a wider slip zone. In neutral the SVS is dead quiet, whereas the 675's clutch plate rattles around like a Ducati dry clutch (but not quite as noisy).

The other thing I don't like about the 675's transmission is that it's very tightly geared, and the gears are short. It's probably perfect for racing, but on the street it's a pain -- especially on the highway, where 80mph is around 7500rpm and you get a lot of buzzing through the bars. An hour of that leaves my fingers tingling, whereas I can ride the SVS for two or three hours before it becomes a problem. The engine has more than enough torque to support much wider-spaced gears and a full overdrive gear, but I guess that's not what you do on a supersport. I bet the Speed 675 or whatever they call it will be a wonderful street machine (and I kind of wonder if I'll be able to swap out the transmission).

Having said all that the 675's transmission is still one of the better I've used (Kawasaki and BMW could learn a lot from Triumph in this area), just not up to the standards Suzuki sets.

Heat

There's not a lot to say about the SVS when it comes to heat management. The open engine sheds heat well, and there are no hot spots. Not so with the 675. The fairing dumps heat out on your legs; nice on a cold day, not so nice if it's hot, and it's downright uncomfortable sitting in traffic on an 85F day. Even while moving I've had my right boot get so warm that I actually looked down to see if something was burning, possibly an effect of the catalytic converter.

But the thing you really notice is the exhaust coming up under the seat. It gets pretty warm, enough so that I've said I need to buy a meat thermometer for my right thigh to tell when I'm done. I'm planning to put heat tape around the pipe under the seat, and am trying to figure out how I could duct more air under the seat. If you are moving it's not too bad, but stop for a red light and it is more than a little annoying.

I don't want to make too much of it, because I've been on bikes that are worse at one or another of these heat management issues, but the 675 has such a collection of issues that you can't help but notice even in mid-60s weather and I dread summer traffic snarls. The SVS is much, much better.

Cargo

The SVS, being essentially identical to the SV, has a wide variety of luggage options. I have a Givi wingrack that I can pack full of camping gear and take off for days. It was no problem to set the SVS up for commuting and sport-touring duty.

The 675, in contrast, has no hard-bag options at all. I couldn't even locate hard points on the back that you might be able to use with a universal rack; there are the passenger pegs and ... nothing else. If you can't drape it over the pillion seat you are out of luck.

I bought the Triumph bags at the same time as the bike. Despite being "designed for" the 675 by Triumph, they're pretty generic and you'll do some fiddling, and shaping of the included pad, to get them installed. They're fairly nice bags as soft bags go, with integrated rain covers, handles, and shoulder straps. They can expand to take extra cargo (although they start to look ridiculous when fully loaded).

The first time I took the bike on an overnight I got a nasty surprise from the luggage, however. Those integrated rain covers? Turns out that they do a terrific job of catching and holding the water in. When I pulled the bags off I got more than a pint out of the bottom of the rain covers of each one, and everything inside had had a good long soak. That was a nasty day, heavy rain for hours on end, but I expected better nonetheless. Wrap your stuff in plastic and punch a couple of holes in the bottoms of the rain covers or you'll be very disappointed. If you only had these bags to evaluate you'd think that the English never got any rain.

I also bought an RKA pillion bag for commuting duties. That was a bit of a hassle to get installed; the straps for the seat pad are perfectly spaced to interfere with the seat installation, although a bit of pushing and pulling got it on there. The pillion bag is too small for a laptop but large enough for extra gloves, shield, water, and raingear and a top pocket expands for more cargo. Velcro straps hold the bag onto the seat pad and it's easy to mount and remove in a few seconds. The shape of the bag is not very complementary to the look of the bike, but the cargo space it affords is worth it on any kind of a longer ride.

I also bought a Marsee magnetic tank bag (one of the ones with the hard plastic top) for the 675. I had an RKA strap-mount bag on the SVS, but it's hard to see how you'd put a strap on the 675 given its seat mounting hardware. The bag is small, 10L I think, but given its design it's not as spacious as that number implies. The thing I really like about it is that the rigid sides keep it from flopping around when you're ripping corners. You can even get it with built-in electrical connections; with an autocom and a V1 it's a very useful blue-flashing-light defense mechanism :-).

Battery

Gotta mention the battery on the 675. It's the smallest battery I've ever seen, with only 6 amp-hours -- I don't recall what the SVS has exactly, but it's something like 15. It won't take a whole lot to kill such a small battery, although the generator is more powerful than that of the SVS and I didn't have any trouble supporting a Gerbing electric vest and gloves riding around town.

A major annoyance was that the 675's battery died the second or third day. I rode in to work, did my job, came out and the key didn't do a thing. I theorized at the time that I must have put the key into "park" position (why they even have "park" is beyond me). I haven't done that in years, but it was possible. I jumped the bike (easy! The battery is right under the easily-removed seat, unlike the SVS where you need two allen keys and ten minutes to disassemble it enough to get to the battery) and while it was understandably unhappy about the situation it got me home.

A night on the charger led me to rethink my failure theory. I expect a battery to be weakened if fully discharged, but usually they can be recharged and be serviceable except in tough cold-weather conditions. This time, however, the battery wouldn't hold enough charge to light the electronics for more than a few seconds. I theorize that there was an internal fracture. Luckily the battery is not an unusual part and a local dealer had several in stock so I had a replacement in a few hours. The battery has a six-month warrantee, at least, and was mostly paid for under warrantee. They would have paid for it completely if I had had a Triumph dealer replace it, but given that I had disposed of the battery before I even reported it I am happy that they gave me anything at all. I believe this is Yuasa's fault, they have a history of catastrophic battery failures just like this one.

Anyway, even given a strong battery, I suspect that the 675 won't be happy about starting in cold weather given the limited capacity of the battery. The first couple of weeks of ownership the local temperatures hovered around 25-35 degrees, though, and I never had any trouble starting it. Perhaps with fuel-injection managing fuel flow and the smaller pistons of the triple versus the twin it just doesn't need as much juice.

Toolkit

Have to mention the toolkit too. The SVS's toolkit is pretty typical, with a couple of cheap wrenches, a spanner for rear preload adjustment, and a cheap screwdriver. I replaced a couple of the stock tools with better quality stuff, but generally speaking if you were stuck on the side of the road you had a chance of doing something about it.

The 675's "toolkit" is a 5mm allen key (fits pillion seat) and a cheap screwdriver that can switch between flat and phillips. Period. There's no chance of doing anything useful if something breaks. There's not even a spanner for rear preload adjustment. I bought an Ohlins spanner (a whopping $8, cheapest motorcycle tool I ever bought) and stuck it under the battery strap. I wrapped the handle with electrical tape to eliminate the possibility of accidentally shorting the battery contacts should it shift (it hasn't).

I expect that if I ever have a problem with the 675 on the road it's going to be my cellphone that gets me home.

Tires

I'm a little hesitant to talk about tires since they are so ephemeral, but most people live with them for at least a year or two so I'll mention them briefly.

The SVS came with Metzler MeZ4 tires. These worked well if it was warm and dry, but were very slippery if it was cool and wet (anything below about 55F) and were dangerously slippery if it was cold and wet (45F and below). Below 37F the grip turned off like a knife switch. I had a number of cold-tire incidents before I finally decided I'd had enough and replaced them with BT010s (and later BT014s) before the rear was even at the wear bars.

Newer models of the SVS came with Dunlop tires, which I hear are much better; they couldn't be a lot worse.

The Daytona came with Pirelli Dragon Supercorsa Pros. These tires are excellent when warm, and despite very limited siping I found they even worked well in the rain and acceptably in the cold (down to 25F at least). The combination of cold and rain gets scary at times, though, and I intend to replace the tires with BT014s as soon as they wear out. The BT014s aren't quite as sticky when warm, but they're a lot better all-around.

Warranty

Unfortunately I've had a few occasions on which to test the warranty; the aforementioned battery, seat and bar-end problems. So far Triumph has taken care of me very well; if I hadn't given the broken battery to a different dealer they would have covered it completely, and they replaced the seat and bar-end without issue.

Conclusions

The SVS and the 675 are very different bikes. The SVS is sporty, but not a full-on sportbike. The many aftermarket options make it easy to mold into a wide variety of roles, and easily fix its deficient suspension. If you want a do-everything bike, it's not a bad place to start.

The 675 is a race bike, pure and simple. The seating position is not very comfortable. The suspension is very firm. The seat is hard. The transmission is geared for rapid acceleration. There are very few options available for modifying the bike to do anything other than racing duty (or just looking pretty).

While it's not what I do, I think the 675 would be very at-home on the track. I'm not sure how the class break-down would place it, and it's definitely going to be more expensive to race than an SVS (or even to outfit given the small aftermarket). But it is a blast to ride hard and the combination of rich torque and lots of power is unique amongst bikes in its class.

The suspension is a bit firm for the road, in my opinion, but it sure does like to corner and the engine is unbelievable, both in terms of aesthetics and performance. While the ride position is a far cry from a sport-tourer there are worse bikes, and I have finished 5-hour straight rides without ridiculous amounts of pain. It helps that the seat is pretty good.

I bought the 675 entirely on emotion; it isn't very good at the things I regularly do with my bike although, with effort, it's passable. But it's gorgeous and sounds spectacular. I think I mentioned the engine once or twice, but let me mention it again: The engine is spectacular.

For a bike like this I can live with some discomfort, at least for awhile, to enjoy its character and performance, but I'll be keeping the SVS around as well.

Night-time shot of the Daytona 675