I had an 82 Suzuki GS1100E I bought new and bent the crank at around 700 miles. I took it in for the 600 mile check and they said all was good. Rode it up to Big Bear and on the way back did a hard pull from a stop sign and boom, hard knock. They replaced it and it went another 50,000 miles before the cam chain had to be replaced. I enjoyed the bike but haven't bought another Suzuki until I found a Savage I couldn't pass up.

My Suzuki experience is mostly with 1970's era dirt bikes.  I owned 3 of them and rode them a lot......and they always ran well, shifted well.....handled OK.  Some of my racing success was due to the fact that the riders on european bikes would often miss a shift - while my bike seldom did.  I think back on how I would ride on rounded knobbies....as I could not afford a new $ 25 knobby tire every year!  Reliability was a strong point for Suzuki at that time.

My current Suzuki Savage experience is not steller.  I bought a bike with 262 miles on it and at 400 miles it started ticking, and at 1,262 miles the engine was apart to fix a left crank bearing and a loose flywheel nut.  I am not sure what caused it - but it is fixed and for now the bike runs great.

I wonder if the problems are that the manufacturing of parts may no longer be in Japan - but can be from China, India, etc.  I do believe tha the design and technology that we have in our bikes today is superior to what we had available in the 70's - but I am not yet convinced that the quality of the parts today is as good as it used to be.  This problem may not be limited to Suzuki, and may include any manufacturer that outsources their manufacturing.    

I know 2 guys that got 50,000 miles on the cam chain tensioner.  One of them ran Suzuki oil. I don't know why some go quicker than others.

Well !

I did put an angle grinder to my belt to add some chamfer to it and guess what ????  The belt squeel went away !!!!   before that I just added some Chain Wax or Shoe Wax either one .