A (TURBO) SPONDON STORY

If powerful custom bikes are your thing, they don’t come much more powerful or more custom then Rob Bean’s Turbo Spondon.

It all started when I was a spotty teenager. I was taken in by the whole performance-custom bike scene, and would spend hours flicking through

Streetfighters magaz ine (it had nothing to do with the boobs in it, honest). I was completely blown away by the big tube aluminium frames with heavily tuned G SX -R Engines, then I saw the big lairy turbo bikes and my mind was made up – I had to have one, one day at least.

When I left school, I joined the RAF as an aircraft engineer and learnt how to build and maintain things properly, so over the next ten years or so I owned, built, modified and repaired all manner of motorcycles. Although I say ‘all manner of motorcycles’, it was almost always late-8 0s and early 90s sports bikes and, in particular, oil-cooled Suz ukis. I had a go at racing, starting on an SV6 5 0 and then, after a season or two, I raced a K awasaki Z X R7 50 H 1 then a 198 9 Suz uki G SX -R7 50 in a class based on a power to weight ratio with a maximum bhp limit (as well as cut off years for different capacity bikes).

It was about this time I received a bonus for my time in service and the day I got the cheque I came across a very unloved (and dated) Spondon G SX -R online for reasonable money; it’s almost as though it was meant to be. I thought it must be fate giving me a hint, so I snapped it up quick-smart. It was all there, complete with the D ucati 916 seat unit, leather embroidered knuckle duster, wide bars and lots and lots of purple anodising. All the important bits were in really good condition; I was chuffed to bits.

My plan was never just to polish and look at it – I wanted one to ride properly so I decided to turn it into a race bike. Q uite conveniently, BEMSEE had just announced a new Thunderbike Extreme class for the following year which allowed a higher power limit than the class I had raced in previously. I spent the winter stripping everything down, selling off the dated