THE FIRST MODIFICATIONS TO THE NEW KATANA!

AS YOU'LL KNOW FROM LAST ISSUE, OR YOU'VE SEEN THE VIDEO ON THE BSHYOUTUBE CHANNEL OR FACEBOOK PAGE, WE HAVE ONE OF SUZUKI'S NEW KATANA 1000s TO PLAY WITH FOR A WHILE, AND WE'RE GOING TO BE DOING A BIT TO IT.

The first thing to do, as I mentioned last issue, is to lose the huge and slightly odd ... err, thing off the back of it. It's a singlesided wrap-around bracket that holds the reg' plate and its light, and the rear indicators, and it's not pretty - not pretty at all! It's there because, under European regulations, a certain percentage (can't remember what it is, and can't be arsed to look it up) of the rear wheel must be covered by some form of mudguard and, in order to have a minimalist stumpy tail-piece, the way round it is to split the rear 'guard into two parts and have a lower, smaller, wrapround bit down near the axle. Ithink (don't quote me on it) the first bikes to sport this arrangement were mid-Nineties

BMWs, but it's hard to be sure as the first thing anyone who bought one did was to rip the offending eyesore off and chuck it away 'cos it's 'orrible!

Now, in an ideal world what you'd replace it with is some form of minimalist side-mount, with a thin vertical 'plate so you don't ground it out leaning round bends, but, of course, no one makes these as aftermarket kits. Sports bike folk don't really go in for side-mounts, as I'm sure you know, it's us custom lot who do, but a minimalist sports bike, or streetfighter, back end always looks good without a massive 'plate, and the enlightened guys who run tiny side-mounts show that. But anyway...

The next best thing is a tail-tidy - a series of brackets that relocate the rear indicators, and the 'plate, up under the rear light where, strictly speaking, they should be. For the Katana there're a few available, but the most common

in this country is made by Rizoma, and distributed through Performance Parts Limited in Daventry in Northamptonshire (contact details below). As I'm sure you know, Rizoma is an Italian manufacturer of alloy and billet goodies for a massive range of bikes right across the spectrum, and they have a reputation for quality second-to-none. Their tail-tidy's a very well-thought-through kit with all the brackets and fittings you'll need (but it's wise to have a few small tie-wraps too, just to tidy things up), and while it's quite fiddly to fit, it's nowhere near as complicated as, say, making up flat-pack furniture for example. It takes somewhere around two hours (probably closer to three if you drink as much tea as we do), and this is how it's done.

Ifirst looked on YouTube to see if there was a video of anyone doing it, but all I could find was one by an Aussie crew named Mustard Bikes which, while being slightly different, does show you how to remove the original Suzuki parts swiftly and easily - it's worth watching all the way through, but be warned, the two kits're slightly different, so you'll have to suss out how to assemble the Rizoma goodies yersel', okay?

I enlisted the help of the long-suffering Ian at Hyper

Trikes in Lakenheath, sports trike builder extraordinaire and general all-round dead handy bloke with spanners, 'cos it's quite difficult to do the work yourself and photograph it at the same time (and, yes, cos I'm rubbish at stuff like this),

He started by, as per the Mustard Bikes video, popping the little screws on the original bracket (pie 4) to allow you to unbolt the plastic cover that goes over it to keep the relevant 'lectrics clean and tidy. These are then unplugged to separate the unit from the bike, and the wiring that runs down to it fed through the seat to be able to be used in a moment (pie 8). The unit itself is then unbolted, leaving the back end looking a lot, lot better (pie 7).

Next you have to unstrap the battery, and swing it out of the way (it doesn't need to be disconnected, the leads are long enough), and the battery holder itself unbolted (as per the video) to allow access to the little panel below it that pops out neatly to allow the fitting of the tail-tidy - so neatly, in fact, that it almost looks as though it's been designed to... Now remove the stock rear indicators (assuming you haven't bought tiny sexy Rizoma ones) from the original unit, and attach them to the Rizoma (again, look at the vid' if you need to, but it's fairly straightforward to work out what you need to do). The feeding through of the relevant wires differs on the Rizoma kit to the one on the vid' but, again, I'm sure you'll work it out when you see it.

Then it's a case of assembling the two parts of the bracket itself (there are actually three in the kit, as per pie 11, but one's for if you're running a European-sized 'plate and

doesn't really concern us here). It's a bit of a faff, both in assembling and explaining, but as with most of the kit, it's kind o' obvious when you look at it so Iwon't bother trying to detail all the ins and outs 'cos you're not stupid, and you'll see for yourself. You'll probably need an extra set of hands though so enlist a mate or a passer-by, or be fortunate enough to've been born near Windscale/Sellafield. One thing Iwill say is that probably the fiddliest bit is feeding the indicator wires through the bracket up into the relevant 'oles, and you'll probably need to trim the ribbed outer sheathing on them to get them to go through properly.

We (okay, Ian) then connected the wires, and while the indicators immediately worked as they should, the numberplate light didn't. We checked the destructions that came with the kit again and, yes, we'd connected the wires the way they said (yellow on the bike to black on the unit, and green on the bike to red on the unit... odd choice of colours, in my eyes - why didn't they just make the colours on the unit the same as the ones on the bike?), but it still didn't work. On a whim, he then swapped them round (yellow to red, green to black) and, hey presto, the light worked perfectly. Hmm, slight mistake in the Italian-toEnglish translation there?

Then it was just fit the battery box back, drop the battery in, and put the seat back on - job done! The result is a much cleaner-looking back end that totally transforms the look of the bike, and takes it that little step closer to being a worthy successor to the original Kat'. There're a couple more little jobs to do that'll help change the modern bike to looking more like its iconic namesake though, and we'll show you the next one next issue...