BIKE OF THE YEAR
Long-time biker, Matt Cain had a dream of building a special Suzuki GSX-R750L Evo… but it started off as a bit of a nightmare…
Another reader and another special restoration/special for the Bridgestone competition!
When I think back to it now, I realise that the purchase of this 1990 GSX-R750 L should have been published under the headline: ‘What not to do when buying or selling a bike…’ You see, I spotted the advert in Facebook and it was listed as a non-runner that had been stored for the last 10 years, and as it was only £1500 I thought I would go and have a look, after all, what harm could that do? I called the seller and arranged to meet him that night – that’s normally a big no-no, right? Add into the mix that it was a winter night and it was cold, dark and raining. He gave me a postcode to meet him at and I was to call him once I was there. It was starting to sound a little bit cloak and dagger for my liking and I was only buying an old air/ oil-cooled GSX-R!
The postcode took me to a back alleyway to a Victorian terrace in a (how should I put this) ‘less desirable’ area of Northampton, where shady people in hoodies quickly passed packages between each other and melted into the darkness. Needless to say, sitting there with £1500 in my pocket, I didn’t feel best at ease…
But, in for a penny, in for 1500 pounds eh? So I called the fella and 10 minutes later he appeared from down the road and jumped into my car. We drove down an old cobbled back alley to a garage where another bloke opened a garage door. By this time the heart rate was up to well above the normal… I was hoping I wasn’t going to get clobbered…
Eventually, the reasoning behind this secrecy came out: the story went that this bloke had split from his wife and this was her garage now and he had to get rid of the contents therein ASAP, to recoup whatever he could from the doomed relationship. Snag one was that his soon-to-be-oralready ex-wife also had the log-book to the sorry-looking black and silver L-model GSX-R, complete with Micron end-can.
In the back of my head I could hear someone shouting ‘WALK AWAY YOU FOOL!’ But a few things stopped me from doing so. Firstly, I could tell it wasn’t stolen and this lad – while down on his luck a little – was clearly quite genuine. I also realised there was a comprehensive spares package to come with the bike, too. So if I could get it for a very good price I would take a chance. Because of the way he was selling it and the lack of V5 I was able to buy it for well under half what he was asking for it, which was a result.
When I got the bike home, everything checked out: this was a perfectly legitimate GSX-R. Not only that but in the cold light of day I could see that actually it was a super-clean example and looked like it had never seen the rain in its whole life: not a bit of corrosion or road muck and was completely standard with the exception of what I could now see was a full Micron exhaust system. But there was a dilemma: should I restore this bike back to factory spec in the black and silver colour scheme, or make a bike that I wanted? The latter thought won through and the Evo project commenced!
The bike was stripped completely and thoroughly cleaned and checked. I had brought a complete front and rear-end from a GSX-R1000 K4 which I decided to fit to the L which is a fairly easy procedure. The front was just a new tapered bearing to the headstock to fit the new size steering tube, and making a new bracket to take the lock stops. A new clock bracket was made and the steering lock was machined to fit the slot in the frame. The old forks were sold on and covered the cost of the new set easily: result! The rear-end again was very simple and just a case of removing the old swingarm and linkage. I kept the old pivot spindle and made some top hat spacers to make up the difference in the width and size of the spindle. I then mocked up the ride height so I could make some new linkage dog bones to fit the new swingarm. As I used the wider K4 wheels and brakes etc. the only alterations were to fit an offset front sprocket and a 520 chain to give the correct alignment and clearance for the chain to the frame. A softer rear spring was needed
as the fulcrum position of the linkage had changed with the new swinging arm, leaving the original spring far too hard. I didn’t fit the later shock because it has a fixed reservoir which fouled on the existing frame, so the original remote reservoir unit was modified.
The body work was ‘well used’ at the very least and I never did like the black and silver colour scheme anyways – in my eyes all Suzukis should be white and blue (my old RGV250M was one of the best looking bikes of all time in blue and white). So I gave the bodywork to our local bike painter, Gary, with a photo of what I wanted it to look like and it came back spot on. The colours he used were later Suzuki colours but it looks just right. I had purchased a decal set off of ebay, and hadn’t realised until I pressed ‘Buy it Now’ button that they came from Mexico. They took about four bloomin’ months to arrive which slowed progress a bit, but this gave me the time and inclination to carry out the modifications. The tail tidy, Yoshi air-box covers and seat hump came from Fibreman modifications over in Ireland. The seat humps especially are hard to find, I guess everyone loses theirs or they get lost in the garage!
To give it the look and feel of a RR model I fitted a set of Mikuni flat-slide carburettors with 50mm velocity stacks and foam filters, these were cupped by those Yoshi air-box covers and a carbon heat shield to create the non-pressurised air-box that were used on the period race bikes. This with the 4-2-1 Micron exhaust system and good set-up means it performs well, although this will be changed for a Yoshi system when I find one – after all, you have to go for Yoshimura with a Suzuki, right?
The whole idea of the bike was to make an evolution of the GSX-R that was subtle and only those that know their bikes would notice the differences, like the colours, the wheels and forks, the wider braced swingarm, the radial brakes, the nitride forks etc. etc. when you stand back and look at it the stance is more aggressive than stock and the under tray with removing all the brackets that weren’t required, has given it a cleaner appearance and a simple fabricated number plate bracket help to keep the lines and make the bike look lighter and faster
Like all these projects they will evolve over time. The next stage will be to get the suspension set up, fit some Brembo discs to the front brakes. A quality steering damper is required to tame it now the geometry has been changed with the new suspension.
And long-term it may well receive a new heart in the form of a turbo Bandit 1200 motor, but we will see… I just hope you all like how it looks.