Some bikes just have the look of having been assembled with maximum care and experience
The sub loom for the bike’s four stick coils: always a strangely difficult thing to build
Orange light for neutral, red light for oil pressure, toggle switch to turn the whole thing on
Rain light switch, plus horn button. Race bike builders often prefer to keep the switchgear very simple
The ubiquitous Domino start/run switch: works well, and its kill button works on CDI or battery ignition
Bob’s Suzuki GSX-R1100 special
If you have a look at the details you can tell this bike has been built by someone who seriously knows racing. Which it has: owner Bob builds race bikes for (among others) Carl Cox’s classic race team. Carl’s XR69 has already been through the RR workshop (see it here). As for this bike, Bob’s mate Michael Neeves, chief tester at MCN, has made a little YouTube vid about it here.
So it’s a bit special. The headstock is braced, but it’s very subtle. Those little triangles behind the headstock are machined to match Suzuki’s original frame look. There’s more bracing inside the frame too. Yokes are also machined to look standard, but they aren’t. The swing arm rear wheel carriers are custom, as is the bracing. And the sub frame is unboltable. There is loads more: brakes, suspension, wheels, bracketry.
Bob bought the bike as a GSX-R750 racer. The existing wiring loom worked fine, but it was a pure race thing which wouldn’t be ideal on the road. He intends to ride the bike (now fitted with a Bandit 1200 motor) on the road on sunny days, as well as on track. So it needed a fuse or two, a tail and brake light, and a horn.
Bob had fitted stick coils, and was going to change the ignition for a Dyna 2000. The existing ignition box had no branding or marks, so he assumed it was a cheap and cheerful jobbie. But as he described it to me over the phone I thought it had to be a fully programmable Ignitech, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So he’s keeping it.
I managed to persuade him to ditch the lithium battery, which he agreed with after hearing my well-worn lithium horror stories (sorry Bob). I volunteered to find a replacement to fit the existing battery box. A Motobatt 14S from Tayna dropped straight in, but is a shade wider so its terminals come very close to touching the frame. Bob will modify the box to move the whole thing back a few mm, and add a brace to cope with the Motobatt’s extra weight.
It’s a bit daunting working on high end bikes like this. They are so beautifully done you always wonder if your work is good enough. I just tried to make the loom as neat and simple as possible, which is of course what I do on every bike. As ever, the planning stage is the important bit. How should the sleeved wires run to be as invisible as possible? Where are the best places to put the branches and connectors?
As I can’t think in four dimensions, I ended up making a sub loom for the entire dash area, and another for the ignition coils. That way the middle bit was easier to visualise. I was pretty pleased with the finished result. More importantly, so was Bob.
1985 chassis technology, with most of the weaknesses ironed out so beautifully. Bob built the bike to look at as well as ride
Here’s the Koso dash going through its waking-up procedure
Solenoid sits under the seat, with the Ignitech ignition behind it. You can just see the main fuse on the right
Braced and re-fabricated stock swing arm, reworked Thunder Ace forks, custom yokes, custom frame bracing, custom sub frame… oh, and a Bandit 1200 engine
