[MCTolmay]

Hi All

So I'm Mark. I'm from South Africa and have for years wanted a bike. So a friend from work convinced me to buy an old Suzuki and turn it into a street fighter.

At first I was not keen, I imagined the bike turning out to be an old slow, carb problem make shift bike. That was until I discovered this site....and wow did my eyes open.

One fighter that stood out and got me excited about the project was this http://www.customfighters.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49660

So I bought this old 85 gsxr750. It has been modified by a few people but no one actually finished it.

 

[MCTolmay]

The bike has 42000km (26000miles) on. For 29 years its not to bad. The bike was running fine when I bought it in April so I did not bother to take the engine apart, hope this will not bite me in the ass later. All the engine components are still stock and original except exhaust.

List of modifications and issues:

- Slingshot rims (good)
- Swing arm extension, solid machined steel bars (Bad & heavy)
- Extending the chain by welding an extra piece in (Very Bad!!)
- Sharpening the clutch and brake levers (Bad)
- Air box has been removed
- No air filters on the carbs (The bike has been moved from one garage to another for years, all the owners thought they would modify it until they saw the cost of parts)
- Sprockets (Very very Bad!!)
- Oil cooler (Bent badly)
- Exhaust (Intact but no exhaust brackets)
- Wheel bearings (Shot)
- Front lights (Modified and wiring harness Bad, but easy to fix)
- Rear caliper seized
- Petrol cap lock shot
- Right foot rest broken

I am writing this after resolving most of the issues already so I might skip one or two.

We decided to do the modifications to the handle bars, front lights and the tail before stripping the bike.

The original bars have been removed and replaced with riser bars. We disassembled the instrument cluster and made new brackets, the indicators,oil pressure, high beam indicator and neutral indicator will now be LEDs surrounding the tacho.

The electrical controls, brake master cylinder, clutch master cylinder and throttle has been replaced with newer parts.

 

[MCTolmay]

So the tail building.....as this is an 1985 F the tail is welded to the frame so we had to cut it and have it re-welded. We also lifted the angle of the tail frame a little.

My first idea was to take a block of polystyrene and sculpt the tail out of it, but the only thing that got us was a dirty garage, the problem is to hollow it out on the inside that it sits in the frame. So we gave up that idea.

The friend helping me build the bike had a huge amount of experience on bikes and modifying them. He suggested we use cardboard box to make the basic shape of the tail. I imagined again that this would be near impossible and would turn out horrible, but we gave it a go.

And this was the results.














The tail turned out Great!! This was the original tail design we did drop the tail a little because of the height for the passenger.

So after a bit of cutting and fiddling this is the final tail. On these photos you can see the reinforcement plate we put into the fibreglass with mounting studs on the plate.

 

[MCTolmay]

I found some more photos.

Here is the result of the tail frame cut off.



Here is the instrument bracket just made.



And here it is after assembly


Will upload some more progress later today.

 

[MCTolmay]

Next step was the front....I liked the idea of the two head lights vertically.
So I started searching for bike head lights, in SA it is quite hard to find custom headlights for
such a project. I found an aftermarket Hayabusa light which is nice, but then decided to go more custom. I found VW GTI spotlights so this is what we did with them.

I have to modify the brackets a little more as finding the center lines on these lights is a bit of a challenge.

I have not put power on them to see what beam they produce, hope it wont become a problem later on.

The side shields is made out of aluminium plate with fine grid inside.

 

[F'dup]

Looking really good!

I like where this is heading...

 

[MCTolmay]

So we had most of the customs parts made and fitted, the next step was stripping down to just bolts and nuts, cleaning, servicing and painting everything.

The picture below is one that I edited in Photoshop to get an idea of colours and if the frame should be black. I played around with different colours, but liked this the best.
When we paint the bike i want two red stripes running over the tank and down the tail as well they are just hard to add in Photoshop.



With the stripes I am aiming for a design something like this:


So we stripped the whole bike....if only I new how much work was to follow.
The wheels were painted yellow as well as the swing arm inside....bottles of auto paint stripper later they were clean.


The frame I took in for welding as well as some brackets and then power coating black.





The Wheels, alternator cover, oil breather cover and engine mountings were painted red after cleaning. I did not want a plain fire engine red so I found this VW volcano red.






The forks were sprayed black, but stupidly I did not get them serviced before painting so they went in for a service and now they have to be sprayed again....

 

[MCTolmay]

Hi All

Wow haven't been here in a while, mostly cause I could not upload more photos, so hopefully the attachments are here, I can also not figure out what the album does on my profile you can upload pictures to there but not use them anywhere.

In any case in the pictures attached I resprayed the engine without disassembling it didn't tun out to bad....you just have to be very careful with the paint stripper.

I also tested my Led's and gauge lights all working great.

Then some new rubber, pretty costly....my first bike so it was a bit of a shock but they do look great.