It never goes to plan: II

Bike: GSX-R600 K1

Name: Adam (Chad) Child, MCN Road Tester

For those of you who didn’t get part one, its a simple idea turn a crashed bike into a race bike on a limited budget. How hard can it be?

With the frame straightened we needed to get it running. The motor fired up okay but spat coolant everywhere from the holed radiator from the original crash.

Back to Ken Urwin Motorcycles for some used parts (01405 740248). I found three-crashed GSXR600’s in his lock up but all three had damaged radiators.

However, one of the rad’s, although damaged didn’t leek, so that went in the shopping kart. It looks terrible but it works.

I also managed to prise some clocks wile I was there after some haggling and arm-twisting.

While the rad was off I removed the original exhaust and hunted down an aftermarket pipe. After loads of phoning around I managed to haggle a full Yoshimura system. Its nothing fancy, stainless steel, but it looks the part and it was cheap.

It used to be display pipe the one you see at shows like the NEC, so its second hand, kind of. Don’t care as long as it’s cheap.

The top fairing bracket is from SES racing (01362 850 847). The problem is the frame lugs have been welded back on out of place, so the whole front now looks twisted. I’ll have to bend it about to make the fairing fit but that’s a job for later.

With the bodged radiator on and the full Yoshimura in place at least it runs and sounds like a race bike. The full fairing turned up last week so hopefully it will soon be looking like a race bike.