SUZUKI SV650 CABALLO DE HIERRO

It is now 2/3 years that we offer you specials that are inspired by the world of endurance racing, saying that it will be the new trend.
Well Bandisca Motorcycles with this Suzuki SV confirms what is our thought, given that the world of endurance races represent a great reservoir of inspiration to create beautiful bikes that also aim to have high-performance vehicles

The concept of this bike was born one year ago, thinking about building something out of the ordinary for The Bike Shed Show 2019.

We received some support from Suzuki Moto Greece for going on a Suzuki donor so thinking about that we decide to use one of their best sellers, the Suzuki SV650 K1, this bike was one of the best seller of Suzuki between 1999-2002, a very reliable bike with a good riding capabilities but… sooooo ugly.

The V2 powerplant has been one of the most used also over other brands, and is very well known being bulletproof, not especially because its construction but because it is so underpowered, I mean, you can obtain a lot of extra power from it if tuning up some things as carbs, camshafts, exhaust… and eliminating its emission restrictions.

I must recognize I was very skeptic with the idea but Mihaela said “let’s go on” and when the boss says that it is Word….

So we found a 2001 S version in a good condition and we bought it… the bike was almost two months on the stand until we started to understand what to do with that freaky thing… Mihaela produced the first draft (so close with the final result) and after some fights she convince me to built it when she said me “the 1990 GSXR750 was your favorite bike some years ago so lets built an endurance version of the SV inspired on the 1990 GSXR!”, at that moment I started to contact the guys from Airtech Streamlining being the only producer that nowadays is making a perfect replica of the 1990s GSXR fairing, and they made one for us (cool people by the way), but was not enough… we needed to made a lot of complicate mods on it for fitting the SV frame and the Mihaela’s designed shape so I built some aluminum adds that after mounted we needed to mask with epoxy resin for don’t feeling the difference with the fiberglass main… but our painter Akis Artek did it perfect!

The aluminum tail and the subframe has been handcrafted in house, once we got all that we start to mess with the tank, no Suzuki matching somehow the SV frame was giving us the shape we wanted, so I decide to betray Suzuki and use a Honda tank, the NTV one was matching what Mihaela designed so we start to seek for one, fortunately our dear friend Leo from Caferacercult.gr found one in Athens and sent it to us….

So problem solved, we jus needed to put all that together, simply…. Or not…. Hahaha!! The process of matching everything was long and required a lot of creativity fabricating small fitting parts.

I was very obsessed along the building process about making not only a good looking bike but also a very performance one so I worked hundred of hours on the engine…complete overhaul, special camshafts, carb tunning, performance clutch with hydraulic actuator, special water pump, Woodcraft caps, custom handmade exhaust manifolds with a Spark GP Muffler… basically all you can modify in this engine I modified.

Also rideability in hard conditions was a target so we went on a Showa full settable Upside Down fork on the front end and a bespoke YSS Suspension rear shock that the guys from YSS Europe built specially for this bike.

On electrics we trusted Motogadget and an M-unit is commanding all, that simplified my life a lot.

The result is this freaky beast, very powerful and light, and with an unique shape, actually people identify very hard the donor model.

Now is time to race it… because it was built for that… next stop will be the Café Racer Sprint at Glemseck 101 in Stuttgart…

Alf.

Grumpy owner of 

BANDISCA MOTORCYCLES

Bucharest-RO