that bike was svrider.com's march's bike of the month, heres the write up, check their article archives as well and to see more of that bike in all its configurations:
"Well the bike started out as a total lost wreck that the guy I purchased it from didn’t have any insurance on the bike. When I first got the bike it had to be carried into the shop because the front end was completely missing!
Once I got the bike in the shop I started to evaluate the situation, as I looked at the bike I figured that the bike could look the way I wanted it to for about 1500.00 dollars. Yeah ok that’s really how it all worked out! NOT the way it worked out. The more I started to look at the bike, I realized that the engine cases where cracked where the shift shaft came out of the motor, great the 1500.00 just went out the window! Time to get crazy with it!
Busa pistons, cams from a 03 intake, to exhaust, you know the procedure. I also remembered that I had a single sided swingarm that I had bought to put on the other sv I got, that was never more than a idea, so I sat down with the stock swingarm with the wheel installed on it, and started to figure out how much I had to take off of the width of the vfr swingarm to get it to fit into the frame of the sv and what had to be done to make sure the chain lined up. After getting the swingarm to fit into the frame, I then realized that there was not enough room to get the shock and the exhaust thru the swingarm together. I had seen other conversions where they had run the header pipe from the rear cylinder on the outside of the swingarm and just didn’t think it looked good.
I grabbed the phone and called my buddy "heehaw", that just by chance is a very good machinist, who I had met playing paintball a few months earlier, told him what I had in mind and he was more excited than I was to be working on the swingarm, because I knew what he was about to get involved in.
So it took more measuring to see how much metal was going to have to be removed from the VFR swingarm to get enough room to get the shock and the exhaust through the hole in the swingarm. Heehaw proceeded to cut where I showed him on the swingarm. After all the cutting I realized that there was a lot of metal that had been removed and I had to rebrace the inside of the swingarm. At this point I was second guessing the entire swingarm part of the project, but I continued to move forward.
I took some construction paper and made the braces to the shape that I needed them to be. The following day I went to the local metal supplier and got a flat sheet of 6061 aluminum and began tracing the paper made braces onto the metal. After cutting them out they had to be welded in place.
From here, another phone call was made to my buddy Barry Wilson who is the type of guy that can create a motorcycle out of a bucket of bolts and flat metal! He welded everything in place after about an hour of explaining to him why we had to do this! After the braces were in I had to figure out the diameter of the hole that heehaw had cut in the swingarm to be able to put the interior wall of the swingarm back in place! I determined that it was a 5 ¼ inch hole that had been cut. I then went down to the local metal shop again to get a 5 ¼ inch pipe of 6061 aluminum and proceeded to make my template of what I needed out of construction paper fitted it into the swingarm, then transferred it to the metal pipe, cut it out on the band saw while almost loosing a finger in the process. Barry then welded it in place for me.
OK last but not least is the boss where the shock dogbones needed to bolted onto the swingarm. MORE measuring and figuring! Heehaw was able to create exactly what I needed! He did tell me it wouldn’t be perfect. So I asked how far off would it be? Well at the most we are looking at about 200 thousands further back than it should be! I told him that was ok and away he went.
Ok swingarm is done.
So in the mean time I have installed the GSXR front end, Buell complete front headlight assembly, moose dirtbike bar clamps, moose tapered bars, and I had started to make the custom battery tray and undertail. Ok swingarm in place, frontend pretty much done now we’re down to the exhaust. Yosh header, that didn’t fit directly into the swingarm like I thought it would, DAMN!
Well now its time to start cutting on a brand new header! To make a long story short here it took about 6 hours to get just this small 4 inch section of pipe right to where it all fit together, after a lot of cutting and welding, the header slid into place just like factory!
Now its time to take the end part of the stock 600rr header and make it fit on to the yoshimura SV header. So out comes the cutting wheel and HACK, HACK the Honda header is cut and so is the Yosh header. Barry then welded it all together - now comes the part of getting the back half of the 600rr header to fit on the back of the bike. After more measuring and figuring there had to be about a 1 ½ cut out of the length of the midpipe to get it to fit. The factory mount for the midpipe was lined up with the stock subframe of the SV so I just drilled a hole in the subframe and then welded in a metal tube so I wouldn’t loose any strength, bolted it all up and it looked really good!
Now sitting there looking at the bike I realize that a carbon can would look better than the stainless one. So that gets put on the things to order list.
Next came the paint I wanted something dark but sparkly, after looking at the color chips at the local bodyshop I decided on the gunmetal gray of a 06 Chevy Silverado. While they got ready to spray I just happened to ask can we make the metallic more noticeable? Sure we can do what ever you want! They told me, from there I said lets make it look like a bass boat but not as course. The painter tripled the metallic of the paint and started spraying, man did it turn out good!
From this point we’re about a year into the project and its getting close. But the VFR rear wheel doesn’t match the front, but a Ducati wheel will, oh, heehaw, we gotta make this fit there! DONE! The finished product is what you see, with only a few more things left to do! (Everyone knows that a project is never done!) I’m sure there is a lot of stuff that I have left out, but I could go on about this bike forever, between all the smiles it has put on my face and all the aggravation it has caused me during the last year or so. But all in all it has been worth every dollar (which has gotten up to a number that I don’t want to say!) and every hour that has been spent!
I can’t go without saying thanks to my friends “Heehaw” and Barry Wilson, with out their help and their patience with me none of this would have ever got to this point so “THANKS A MILLION GUYS”. And for the people that say why didn’t he just go and buy a new bike? (Which I’ve been asked)……….. I DID!
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[img]http://forum.svrider.com/photoalbum/albums/userpics/19909/bike%20girl%20bannar.JPG[/img]
Theres just something about a blue bike....
Throttle on man, Throttle on....
It does look awesome, very unique.. too bad it would cost a fortune to build!
