Bike of the Month March 2020

As February has come and gone, you may have noticed a apparent lack of BOTM that month. They made that month too short; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It didn’t help that the weather was utterly miserable and riding bikes in the summer sun was a long distant memory. Cue March and we’re inching ever closer to spring. Yesterday was the first decent day of 2020 here and I even managed to get the bike out.

I don’t ride on the road very often anymore (not here anyway) but if there’s one thing I get the most gratification out off, it’s showing up modern machinery with our older bikes. Having the powerrangers scratch their Rossi-rep lids in disbelief how they just got left for dead by a bike older than themselves, usually ridden buy a guy in jeans and trainers. But, enough about me…

The above is best done on a bike that is very understated and one that, in the eyes of the unknowing, just looks “old” My pink-neon wheeled EFE doesn’t fit this category but the 1100M Oilyspanner built that you see above is one of the best I’ve ever seen.

Even if you do know what you’re looking at, you’d have to look twice to see all that has been done to the seemingly stock-looking bike. Starting off fairly standard a few years back when it replaced a (much) later model GSXR, all was done to have the older bike get in the realms of modern sportsbikes.

Weight was shed anywhere and everywhere possible; roughly 40kgs (!) saved over stock and with a modern frontend swapped with the endlessly outdated (and questionably sprung) original Slingy USD’s, the rear was balanced out with a very trick raceshock from Nitron.

The buildthread of this bike reads as though a proper hands-on journalist is using it as a longtermer, with a wealth of information on chassis and especially carb-setup. Jetting all done on the basis of experience, “feel” and the use of a private road (officer), the bike has become what it should’ve been in 1991, had our friends in Hamamatsu had the technology of today.

Still very much a project but you can’t help but tip your hat to the work already gone into this bike to make it what it is now.

Congratulations Oilyspanner, your bike is this months Bike of the Month

I’d have left the purple wheels though…

Discuss here

Buidthread here

How-to fitting 3.5 GSXR front wheel into EF front end

Capitan Chaos site moderator, motorcycle mechanic and EFE addict shares some useful info on upgrading the front wheel on your EFE.

Here’s how:

– remove the bearings from the EFE front wheel, and take the tube which is in between them. Do the same with the GSX-R one.
– you will find out the EFE one is 16mm longer than the GSX-R one. It needs shortening 16mm.
– buy some bearings which fit in the GSX-R wheel and on the EFE spindle. I don’t remember exactly the sizes, but you need bearings with the ID of the EFE ones, and the OD and width of the GSX-R ones. They were off the shelf in the local bearings shop.
– the tubes in the bottoms of the EFE forks are now too short. Make some new ones which are 8mm (each) longer.
– the EFE speedo drive will fit after a little bit of material has been removed. Offer it up on the GSX-R wheel and you’ll see exactly where.

And now, with that nice 3-spoke wheel, it would be a shame not to upgrade the brakes as well.
The Slingshot Nissin 4-pots, and the later GSX-R models’ Tokico 4- and 6-pots all fit on the EFE forks, 90mm spacing between the bolts. But the Slingshot discs are too large.
Now Suzuki had thought about this and launched the GSX600F in the late eighties, this bike has brake discs that fit perfectly on the GSX-R wheel and are small enough to accept the more modern calipers when mounted in the EFE forks. All it needs is some small rings to space out the calipers a bit towards eachother.
Use the EFE caliper mounting bolts, they are longer than the GSX-R ones.

Captain Chaos

Discuss here