Evo 2 roadtest at Cadwell Park, June 14th 1999

I can see by the hole in your piston, that...

On May 15th Performance Bikes Magazine organized a big GSX-R shoot-out. About 300 GSX-R's were present at Santa Pod's dragstrip to prove how fast they can cover the quarter mile. Sandro's Evo 2 turned out second fastest, one second behind a purpose built turbo GSX. No wonder Sam caught the attention of PB feature writer Bob Gray, who later admitted to be a real fan of oil-cooled GSX-R's. He asked Sam if they could do a special feature on his Evo 2 and his son Tony's GSX-R400 which looks like a mini Evo 2 and is equally trick. Tony entertained the people in the paddock with his antics on his Lucky-Strike Suzuki minimoto.

So they were invited to Cadwell Park on Monday 14th May.
Sam tells us " It started out with at 3am leaving here, went to Zak's place (creator of Evo 1) then the 4 hour trip to Cadwell. 3 Hours of photoshoot in leathers in 80 degree heat taking pics from every angle with bodywork on and off, then the fun started.
Bob Gray took mine out first and Trevor Franklin (Top Guy) took Tony's for some knee down shots for the first page of the feature then Trevor came around towards the pits... where the fucks Bob??
Black flag goes out, every one in, the recovery van goes and picks up my bike. The electrics had stopped working.
Half an hour later, after butchering my remote ignition we traced it to a loose terminal on the horn and when braking hard it was shorting out on the front oil cooler. Back out again this time they swapped over and Lard arse Franklin rode mine... Fuck he slaughtered my back tyre!
Then it broke down again... WHAT THE FUCK is happening now!
Van out again, I feel like a right prat now loads of people about and they all must have thought I was a celebrity as there was 4 PB staff and a freelance photo guy milling around all day.

Anyway the bike comes back in again and Lardy says it backfired and died (I was the one that nearly fucking died when I found what it was... are you ready for this???)... on the top of the carb as are 4 rubber nipples that you use to balance the carbs. The one on carb number 1 decided it wasn't going to play anymore and fell off landing on top of the starter motor, resulting in one very weak mixture and one very HOLED PISTON... FUCK FUCK FUCK!!! :-(

Funny thing is I was more pissed that I never got a go on the track (I was next).
The engine I am not too worried about as now I can bring forward what I was going to do this winter... MORE HORSEPOWER! :-)
I want to get the crank lightened and balanced and have a big valve head and stage 2 cams so I am not that bothered about the see-trough piston."

Look out for a 4 page spread on the bikes on July 3rd!!!

The feature has more to do with the "Father and Son" relationship, with dad having the trick monster and junior having a mini replica, they freaked out over it!
Sam asked Bob why they were bothering to use up 4 pages of there mag on a couple of 8 year old Gixxers and it turns out he loves the oil-cooled GSX-R's to bits and has had several bollockings from upstairs about repeated features. What a hero! ;-)

Sam: "Bob and Trevor are 2 of the nicest people you could meet, they have been ringing me constantly since Friday asking all sorts of background info, but you never know what will end up in the feature as they seem to have a warped sense of humor in some of the issues. Trevor kept saying that we (Tony and me) got on so well that it was as if we were best mates not father and son."

Follow this link to view the pictures taken by Performance Bikes Magazine on that day. >>