Dezza

Had frame welded by blacksmith - great stuff I really like your paint scheme too Good luck for the 2018 season.

FZR600 engine in the FZR400 frame seems like a common build. The later 600 engines are pretty powerful and the 400 chassis has a reputation for great handling and build quality. They are absolutely tiny though, more Angel Nieto than Terry Rymer.

Looking at the bike, if a head cooler is necessary then something else on the bike is going to need to be modified to allow this to happen. Either using a different headlight set up to allow for a cooler up front or using a conventional exhaust so an underseat cooler can be used could be the way to go here, but the seat unit may have to be changed too as it looks fairly small. As an alternative, maybe 2 coolers mounted longditudally, one either side of the bike, would work. Like the radiators on a Gurls blouse SP2 or some of the aftermarket Yoshimura coolers for GSXRs that went under the fairing.

What were the standard sizes for the jets?

The stem, with the long threaded part and threaded bit for the top bearing, looks like a great idea to copy for other yokes because it can obviously be adjusted to enable the yokes to fit a variety of different headstock lengths

Unless your bike has undergone dramatic weight loss and or power increase, going up 3 teeth on the front will be too much without also going up a lot on the back. If the stock gearing is 15/42 then the gearbox sprocket has to turn 2.8 times to make the rear wheel turn once. The GSXR rear wheel will help as it is a lower profile tyre than a stock Kat rear but anything less than 2.5 and you may be overgeared. A 45 tooth rear sprocket would give you this ratio; to get the stock ratio of 2.8 you'll need a 50 tooth sprocket but using one this big may mean you run into chain fouling issues, e.g. on the rear shock. Personally, I would use a 16 or a 17 tooth front sprocket but as we all know, these aren't exactly cheap.

Looks good. Did you drill out the threads of the clutch adjuster boss on the crankcase to fit the hydraulic slave cylinder directly? Mine wouldn't screw in as there isn't enough space to turn the unit so I had to make up a bracket.

It looks like the nearer the end of the silencer can is to the rear wheel spindle, the better looking the system

Are the inlet rubbers in good condition? If old they harden and can crack and cause a leak, a problem made worse by using jubilee clips instead of the stock clips (which are impossible to overtighten). Yours looks like it still has the stock clips though

Maybe also a commercial exhaust manufacturer would take into account the 'note' of the pipes they make, which may, for road bikes at least, even be more important than any technical advantage. If a 421 configuaration made the bike sound naff, even if it was technically superior, the manufacturer may decide to go with the 'inferior' option if it made more commercial sense. This would be less likely for products sold for racing though. Just a thought.

Dunno where it is supposed to be on a stock bike but the unit on a slabside is exactly the same as the one used on Katanas and EFEs so your search image should be right.

I flogged a set of 1100 slabside clocks late last year that would have been perfect

Don't you mean chip shop? Put fairing back on in a matching paint job, replace clip ons, replace clocks, replace anodised bits with stainless - job done!

The mot history on the DVLA website for any vehicle until very recently used to tell of where the vehicle had its past mot's done, and this would give a likely locality of where the owner was based but it seems like this is now not available.

Looks cool but that tank probably cost about the same as my complete project bike!

It's a shame you are so far away up there in Scotchland or I'd be trying to presuade you to have a go at mine What the hell is that new fangled contraption that has the faceache webpage address on it? I thought that so called new 'Katana' would be the end of this sort of buffoonery.

Looks great!

Several KTM large capacity models use WP forks that can be had for about 60% of the cost of Ohlins. The ones I have are longer than the GSXR1100K RWU forks that came with the bike. You can get radial and non-radial depending on what model they were fitted to originally.

Seems like an obvious point to make - what size tyres do you want /is it possible to use? 4.5 and it's 160; 5.5 170 (if available now?) and 180; 6 180 and 190

See it as an opportunity to faff about more with our beloved neolithic Suzukis and to know there are fewer brain-damaged kids in the world

Doesn't the EF have different carbs to the ES? EF is 36mm whereas, I think, older GSXs have 34mm so base settings may be different. My bike has a stock EFE motor and carbs, with S and B filters and a pretty much baffle-free Harris replica pipe and it has 152.5 main jets and a ledar air corrector kit. The EF stock jets I think are something like 125. NB's ES still has the airbox so it may only require slight alteration to account for the exhaust. One other thing though, check the needle positions and compare with the stock settings.

If it's had the pipe on a while, and it seems like this is so by the look of it, clean and rebuild the carbs and then see how it runs The stock jet sizes are in the genuine workshop manual (online somewhere?) They may differ between bikes intended for different countries but not by very much. A good carb upgrade is apparently, and if I am wrong I am sure someone will correct me, the 38mmm carbs as fitted to certain GSXR750s. I have no idea what jets to use on these for an 1100 motor but if you buy 750 carbs you'll still have to change all the jets.

What route are you taking to get there? I ask as my missis is Finnish, and it would make a pretty epic bike trip. Not in February though as its absolutely freezing, and dark much of the time. Looking forward to the pics of the Finnish bikes

At least none of them have brown seats and exhaust bandages.

Removing the head and barrels and then replacing them correctly will eat up a sizable chunk of £400 due to the costs of the multitude of gaskets and seals required. This will not leave much for any specialist labour costs and parts for any increase in bhp needed to wobble more quickly to the next corner on stock suspension. I think.