Thanks mate, I bought it as a crashed wreck, the PO is a guy called Ken Piper who is an old race-bike builder and mechanical engineering lecturer, who crashed it at 60 MPH and destroyed pretty much everything except the frame, engine and triple trees.
He'd done a magnificent job machining the billet triples for the Yam forks, so I just found a straight set of tubes and re-used them. The bike had done several somersaults, destroying the forks, headlight, gauges, bars, seat, fenders, fuel tank, oil tank, handlebars, levers, switchblocks, footpegs etc. I found the speedo needle under the cam chain tensioner! Ken tore off both of his kneecaps in the process, and when I bought the wreck, he'd only been walking again for a few weeks after almost a year on crutches.
So my contribution really was just a cosmetic resto, the only bits I machined were the brackets for the front fender. I did do a GSXR front end conversion on a Suzy GS1000 a few years prior and that worked well, especially after I had some special screw in fork tube extensions machined to lengthen the forks by 3 inches.
Here's a couple of pics I took when I picked up the bike, that's Ken sitting on it with his newly repaired knees. Cheers, Terry.
