Streetfighters 2016 Special Preview

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editor:

NIK SAMSON

nik@backstreetheroes.com 07884 052003 editorial assistant:

LAUREN RADWELL

lauren@backstreetheroes.com 07825 597793 production editor:

PAULINE HAWKINS publisher:

JULIE BROWN design:

GARETH WILLIAMS advertising sales manager:

BILLY MANNING

billy@backstreetheroes.com 07775 753966 subscription manager:

PAUL DEACON

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circulation manager:

STEVE O’HARA marketing manager:

CHARLOTTE PARK publishing director:

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DAN SAVAGE

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commercial director:

NIGEL HOLE

freelance contributors:

SIMON EVERETT, MDM, DOUG WARREN, ICON 1000, PAUL MORRIS, YAMAHA UK editorial address:

STREETFIGHTERS, MORTONS MEDIA, MORTON WAY, HORNCASTLE, LN9 6JR subscriptions:

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Distribution Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue London, EC1A 9PT, Tel: 020 7429 4000. Printed William Gibbons and Sons, Wolverhampton.

ISSN: 02679841. Streetfighters is copyright to Mortons Media Ltd 2016 and all rights are reserved.

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04| STREETFIGHTERS |

Andy Sparrow’d

0

540BHP TURBO ‘BUSA

– Gary Rothwell’s world record-holding wheelie bike

62

ENDURANCE RACER KAWASAKI – homemade and pared to the bone

68

PENDINE SANDS – we’ll

race them on the beaches… as Winston might’ve said if he’d’ve had a turbo Gixer

X

l

– onster by na by nature

SA

, monster

88VMAX BANDIT 92CX 96SUPERMOTO before!

– like no other ‘Max you’ve seen

– lean, mean and green

– yes, you did read that right, you’re not hallucinating!

102READERS’ BIKES 106SF WORLD – more of your machines

– lots of smoke, not that many mirrors…

BULLDOG DRAG RACING ROOF The categories for the drag racing at this year’s Bulldog Bash have been announced and are as follows; Fastest American, Fastest British, Fastest Classic, Fastest European, Fastest Japanese under 500cc, Fastest Japanese under 1000cc, Fastest Japanese Unlimited, Fastest Ladies, Fastest

Trike, Fastest Buell and Fastest Non Road-Legal.

Racing costs just £10 a day and almost anything two or three-wheeled can race as long as it passes the scrutineering safety check. More info on the whole event can be found at the Bulldog’s website at www.bulldogbash.co.uk

BOXER V8 BOND Ever since its launch back in 1995 (has it really been that long?), the Roof Boxer, the first-ever helmet with a 180-degree rotating chin, has been a best seller for the French brand due to its high standards of construction and finish, its ability to be worn as both an open and a full-face, and its funky looks.

It’s evolved over the years too,, and is now certified to dards as both a European standard full-face and an open-face,

ACKE KNOX ZEPHYR SUMMER JAC The Zephyr is the first armoured jacket from Knox that’s design ned specifically for summer riding, in both men’s and women’s stylles, which also looks stylish on and off the bike.

Combining the best features of a mesh jacket and an armo oured shirt, the Zephyr delivers full venting, reinforced with abrassionresistant fabrics and with the reassurance of class-leading g Knox CE protectors covering the shoulders, elbows and back. Th he men’s version features two-position popper adjustment at the waist w and cuffs for a snug and secure fit, and the ladies has zipped d cuffs and a stylish real leather waist belt, for a more feminine e style and fit, and both have outside pockets; high quality YKK K zips, and a soft, ribbed collar for comfort.

The men’s version comes in sizes S-3XL (38-50”), a and the ladies in XS-3XL (8-20), and both retail at £199.99 fro om Knox on 01900 825825 or www.planet-knox.com

SANTA POD IS 50!

5 Santa Pod Raceway, the home of British drag racing, is celebrating its 50th birthday, and they’re doing it at their big anniversary events; 15-17th July, Dragstalgia (drag racing from a bygone era); and 8-11th September, the European 06| STREETFIGHTERS |

Fi Finals (the lastt round of the FIA/ A/ FIM European Drag Racing Championship).

Their new 50th Anniversary logo will adorn a full range of special anniversary merchandise on sale

throughou ghout the year.

They have more ore planned for the year too so keep an eye on their website at www. santapod.co.uk

FORTY YEARS ON, THE NEW JACK IS ICON 1000’S REIMAGINATION OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN...

014| STREETFIGHTERS |

AC RACE ROCK & RIDE Words: NIK | Photos: Nik & FD

AS

with all the events at Pod, as it’s colloquially known, the list of attractions that’d been laid on was extensive; Run Wot Y’ Brung drag racing, rounds of both the ACU and Straightliners

in the land including Lee Bowers and Ash and Vandal from Two Brothers Racing Stunting among others, a monster truck show and monster truck rides, displays of custom bikes and classic championships, demonstration passes by a variety of Top Fuel, Funny and Competition Cars, the Fireforce jet car, a wheelie competition, trials stunt shows by Steve Colley, a stunt competition featuring some of the best riders

racing bikes, a funfair, a bungee cannon, live music, trade stands, food and beer.

Unfortunately what they couldn’t arrange was the weather and for the Saturday of the weekend-long bash, the sky was darker than a Tory politician’s soul. It didn’t really rain much, just early in the morning, but it looked like it was going to most of the day and then, in the evening, ‘kin ‘ell did it come down. As we sat under the canopy outside the bar in which the AC/DC tribute band Livewire were playing, the rain was coming down so hard everything

SUNDAY WAS GLORIOUS; BRIGHT, SUNNY, AND WARM, AND VERY SOON THE PLACE STARTED TO FILL UP ... | STREETFIGHTERS |031

JUST LIKE ONE OF ANDY’S

ANDY K’S SUZUKI BANDIT

the same way as the hairy-arses over the fence at Back Street Heroes* cite the unspeakably lacklustre big-screen flick Easy Rider and the golden oldie biker cartoon Ogri as two of their main influences, us lot over ‘ere in Streetfightersworld have our own cinematic and graphic icons too – it’s just that ours are (the original) Mad Max and Andy Sparrow’s Bloodrunners.

Mad Max was, for many of us, the first time we’d seen anyone smoking a rear tyre who wasn’t on a drag strip; the first time we’d seen anyone do a donut and definitely the first time we’d seen anyone do a donut, put a line through it and then wheelie away. It was also the first film we’d ever seen that managed to convey on celluloid what riding a big bike at high speed was really like. Yes, there’d been films with bikes going fast in them before, of course, but the way that George Miller and Byron Kennedy, the

director and producer respectively, shot the riding sequences using a cameraman actually perched on the pillion seat of the bike he was filming from as it blasted across the State of Victoria really gave a rider’s eye view of what the rush of ear’oling a big, loud Jap four at speeds that’d make men in blue serge very, very angry indeed is actually like.

Similarly, Andy Sparrow’s seminal 1983 cartoon Bloodrunners predicted the style and attitude of the streetfighters that we all know and love some ten years before

the magazine that bears their name really came into existence. In fact, given that ‘fighters didn’t really start to sport the kind of monstrously wide wheels that Andy drew his bikes with until the early 2000s, you could say he was twenty years ahead of his time.

Andy K has always had a soft spot for Mr Sparrow’s fat-wheeled street-terrorisers, but he hadn’t really intended to build a bike that would do his cartoons justice. No, he actually intended this bike to be, in his own words, “a mild

streetfighter build… like the normal Bandit ‘fighters out there.” His main aim was an all-black bike with a singlesided swingarm, a solo seat and slab yokes; nothing too fancy as he wanted to be able to load it with camping gear and do a shit-load of miles on with his club – he’s a member of the National Chopper Club, South Bucks. NCC bikes have to be able to rack up serious miles each and every Bank Holiday, you see, and so can’t be fancy fragile show-ponies; they have to be capable of cracking off a few hundred high-speed miles each way to club events anywhere in the UK and, once a year, abroad too. They also have to be suitably custom too – a favourite insult between club members is to call each others’ bikes ‘stocker’… | STREETFIGHTERS |047

* I s’pose I shouldn’t really talk about MDM’s missus like that, should I?

IN

endin Pendine

SANDS Words & photos: MDM

F

or such a vehicle, taking to the salty sands of Pendine in South Wales could be seen as being about as wise as running into a pub full of paratroopers and announcing in a loud voice that only fairies have wings…

Rob Bean and his Spondon are no strangers to the pages of Streetfighters, having been

that a bike has been built to be used, and used hard.

I’ll justify that statement by pointing out that he clocked up a top speed of 164.531mph on the Standing Start Mile on Pendine Sands, following that up with 178.55mph over the 1.5-mile course.

The Pendine Sands event was the third time that bikes have been run on the beach in recent years, after a ninetyyear-plus break since top speed record meetings were originally held there. For 2016, the event covered the final weekend of the inaugural UK Speed Week, the first two days being at Elvington airfield in Yorkshire. The events were encompassed under the same class regulations as Bonneville Speed Week, meaning that there were some rather unusual vehicles being thrashed down the beach, and many of them built to a spec that wouldn’t be able to compete in any other kind of race series. This is featured on the cover (and inside, naturally) of issue 221. In fact, we followed the progress of Beany racing the Spondon in the Bemsee Thunderbike road racing series. That was before it was turbocharged. It’s clear that Rob is very much of the mind

THE EVENTS WERE ENCOMPASSED UNDER THE SAME CLASS REGULATIONS AS BONNEVILLE SPEED WEEK | STREETFIGHTERS |069

OLD’S COOL

A fter breaking my previous bike, a Slingshot ‘fighter (and by that I mean broke it up for parts, not caused it to auto-dismantle at great speed over a section of the Queen’s Highway), I bought a 1200 Bandit to get around on for the summer while I thought about what I wanted.

I’ve always been into older Suzukis, the big air-cooled ones from the Seventies and Eighties, and streetfighters of course, so really I wanted something that would combine the best of both worlds. I saw that someone was selling a GSX 1100ET frame and bodywork and that would’ve been ideal, but I missed it by a whisker (dammit!). That set the ball rolling though; I started looking for another ET (or something similar) and, eventually, one came up on the OldSkoolSuzuki forum (www. oldskoolsuzuki.info) It was a little tatty and came with mismatched paintwork, but

that didn’t really matter as I was planning to put the engine from the Bandit into it and go from there. As it happened, a couple of months later I had the chance to buy the present bodywork that’d not long before been repainted in stock colours anyway so that saved me a job.

I’d asked my good mate Dave Dunlop at FastByMe Turbo Systems (www. fastbyme.co.uk), a man whose website has the best soundtrack ever, if he could make and weld in new engine mounts for me and, having spotted it in his workshop, also bought the extended Slabside

PAUL MORRIS‘ GSX/GSX-R/ BANDIT HYBRID

swingarm from him. Chatting over a coffee one day he said: “It’s not leaving here without a turbo on it, you know that, don’t you?” As I’m easily led we struck a deal and that’s what happened. Thanks, Dave.

Having ridden the boring Bandit all summer I promptly stripped it and sold off all the parts I didn’t want and, after talking to Dave about what I wanted the bike to look like, I started to collect the parts I needed. I managed to get a complete front end from a 2001 R1 (wheel with aftermarket wavy discs, calipers, USD forks and yokes) to use at the sharp end and, with a hybrid steering stem made from Slingshot and Slabbie parts and risers welded on, that would fit on nicely. At the back I got a Bandit 1200 wheel and caliper, on a Kagizume wavy disc, and a GSX-R 1000 K1 torque arm, and TEC shocks to bolt to the mounts that’d been welded on to the extended drag ‘arm.

When my turn came at Dave’s the build started, and two weeks later I had a turbo bike. | STREETFIGHTERS |077

Scotland used to be famous for just one legendary monster, but now it has two. Simon Everett got photos of the beast near its lair, Nik Samson did his best not to wet himself‌ again.

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READERS’

BIKES BARRY MALE’S 2005 1050 SPEED TRIPLE; GERMAN DRAG ‘BARS, STREET TRIPLE HEADLIGHTS, REWORKED HEADERS WITH ONE-OFF SNAKE TONGUE EXHAUST, 200/50/15 REAR TYRE, AND LOTS MORE.

LEFT: WE FEATURED THIS BIKE IN THE MAG BACK IN 2010 WHERE IT WAS PREPARED FOR DAYTONA BIKE WEEK. PHIL HALL NOW HAS THE BIKE IN THE UK… SPAWNY GET!

TOP: GIORGIO SCIALINO’S BENELLI TNT IS A BIT TRICK, ISN’T IT? ABOVE: AS IS HIS BMW… RIGHT: …AND HIS BUELL! 10 2| STREETFIGHTERS |