This bike is built on a Suzuki RGV250 chassis, which originally had a 250cc two stroke V-twin motor, sold mostly in England and Australia. I bought the bike without the engine, and installed a modified (ported) Yamaha 350 two-stroke motor from a Banshee quad, probably about 60-65 horsepower. The engine was originally assembled by Rick Gervasi using mostly new parts including a fully welded crankshaft. However the jetting was not correct and eventually burned a piston. The engine was recently rebuilt by Jason Wallace, a very well known moto mechanic and rider in the Seattle area. He lowered the compression slightly to give better street rideability and it has been jetted to perfection.
The engine mounting was done by Sean O’Brien, who also built the custom pipes. Sean took a Toomey custom Banshee pipe , measured the diameter at 1 inch intervals and made a straight line drawing. We then went to our local motorcycle salvage yard and looked at a very large collection of new and used pipes. One set was huge, probably off some sort of snowmobile. By cutting out the large center section the remaining pipe was very close to the dimensions of the Toomey. With a few twists and turns to fit inside my fairing, these pipes were fitted with a pair of FMF mufflers. Several people commented that those were off-road mufflers and did not look right on a sport bike. Now, 10 years later I go to a bike show and half the custom road bikes are using these same mufflers.
The new stator and CDI are from Ricky Stator. The forks are from a late 90s GSXR 1000, and the front brake (single) is an aluminum/silicon carbide disc made by Tom Chamlee, about half the weight of a steel disc. The wheels are Marchesini magnesium. The tailpiece is a highly modified factory unit from a 1998 Yamaha R1, narrowed about 2 1/2 inches to fit this smaller bike. I built in the tubes for the round turn and brake lights, a custom fitted tail light and a flip top locking trunk, just big enough for my camera and few tools.
Building the LED lights was in interesting project, as I had never done it before. The lights are grouped with 4 LEDs plus a resistor, 36 total LEDs per light. The front turn signal lights are inserted through the fairing with no lens covering them – just thought it would be an interesting and unique look. After learning the skills here, I subsequently built all the LED lights for the Stiletto three wheeler project, shown elsewhere on this web site. These lights have been trouble free.
The rear fender is custom made with a layer of glass cloth for toughness and a layer of carbon for stiffness. I actually wrapped the rear wheel with foam and a layer of Saran wrap and laid up the glass and carbon over that. It has a lot of wrap as you can see – after all that work on the tailpiece I did not want it getting sandblasted every time I ride it.
Operational video and commentary by Jason Wallace here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rj0RoqFR2w