It might sound obvious, but when you commission a custom bike, it’s important to ask for exactly what you want. Most clients brief the builder on how they envisage the finished product. The more detailed the brief, the less surprises you’ll have when you pick up your shiny new machine. And, let’s be honest, when you‘re spending large amounts of moolah, you don’t want too many surprises. When new customer John briefed Purpose Built Moto on building him a bike using a Suzuki SV650, he didn’t mess around and supplied an eight page brief to make sure he got exactly what he wanted. It’s no surprise he loved how this retro racer turned out.
Even though John’s brief was thorough, it didn’t specify the exact style of bike he wanted. “While he didn’t have a completed picture, the list of items on his brief screamed retro racer to me,” Tom from PBM explains. “After a conversation and a few inputs from my end we got to work on creating a track worthy Suzuki SV650, but with all the necessities needed for the street.”
To start this retro racer project, a fairing that would suit the SV650 was the first order of business. “After a little back and forth the style was decided and a set of miss matched fairings were ordered for the SV650. I wanted a sharp, square 80’s vibe with this project and Airtech had a few perfect pieces. Now we needed to make them fit.”
When the body kit arrived in the PBM Gold Coast workshop, the rear subframe was removed and rebuilt from scratch. This allowed them to set the tail angle properly and fit the fibreglass tail in a way that would allow the under-tail exhaust. “The exhaust configuration is a tricky one on sporty V-twins or v4’s for that matter with a lot of bends needing to be squeezed into a small space.
Next on the list was creating the perfect 2-into-1-into-2 exhaust system – that turned out to be more complicated than it looks from the outside. The headers split off and exit out each side through a pair of Torpedo mufflers, and then pop out under the new tail. “We’ve head proofed the side fairings of the fibreglass tail so we don’t cop any paint face or heat damage when you’re holding this little ripper wide open for as long as you have the balls to.”
With a beautiful triangular shape at the rear to work with, PBM fabricated a clean recessed orbit tail light mount and used a set of their new Orbit lights for the rear indicators. They also made custom battery box and electrics tray that is hidden within the tail.
To help the tail and tank flow seamlessly together, some small bridging fairings were fabricated from sheet aluminium, which utilise the factory mounts. This small detail makes the aftermarket tail look more like a factory option.
Moving to the front of the SV650, the Airtech half fairing has had a custom shaded windscreen made. The headlight chosen was not a PBM unit this time, they ended up re-purposing an enduro headlight form a late model KTM that fits the styling of the rest of bike. A set of discreet hollow tip LED indicators are tucked under the wings at the front. The stock speedo was binned for a more modern Daytona DEVA digital unit.
One of the requests in the brief from the client was gold wheels. So they were stripped and sent off for paint. When the gold wheels came back, the SV650 was assembled and the paint designs started. “Early on I decided we would go with a red, yellow, black and white colour scheme,” says Tom. “I usually try to stick to 3 colours max, but for this one we’ve stretched a little to get the vibe right. Taking inspiration from a few of the old Barry Sheene Suzuki two-strokes, and some 80’s Era racers. I laid out the retro inspired design and then took the Bike out to be painted by Justin at PopBang Classics. We’ve included a few throwback decals, most notably the Faberge logo that’s been missing from motorcycles for far too long.”
While the rest of the bike was being painted, Tom and the team got to work on some performance upgrades. Because the low engine milage, they decided not to molester it too much. Opting for a MWR airbox upgrade, power commander and a tune at Dynomite Moto. After the upgrades the SV650 makes a decent 74 HP at the rear wheel and 44NM of torque – which translates to a lot of fun for a bike that weighs 175kg.
“While the SV650 looks decidedly race bred, we’ve worked hard to ensure a comfortable ride on the street. With higher clip ons and a reasonably plush seat trimmed out by Timeless Auto trim the SV delivers on any road you want to point it at.”
With a lot of the weight removed, the SV650 is a well powered and great handling light weight racer. And even though the brief was very tight from their client John, the bike ended up surpassing his expectations and he couldn’t be happier customer.
[ Purpose Built Moto | Photography by Ninefivers ]