A King And Its Kin
A KING AND ITS KIN
Gregg's Customs Suzukis
BLAKE CONNER
YOU KNOW YOU’VE HIT THE BIG time-or at least made a significant impression-when a major motorcycle maker commissions you to customize wfiat its own designers spent years penning in the first place.
With custom sportbikes surging in popularity, Gregg DesJardins, owner of Gregg’s Customs ( www.greggscustoms.com), has secured a spot at the top of a short list of new designers taking customization a leap beyond chrome and bolt-on accessories.
We’ve featured two of his labors-of-love in Cycle World over the past couple of years (“Rootbeer Inferno,” March ’07 and “Hell Awaits,” June ’08). Both of those bikes had custom frames and swingarms, with every body panel formed by hand on the English wheel. Very time-intensive labor resulting in true works of art.
Built in little more than a month, the three bikes you see here came about after business associate Jonathan Reed, owner of Sport Chrome ( www.sportchrome.com), had a conversation with Suzuki PR man Garrett Kai about putting some bikes together for display at Laguna Seca’s MotoGP event. Kai liked the idea of the collaboration between GC and SC and green-lighted the projects, albeit with deadline quickly approaching.
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With very little time and a lot of work ahead, three stock 2008 Suzukis-B-King,
Hayabusa and GSX-R 1000were split up. The B-King and Hayabusa headed north to GC’s shop in Campbell,
California, while the GSX-R stayed in SoCal and went to Reed’s shop in Westminster.
Suzuki’s B-King polarizes people; they either like the look or hate it-but does anyone out there actually love it? Like any good designer, DesJardins could see that hiding below the cartoon-like tailsection and overly bulbous tank and radiator shrouds was a really cool bike. But getting under its skin required the most labor of the three customs here.
DesJardins’ biggest beef was with the rear end. He replaced the bodywork with a GSX-R tailsection, but it wasn’t a simple bolt-on modification. In order to get it to fit, an entirely new subframe and seat pan had to be created. Blending the junction between the tank and new tail, and getting the width of the seating surface to look clean, was a challenge. But a specially shaped leather Corbin saddle helped it all fit perfectly.
Gone are the Batmobile underseat silencers and their plastic housings. A slip-on GC carbon-fiber high pipe now resides on the right side and dramatically cleans up the appearance. The exhaust note is a nice deep tone, not too loud.
Next, DesJardins attacked the tank area, which he felt was ridiculously wide. After stripping the bike in his shop, he discovered that the “ducts” served no functional purpose other than to support the front turnsignals. Unfortunately, when the giant side pods were removed, they left gaping holes in the sides of the tank. The solution was to form two aluminum covers that redefined the tank’s shape. That little project took 16 hours of fabrication alone!
Beyond the tankand tail-fab work, the rest of the bike was fairly straightforward. The GC 240 Side-Arm single-sided swingarm kit and frame were chromed by Reed. Performance Machine Contrast Cut Heathen wheels in 18 x 8.5and 17 x 3.5-inch sizes carry 240/40 and 120/70 Pirelli Diablo rubber. Foot controls are Sato by Kyle Racing. Braking is handled by PM Contrast Cut radial-mount, fourpiston calipers with Heathen rotors up front, while a billet, twin-piston GC caliper and Star rotor reside out back.
Sprayed by ColorZone (www.colorzonedesigns.com) in Huntington Beach, California, the paint is a throwback to the original 1999 ’Busa, which at the time was pretty controversial but has since become a cult icon. The metallic gold and copper has ghost watermarking graphics that are only apparent upon close inspection.
Throw a leg over the GC B-King and it instantly feels smaller than the stocker. The cockpit is much more to the scale of a typical sportbike’s, making it feel more compact.
In motion, the huge 240mm rear tire inhibits quick handling a bit but much less than expected. It obviously steers more heavily than stock but still impressed us with its ability to tackle winding roads at a very sporting clip.
The idea of putting a 'Busa engine in a naked maxi-streetfighter was a bold move on Suzuki’s part and one that we’re thrilled the company brought to market. Unfortunately, the Bee’s styling scared off potential customers, so the bike won’t be returning in ’09. Looks like Suzuki rang up DesJardins a little too late!
Sick same of repetitive seeing the formula for customized Hayabusas...you know, stretched swingarms, airbag suspension and more neon than a ’50s diner? DesJardins and Reed decided to take another route.
They wanted to fool the masses with their Mladin/Spies camouflaged ’Busa. So convincing is the Rockstar Makita-liveried 1300 that it apparently tricked quite a few of Suzuki’s marketing-types at the Laguna display area into mistaking it for a custom GSX-R!
It’s amazing what a simple tailsection change can do for a bike’s appearance. Once again, it’s the Gixxer piece that’s responsible for the transformation. Simple, clean and svelte, that one piece of bodywork gives the big bird a completely new personality. Like the B-King, the Rockstar bike required a custom subframe and Corbin seat to ensure that all of the lines flowed in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
A GC kit with a Gixxer tail and subframe for the Hayabusa is in the works and should be available soon.
Chassis mods include the flat-black-powdercoated GC Side-Arm kit and gold-anodized PM Assault wheels with Star brake rotors at both ends. No fat tire here: The front and rear are conventional sizes with 120/70-17 and 190/50-17 Pirelli Diablo Rosso rubber. Levers and bar-end mirror are by CRG, while foot controls are Sato. The exhaust is a full system from Roaring Toyz and, unlike the B-King’s, is anything but stealth-it puts the Mega in megaphone.
Blending in when in the paddock is made easier by the Rockstar Makita paint sprayed at ColorZone. But what wasn’t easy was getting all the custom sponsor stickers sized to fit the Hayabusa’s multi-ducted fairing. Reed says his kids now have more Rockstar stickers than they’ll ever know what to do with!
Last R1000, of the for trio which is the Reed GSXdevised the color scheme.
He’d seen a customized Bentley in the same colors and fell in love with the look.
That led to the low-key flat silver paint with hand-drawn pinstripes and simple ghosted black-on-black signage.
It’s no surprise that the bike that Reed was put in charge of is a rolling mirror of chrome, showing what his company is capable of making shiny. A lot of stock parts were retained on the bike but very few were left untouched. Black chrome was applied to the entire front end, including the fork, triple-clamps, handlebars, risers, master cylinder, switch pods and all the hardware. Hand and foot controls are by CRG, black with red accents, while blackanodized billet grips are from Todd’s Cycle. Stock brake calipers were sandblasted, painted and pinstriped by ColorZone. The GC Side-Arm swingarm and frame were chromed black; the latter required a bit of investment on Sport Chrome’s part as it previously hadn’t been able to handle pieces as big as a frame in the black finish.
Wheels are PM Domino units featuring contrasting chrome spokes, with black chrome applied to the rims. Reed
said that he spent countless hours masking the wheels,
which was the most laborintensive aspect of the build. The rear is a massive 18 x 8.5inch unit with a 240/40 Pirelli.
If the Gixxer appears lowkey in static form, firing up the engine to hear the VooDoo exhaust will quickly change the mood. As with the other two GC Suzukis, we had the opportunity to ride the GSX-R a bit. Of the three, this bike steers the heaviest of the bunch. The combination of a fat rear tire and narrow makes turning higher-effort than clip-ons with little leverage makes turning higher-effort than stock. Nothing that can’t be compensated for, though.
DesJardins and Reed hoped to build bikes that people would actually want to own and ride. They didn’t envision creations so far off the deep end that real riders couldn’t relate to them. Not only do we think they reached their objective, but in the case of the B-King, they achieved something Suzuki itself missed the boat on-carrying on the Hayabusa lineage in a maxi-streetfighter disguise. Maybe we’ll see the B-King again when the leftover ’08s make their way out of showrooms. Looking more like Gregg’s Customs’ interpretation wouldn’t hurt one bit.
For more "Trick Gixxers" photos, go to www.cycleworld.com
