This story is not supposed to be used as a guide to do any mechanical work on any motorcycle and any advice offered may be hazardous to your health and property. Be forewarned. Now read on and enjoy.

By way of an introduction to folks who do not know me yet. My name is Rassie van Aswegen or Rusty van Asswagon since I have become an American. I was born in the central parts of South Africa back when General Motors was still Corporal Motors. About 10 years ago I traded my loin cloth in for a full set of leathers and some business attire, moved to the USA and now live happily in Pennsylvania when it is not covered in snow.

As you may or may not know I also own an SV1000S. Now all you Honda diehard’s out there please keep your pants on. I will explain and for the record the Honda VTR1000 is the strongest bike ever made, John Deere cannot even make something that has more grunt and torque. Anyway I was actually shopping around for a salvaged (did I mention I am cheap) VTR1000 or RC51 when I happened to spot the SV for a really good deal and even after taking into account the psychological trauma of owning a Suzuki (which is like sleeping with a really ugly chick and getting caught) and having it parked in my garage next to my then pristine 1996 Kawasaki ZX6R (like bringing the ugly chick home to meet the wife) I went ahead and bought it anyway. I mean for crying out loud man it is a V-twin that has to count for something, besides it is not like I bought a Harley.

In all fairness to my superior deal making capabilities and trauma aside the bike only had 320 miles on it and from a distance looked like it was in perfect shape. Besides by the time I left with it on the trailer the guy I bought it from was scratching his head as to how I talked him into providing all the required parts to fix it, included in the price no less. Now that right there should have sent off the alarm bells. Like my grand pappy always used to say “when it is too good to be true, it probably is”. Long story short I am still waiting for the parts to arrive but in my defense it was still a good deal. Live and learn.

OK so back to the story. My buddy Kappie, who also owns a VTR1000, and I went to ride the Tail of the Dragon late last year. We also did a 220 mile ride up and then down again on the Blue Ridge parkway. After day two on the parkway I felt like someone had used my body to make one of those Karate movies with Jet Li in it. You know those where some oriental dudes, without shirts, making pissed off cat like sounds, come out of nowhere and kick the **** out of our hero Jet, just so he can make a miraculous comeback at that exact moment just before he dies and still manages to then turn around, achieve unaided flight, turn the whole place into confetti and the oriental guys into bags of hamburger meat, super sweet, he must own a VTR.

Anyway I digress again. My legs, shoulders, back and wrists were killing me after 6 hours of riding. I guess the fact that I have a GSXR750 front end on my SV (another story for later) did not help my riding position much other than on the race track pretending to be Kevin Scwantz. So after we got back from the trip I decide to look into fitting a regular motocross type handle bar on the SV. That is off course a decision based on the fact that I am cheap, since Convertibars or Helibars all cost like $400 bucks, which is way off of my “affordability” scale. As usual I get a six pack of Michelob Amber Bock brain food and venture into the basement to “strategize”. After looking at one of my downhill racing bicycles I come up with the idea to use stuff from a bicycle to adapt the top clamp to accept the handle bar. I figured I ride like 6 foot drops and **** with my downhill bicycle, it should stand up to the abuse of a measly road ride on my SV just up and down the Blue Ridge parkway.

So after about the fourth Amber Bock brain revitalization treatment my brain is starting to fire on all 6 cylinders like an old Honda CBX, creative juices overflowing. I know this since I had to go take a **** twice. Anyway so I go digging into my box of bicycle parts and I quickly find some really juice looking pieces that will be perfect for the job at hand. In particular I found a “gooseneck” type steering stem that inserts into the steering stem of the fork and then bolts down by way of a wedged clamp inside the steering stem. Now that there was the find of the century since the stem part fitted right into the GSXR steering stem. I mean no drilling required, no special fabrication nothing. Just drop the stem into the GSXR steering stem tighten the nut, attach handlebar, switches and levers and off you go. Man was I ever excited especially after I found some carbon fiber handle bars lying at the bottom of the box of parts. This is going to be soooo sweet.

After fiddling with the routing of the cables and hoses for a while I put everything together, bolted everything down (to spec, meaning tighten until it starts to strip then back it of a tad) and stood back to admire my handy work. I even mention to my cat, sitting on the trunk of my wife’s car, how great an innovator and engineer I am. There it was the bicycle steering stem sticking out of the GSXR steering tube, carbon fiber bar attached, everything neat and tidy. Very spindly looking but other than that I could not believe why the motorcycle industry engineers had not though of this before. Now right there I should have seen the warning signals.

Anyway I fire the SV up and sit there admiring my work while it settles into a lumpy V-twin idle. When the needle hit “nice and toasty” I kick it into gear let the clutch out slowly and started heading out the garage. Now as you exit my garage there are some shrubs to the left before you get to the driveway. You basically aim for the gap between the shrubs on your left to head down the driveway towards the street. So I started to nudge the bars to the right to set me up for the left turn when all of a sudden the bars went to full right lock, at the same time the throttle got whacked wide open since the wheel was pulling left and the bar to the right. The SV starts to buck forward and heads straight for the shrubbery to my left, bouncing off the bumper of my wife’s car that is parked as you exit the garage. My cat that was sitting on the trunk of the car freaks out and jumps right onto my head, clawing away at my face, scalp and whatever else it is desperately trying to attach too. I go plowing through the shrubs, ride over a gnome that was strategically placed in front of the shrub and hit the large concrete fountain with surrounding angels just behind it. The bike stands up on it’s nose and both the cat and I go flying over the locked out bars that have now come out of the steering tube only held on by wiring and hydraulic pipes. As I pull myself together and get up off the ground to inspect my situation, cat nowhere in sight, my know it all neighbor who is a workshop manager at the Subaru dealer walks over to see what happened. He helps me pick up the bike and inspects my now not so sweet looking handle bar conversion. He reckons that the amount of surface the clamp inside had to grip on was easily overcome by the force generated by the tire and the weight of the front end. Hence it would never have held together anyway. Smart ***, damn he keeps doing that to me, oh well live and learn. It took me 3 hours to polish the scratches of my wife’s car and another 3 to restore the garden to it previous condition. The cat is still missing and I look like a 16 year old zit riddled teenager with hundreds of holes in my face from the cat claws. Live and learn.

As usual I posted a pic of the real thing. Also if you liked what you saw go read my earlier post at

https://www.superhawkforum.com/forum...ead.php?t=4357

 

Oh God......(LOL)


Can't wait for more.....(pissing my pants)


Bwaahahahahahahaaaaaa..........

 

Those crazy cats.

 

Very entertaining, but the pic doesn't seem to match the description. I don't know what's up, maybe I missed something . Good luck figuring out a better setup.

 

Thanks everyone for the "compliments". I know I am not right and my mental state is bordering on the "questionable". At least that is what 4 of the 5 voices in my head keep telling me.

Actually these stories always have some truth behind them. The little stupid idea projects I am writing about are always those "what if I tried that, naw stupid idea" types of things.

The real conversion on my SV actually turned out great. It was cheap and is highly functional and only cost me $80. I plan on writing up the actual "real" project so other's can do the same. I already checked and it looks like you could easily do the same on the VTR. Also I used high end parts, you should be able to do it for much less money.