revtothelimit - motorbike forum

I recently bought a Hayabusa from my pal Mark. He had tried selling it, but it did not have any takers as I guess people could not see past the paint. Mark loved it, but without being rude, I don't think it got much love from anybody else.

He loved it.



Dismissing the paint, the bike has aftermarket springs and things in the forks, Brembo brakes (from Brembo, not taken from another bike), Marchesini lightweight wheels, a full lightweight 4-1 race exhaust, a Power Commander, a nitrous system and a whole load more.It came with an extended drag swingarm, shock and aftermarket spring as well. So, in Busa terms, it has the makings of a good bike. A lot of parts that must have cost a fortune down the line. It also has some horrible parts. Rear sets that are a good make but look tacky along with gold Brembo reservoir lids and worst of all, chrome frame cover things. But my mate loved it. So good on him.

I am not in a massive hurry to work on it. I have started and will update as I go. Looking at some of the photographs I have, I am almost frightened to share them. But what the heck, here goes.
Can it get any worse than this?



Looking at that, I need to go and sit down with a strong cup of coffee, to relax my nerves.

A lot of those parts,such as the Gilles rearsets could be sold on if you don't plan on including them in the revamp. They are good quality,I had them on my 10R.

Nothing wrong with a bit of pink, blue and white

I'm not sure I'd have done it to my Busa.


But I kinda like the colour.

There's good news....


It'll be hard to make it worse... and easier to make it better

https://www.newfairings.co.uk/products/ ... gWEALw_wcB

https://www.newfairings.co.uk/products/ ... gsEALw_wcB

I'd be binning the lot personally and getting something more like this

It has already started to have a change of colours.
I am going with a Yoshimura X1 style of things.

Even though the Yoshi colours look to be a very dark grey I am going with this colour;



I bought some of this colour paint, but figured it was going to be too dark;



For the red, we are going with Dodge Viper red which seemed to be nice and bright and for the wheels, probably just a Ford Diamond white.
There is nothing wrong mechanically with the bike so it is a visual make over. Anything tatty will be replaced (braided hoses, handlebar clamps, hand grips...) and then an oil and filter change. The forks were rebuilt less than 100 miles ago along with the coolant (and the oil and filter). But I would sooner do it again for peace of mind. Even though I did the last fluid changes!!

I can't decide if I love it or hate it as it is

Le_Fromage_Grande wrote: Fri Mar 07, 2025 7:53 pm I can't decide if I love it or hate it as it is

Hmmm... dislike.

As it stands I have removed the extended swingarm, added risers and renthals which makes it more usable for me. But, I do actually like extended swingarms. It is now too far gone and stripped to go back to how it was in the pics. But with dyno sheets that show 200hp plus it should be fun. For somebody.

I was laughing when I bought it when Mark (the previous owner) explained the nitrous system. "Open the bottle and arm it" he told me. It is programed thru the Power commander to kick the nitorous in in 3rd gear at 6000rpm". "Hold on a second, 6000rpm in 3rd must be 140-150mph?". "Yes" he replied. It would be mental in my opinion.

If you hated it I would not take any offence. I was not keen on it as it stood.

Just to go back to the previous comment as to how crazy the bike could be for somebody, I bet that there will be new Chinese 125's that cost more than the busa which makes it even more mental when you sit down and think about things.

Before I got my hands on the bike it originally looked like this. With standard bars and the long swingarm.



Along with tasty decals everywhere!

Mark, the previous owner asked me to change the bars to something easier for his back so I did a bar conversion. Just to try out a set of bars for "feel" I cobbled things together with another hideously coloured set of bars from an old GSXR11 that I bought a while back. Red anodised things! Yuck. When I say "cobbled together", what I really mean is he dropped the bike off, did not give me any budget and said he would sort me out later.
Luckily, one of the parts I used was a CNC'd top yoke.

I found a set of black Renthals in a stash along with some C90 or whatever risers so they went on.





From memory I think the brake lines (original length but braided) worked OK, but I did have to buy a longer clutch line to allow the bars to move safely side to side. Which remeinds me that I need to order some new brake lines and new banjo bolts as I think that they looked a bit second hand!

The bike came with beautiful blue upholstery.
So...

I am not 100% sure how the upholstery paint will last? I have since done a couple of seats with black leather dye, which I prefer, but time will tell. I can easily do something with the upholstery again at a later date if need be.

When I bought the bike, I had no idea's as to what I was going to do with it? I knew it was going to be cosmetic but other than that my mind was blank.
And then I spotted pics of the Yoshi X1 Busa. I figured that my bike had things like the wheels and a nice exhaust which kind of (if you squinted) could look similar to a Yoshi bike.
So, a plan was hatched. A friend of mine has 3d printing gear along with a fantastic CNC machine (thing). It is used for (as an example) making furniture/kitchen doors as it can take 8x4 foot sheets of wood, but it is CNC and can cut any size that is programed into it.
Having looked at Yoshi tanks I asked my mate if he could make me some duplicate Yoshi letters that could be stuck on, bonded,glued,clagged onto the tank, prepped and then painted to emulate the embossed feature of the original tanks.

I also got my dirty hands on this;

And sat and waited.

And waited.

My mate eventually did show that he had tried (so a BIG Thank you to him!) to make some bits in thin-ish alloy, the but sizing was wrong and he has a business to run and I did not want to take his time up, so we knocked the idea on the head.
I was a bit gutted, but seeing as I have the spare Busa rolling chassis I can do things to that in the future.
Another mate of mine has a bead rolling machine and he says that we could bead roll something similar to the top of a gsxr slingshot tank into a sheet of steel and then tig weld it to the top of the Busa tank to allow fitment of the endurance single (double style) filler. But again I will hang fire and do this to the spare rolling chassis bike. I think? LOL.