SDC Performance UK News

Winter is nearly upon us ... the time of year we get all sorts of wierd and wonderful carb issues , here is the before and after of some emulsion tubes that we cleaned in the workshop to cure poor running.

Its always good to see some SDC Performance bikes out on track, Paul Williams from Devon is at Cadwell Park this weekend racing in the Minitwin and Supertwin classes on his SV650's. Both bikes are looking imacculate.

Good Luck Paul.

What better way to blow away the friday cobwebs than some time on the rolling road with a SV650 Minitwin race bike ... lets she what she does.

This winter we have been building various race and track bikes for the 2015 season - Here is one of these bikes that is being tested for the first time. Adam Mulvey from Ireland had us build this SV650 stocksport bike to race spec . Adam's feedback after his first ride "First day out on Saturday Gary, couldn't ask for a better bike, over the moon with it, can't wait to get racing now, getting great lap time, quicker than I was last year on the CBR600, so I'm looking forward to it, thanks again , great job" - Thank you Adam its good to hear feedback on the work that we produce, we look forward to more updates from Adam over the coming race season.

W

After 12 months of development our long awaited M2 ( Moto2 ) race fairing kit for the SV650 is now available.

Priced at £300 for a complete kit ( front fairing, belly pan and seat unit ).

It brings the SV650's looks bang up to date with a MotoGP style.

Here at SDC Performance we have been an authorised Dynojet Tuning Centre for over 15 years now. So in that time we have stripped and rebuilt a lot of carburetors. Recently we had a streetfight GSXR750 come in that was running at best on only 1 or 2 cylinders, the bike it turned out had been left standing for a couple of years. As can be seen in the pictures below petrol left inside a motorbike that has been stood up for a long period of time can have a devastating effect.

After stripping out the float bowls, mains, pilots, floats, slides, needles etc ... we ventured deeper into the emulsion tubes !! - BEFORE

This is the same items cleaned and ready for re assembly of the carbs. This required use of an acid bath, hss needle drills and a gentle buffing wheel, as can be seen the difference is incredible - AFTER

We had a request from a customer about modifying a Triumph 675 to a side exhaust outlet. As standard the Triumph 675 has the underseat exhaust system, very nice, but also the same as every other 675 on the road. Using a Titanium Akrapovic exhaust outlet, we modified the standard exhaust headers and machined a bracket to hold it in place. Not the simplest of jobs and quite time consuming. But the end result was very satisfying and one very trick looking Triumph 675 !!

Our latest creation has been built and left the SDC Performance Workshops today. Tony Warren ordered this bike to be built and painted to his spec. Built to the usual SDC high standard this SV650 features, Akrapovic, Ohlins, DBR, Talon, DID etc etc ... Plus all of our usual BB Plastics bodywork and lightweight alloy subframes. The bike puts out a very healthy 71+ bhp on the dyno making it right on the Minitwin BHP limit.

Well the weekend of 14th/15th September and we are off to Sunny Cadwell for the next round of the BMCRC championships. To be fair not very sunny .. infact turned up on friday night and was poo and when we left on Sunday afternoon was poo .. oh well. The 400's were up first for qualifying at 9am on a damp track in the drizzle, unfortunately oil was dropped around the whole circuit involving a 3 hour delay for clearing up. When qualifying did eventually happen on a slippery oil soaked track, we managed to put the ZXR400 on pole .. so another good result for project Scrappy. The weekend went well, we had a 3rd overall and 1st in class the first race, the clutch was slipping slightly so after the race Grandad stuck a new set of plates in. Race 2 was good with 2nd overall and 1st in class again, we just missed out on the win , i think possibly showed our hand a lap too early.

Who said Fred Dibnah was dead ... we've got him fitting ZXR400 clutches at Cadwell Park !!

Dougie/Grandad/Fred - finished the clutch and went off in search of more chimneys !!

We arrived at Snetterton late on friday night and all settled down for the night in the truck , only to be awoken by heavy rain at 5am ... This was not good , as at 9am scrappy is due to qualify for grid position and we don't have any wet wheels or tyres !!

Qualifying .. we manage to complete the slowest 3 laps ever of a soaking wet cicuit on dry , cold race tyres . We keep scrappy upright and do our 3 laps which is the minimum required amount for us to be able to race. No suprise but we were slowest in our group.

Saturday Race 1 .. All very excited and now with the sun out scrappy is ready to roll. With the last call for our race the tyre warmers are removed  and ... we have a 5 min mini hurricane !! the heavens opened !! We were actually looking for gods plague of raing frogs or brimstone !!  If you are still following this you will be aware we have no wets .. so Race 1 ... no show( sulking )

Saturday Race 2 .. At bemsee club the finish position for race 1 is your start position for race 2 .. So we start in 39th place ( luckily had my ticket on me to get back into the circuit when the lights went out for the start ). A good start and progress was made into the top 10 , but on lap the the brake mastercylinder resevoir cap fell off .. brake fluid everywhere and game over agian ... more sulking !!

Sunday Race 1 .. We are very optimistic .. scrappy has had a good nights sleep and a good BBQ was had by the team. Starting at the back again , this time with a flying start .. a very hard race and pushing all the way to flag gave us 7th overall and 1st in class + fastest lap.

Sunday Race 2 .. Starting 7th on the grid ,  just as we start the warm up lap it starts to rain , but having been declared a wet race already everybody starts on dry tyres in the slippery conditions. Another good start and we are away with the front running tuned 400's. Another hard race and scrappy does us proud with a 4th place overall , 1st in class again and another fastest lap.

The old girl never missed a beat !!!

And now a pic of a fat old bloke looking smug with his new love scrappy x x

And finally .. scrappy had a team of helpers .. but we would like to say a special thank you to our 2 brolly dollys who not only kept scrappy dry in the wind and rain but also warm .. Thank you Eleanor and Mia

And they all lived happily ever after ... The End

Well ... Grandad took the bodywork away and sprayed it all up for us to save time. Scrappy has been on our rolling road and we have set the carbs up to go with the ram air system , velocity stacks and modified Micron exhaust system. Its now the day before we go to Snetterton to race the old girl in Bemsee clubs 400 class. We have entered in the Sub 65 or stock engined class.

So with Nick Knowles gathering the crowd of helpers together and a crying  owner .. as is traditional we show you the before and after ...

Scrappy in all her original glory ...

And now our lythe young swan brought back to life ... Ta Daaaa !!!

Oops ... bit of a give away ( cock up ) in how the weekend went ... Doh

Well scrappy our beautiful little race bike is finally back together. Pigs ear , silk purse ... ugly duckling , swan ... piece of throbbing shi ... well you get the idea.

Today "Grandad" is over to help us fit the bodywork. We are using our own SV650 M1 kit . It needs a bit of trimming here and there but Grandad gets a good fit ( and its got him out of working at B&Q for the day !! )

We have modified the Micron exhaust system that came with the bike , the baffled link pipe has been removed and a more normal 50mm link pipe has been made up to take a Hindle race can ( as usual found lying around the workshop ).

Getting scrappy pretty well all together now. We have had to rip the brakes apart and use a blow tourch to remove the seized in pistons !!! rear caliper is rebuilt .. but the magic shelves of scrap parts comes to our rescue again with a piar of CBR929 Nissin calipers. Once stripped and rebuilt these were fitted. A slight bit of milling on the calipers for clearance and a couple of top hat spacers turned up and we have some nice shiny calipers !!

These bled up nicely and were fitted with a set of HEL lines that we had laying around off a ZX6R , we modified one end of the lines and they fitted perfectly.

On the rear brake , we kept the standard caliper ( rebuilt and now cooled down from the blow tourch experience ) and fitted the rear master cylinder up to a set of GSXR1000K8 rear sets that we modified to fit . At the same time we modified the rear mastercylinder to take a return spring so there is no chance of the rear brake accidently dragging. 

The front forks that have already been rebuilt now need fitting.

The radiator and oil cooler were total scrap , there is so much corrosion in the aluminium that the only option is the bin !!

Radiator wise we have a ZX6R one knocking around in the workshop with a hole in it .. Hole fixed .. and we now have a radiator , fabricate a few brackets and away we go. Oil cooler wise was a bit harder , seeing as the club races we want to try this in are only 5-6 laps long , we have bypassed the oil cooler all together and done without !! simples ...

We have now added one of our own ram air boxes and velocity stack kits. This should get the old girl breathing a bit better !!

We alos had a good rummage around and manged to make a good quick action throttle out of 3 or 4 broken ones so that is another problem solved.

To make running the ram air box easier we also found a set of coil sticks in our electrics draw . So together with the race loom that we made earlier we have a very neat and tidy electrical system now.

Day 9 and time we started the assembly, the suspension linkages are in a real mess , the whole lot has been stripped , new bearings fitted where needed and all greased and set up.

Frame and swingarm have been stripped and given a fresh coat of 2K satin black

New swingarm bearings are pressed into place ready for assembly

Finally the frame and engine are put back together again

and finally for today the WP shock that we picked up second hand is fitted.

Engine has now been cleaned and serviced ready to start the bike final build . At the same time as the srvice , we have cleaned the engine ( a massive job on its own ) re painted the side casing to SDC red and also removed the fly wheel and turned it down in the lathe to reduce crank weight , the bike will be running total loss ignition.

Although the engine is being kept standard we are trying to get as much out of it as possible for the race day.

BEFORE

AFTER

Now finished and ready to build the bike

Well its Sunday , but certainly not a day of rest on ZXR400 race project ( scrapheap challenge ).

Today we are starting on the engine , the oil was dumped already when the engine was started and hot. So now to remove the sump and check for debris and make sure the oil pick up strainer is clean , and check all of the valve clearances and cam timing.

Boy are we glad we checked ... the cam carriers bolts were all loose , as in finger tight , with a couple even having an air gap !!

The bolts were all torqued down and then the clearances were checked , a few were out and have been changed , but to be fair not too bad.

Down at the sump end , all was pretty clean , we then carried out a compression check to get an idea of the engines condition.

Good readings of 165-170 on all cylinders give us some hope ( fingers crossed its not false hope )

Well the forks have been totally stripped over the last 2 days , I must say they were in a hell of a mess. Once stripped we could assess thm properly. Both fork oil and dust seals were rusty and leaking , fork stantions were covered in paint overspray and dirt build up , the damper unit that controls the rebound damping in these forks was so gunged up that it kept seizing solid.

It took a good 30-40 mins of working the damper unit and flushing with brake cleaner , but eventually we managed to remove all of the gunge and built up crud. The fork caps had to be soaked in paint thinners to break down the beautiful green paint work !! These had to be totally stripped to component level and every individual part cleaned , corrosion removed and polished , then all re greased and assembled to get the caps working properly.

As this is for race use we have have upped the fork oil weight to 10w and used Rock Oil competition fluid. The air gap was set to 90mm and new fork oil and dust seals. While apart we also gave the outer stantions a new gold finish , the lower stantions were polished and the bottoms given a new finish in black. Both forks feel like they now have a much stronger damping for the track and look like new , all adjusters now work exactly as they should ... Forks ... Job done

Have decided to tackle the forks today , what we are starting with is to be fair a pretty disgusting set of ZXR400 forks , covered in paint over spray , oil , dirt and the fork caps having been totally sprayed in a rather fetching shade of metalic green ... nice !!

Well today the wiring loom has been stripped down and converted to a race spec , lots of bad connections , broken wires and corroded terminals all removed. New wires put in place and all of the relays and road parts have now been junked. A bit of tidying up left , and the wires need to be bound together. But the bike now started for the first time.

Later today we gutted the whole bike to start the rebuild proper. Frame and swing arm are now being stripped. All bearings have been removed and we are assesing what parts need binning , keeping and replacing.

This at the moment is all that is left of our race ZXR400 project !!

We like a challenge here at SDC Performance.Here is our latest project ( scrapheap challenge !! ) this beautiful little Kawasaki ZXR400 .. This bike / heap / wreck !!  we are trying to get built and on track racing in just over 14 days !! So here goes ...

DAY 1- In all her glory !!

Graham English and TIVA Engineering have been good friends of SDC Performance for a long time , we would all like to congratulate Graham on an excellent result today in the Superbike race. Graham's laptimes have been steadily improving and today he recorded his best lap yet of 117.2 mph. This is only Graham's second visit to the TT races. Well done mate , excellent reult.

This Saturday , Steven Tweddle picked up his SV650 Supertwin , Steven and his dad Ken made the long trip down from Newcastle ( Whitley Bay ) , leaving at 6.30 and reaching our workshops just before 11. Steven had emailed us some pc scans and colour schemes for his race bike . Working on what he sent us we all think his Supertwin looks stunning. We wish Steven all the best of luck for his 2013 race season and look forward to working with him again in the future.

Suzuki SV650 Supertwin - just finished here is our latest race build for the 2013 race season , a Supertwin based on the popular SV650 race bikes that we build. The picture here is over the naked bike , with the new bodywork and design being fitted up later today ( pics to follow ) . This bike runs a Penske full race rear shock , GSXR front end set up by Maxton , Arata full Titanium system ( this truely is sex in metal pipework !! ) , Fuel set up with the Dynojet Power Commander. More details to follow.

Jim Buchanan's ZX9R race bike. Jim turned up at our workshops with his road going ZX9R. Having bought a race bodykit from our sister company ( www.bbplastics.co.uk ) he needed the bike preparing for his first season of racing. The ZX9R has been prepared for EMRA roadstocks. Suspension has been set up , rearsets and crash protectors added, all the lockwiring and race prep that is needed has been carried out. The bike is finished in a Black and White colour scheme of Jim's choice. We wish Jim the best of luck with his new venture into the racing world in 2013.

One of our SDC track bikes that recently was sold is this immaculate CBR600RR Red Bull race rep . A lovely example of how a track bike should be prepared.

Our latest bike build has just been finished and will be on track later this week , here is Ed Reekie's Supertwin Suzuki SV650. Built to our usual high spec this bike has been built from the ground up using all of our own in house products plus parts supplied by M4 , Yoshimura , ProMach , Goodridge , Supersprox , Brembo , Showa , Ohlins , Factory Pro , the list is endless . The bike is finished of in Ed's own choice of Repsol retro MotoGP colour scheme.

We currently have been carrying out some rolling road work for Shaz on his very clean white R1. He has fitted some very nice Toce Brothers exhausts from the states , the bike has had a power commander fitted and and all the fueling set up with a custom map to his requirements on our in house rolling road.

As you can see the R1 has picked up 8 bhp rear wheel , going from 150 to 158 bhp with a smooth power curve.

We now have the Latest Peugeot Kisbee RS scooter in stock , unique to ourselves at SDC is this Monster Energy edition. Eye catching in Satin Black with Monster Green livery.

RRP is £1649 , we currently offer a massive £420 discount making the Kisbee RS at just  £1229.

Please contact our office for more details.

An old friend of ours at SDC ( Hog ) contacted us a short while back about setting up the fueling on our rolling road for their World Record attempt at Bonneville Salt Flats.

After a quick catch up , it turns out that Hog and his friends had lost a biking friend of theirs , Mike Page . Mike had passed away at the age of 44 , and as a tribute to their friend they decided to rebuild and finish Mike's Triumph T120 Bonneville. It was then decided over a few beers that is was a good idea to build the bike and take it to the Bonneville Salt Flats for a World Record Attempt. So that is what they have done.

It must be said that the whole team are a lovely bunch of lads and we certainly wish them all the luck at Bonneville ( sorry we can't remember all the names , but to say Hog is just one of a whole team ). The whole team have done everything together , they all turned up together even for the dyno work.

Keep an eye out for the BBC documentry that is due to be screened this Autum.

You can find out all about the team at www.teampage.co.uk 

The Team Page Triumph T120 Bonneville - the lads have done an excellent job and are a credit to their friend.

The man himself "Hog

" being filmed at the SDC premises for the up comming BBC documentry

Dyno time , Gary from SDC sets about setting up the Triumph .

GOOD LUCK LADS.

Our latest SV650 race bike creation is finally finished and has been collected on its long trip home to Devon. Paul Williams has collected his new bike and has taken it back home to sunny Devon !! Think with the current summer he may be wearing his wet tyres  out quite soon.

The SV650 has been built to our usual high standard , M4 full race system , race loom , digital dash , alloy subframes , adjustable rearsets , our own M1 fairing kit , etc.. etc .. All finished off in Paul's choice of colour - Orange . We weren't sure of his choice of colour at first , but everyone seeing the bike has loved the colour, and we have to agree it was a good choice.

Our next SV650 race bike project is finished and ready to go out to its new owner , Keith Lynch who is based over in Ireland. It is built to our usual high spec , with injected cams , Ohlins , M4 full system with Muzzy race can , SES rear sets , Renthal , DID, and all of our of our in house SV parts . Subframes , bodywork etc etc .. All the fueling has been set up on the rolling road and the suspension set ready for Keith. It is all finished up in Keith's own choice of colour and design.

We have been carrying out Dyno work on Colin Jacksons absolutely immaculate Bandit 1200. Colins bike has been in our workshop to have the dual K&N air filters fitted along with rolling road set up and a Dynojet stage 3 kit . All set up and the Bandit now puts out a healthy 125bhp at the back wheel with a smooth power curve.

Colins Bandit also has fitted WP shock in the rear with fork internals to match, Goodridge lines all round, Full Akrapovic race system with Titanium can and a heavily braced and modified swing arm. The bike has only covered 7000 miles form new and is a real head turner and credit to him. All our customers that saw the bike commented on its condition.

Matt Goldsmith collected his Injected SV650 Minitwin race bike today . Matt purchased this bike from ourselves just over a year ago now. Having been testing last year , Matt unfortunately had a big off at Paddock Hill bend at Brands Hatch during his first race meeting on the bike. The bike has been through our workshops for a winter race preparation and to rectify any remainders of his crash damage.

Its always a pleasure to see Matt and his dad when they collected the bike. Matt is a former BMCRC club champion with MZ racers. We wish Matt all the best for 2012 and hopefully more championship sucess.

Iain Green has been a good customer of ours for a number of years. He collected his son Nick's R6 race bike today , fully prepared and ready for the 2012 race season. The Yamaha R6 was built by ourselves from new for Nick to race. Nick was the 2010 DP SS600 champion on this bike. Engine is fully tuned to Supersport spec by Mike Smith Tuning , all suspension , fuel set up and rolling road work ,  chassis upgrades and even paint and graphics was carried out in house in our race workshop.

Ben and his dad John collected Ben's minitwin racebike today. The bike was supplied by SDC and built and prepared in our race workshop. Ben is new to the minitwin scene having raced very sucessfully in Moto x . We wish Ben the best of luck on his first season of road racing.

Harry Pullar from Scotland's new race bike leaves the SDC Perofrmance workshops. Harry purchased this race bike from us . The bike has undergone a complete rebuild in the SDC workshops , and is finished off in Harry's colour choice of Yellow and Black . Good Luck in 2012 Harry - More photo's of Harry's SV650 Minitwin race bike can be found in the gallery.

One of our winter projects is finished and out the door, a FZR400 3TJ track bike that has been set up as a MotoGP replica. It uses our M1 fairing design and seat unit , with a Yamaha 50th Anniversary paint scheme .

The complete bike was built in house , from all the fabrication of brackets and subframe , to the rolling road and paint scheme.

A Cold snap is on its way, make sure your bike is ready!

Check your anti-freeze!

Maybe park the bike up until the weather gets better!

If you need any help or advice get in touch.