Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa

The Fastest Production Motorcycle Money Can Buy. Strange that those few words mean so much down the pub, and yet so little out on the open road.

Sure, it´s the kind of fact that sell new bikes by the boatload, as Suzuki are well aware. But there is no denying that the Hayabusa is an accomplished all round motorcycle too.

It tours, carries a passenger well, returns adequate fuel consumption for such a 190mph rocketship and offers a decent amount of weather protection from its debatable looking bodywork.

A tried and tested liquid cooled, DOHC, four cylinder engine format gives the Hayabusa enormous reserves of poke - a claimed 175 bhp at 9,800rpm is a scary, tyre shredding number.

But it is the clever aerodynamics of the Hayabusa which give it unbelievable speed above 150mph when normal superbikes are running out of steam.

The world’s fastest bike just got faster. Much faster. What else was there for Roland Brown to say back in December 1999 having ridden Erik Marklund’s turbo-charged Hayabusa in rainswept Sweden?

This was getting silly. Here I was in Sweden, looking forward to some serious speed on the most powerful motorbike I’d ever ridden. But although the road ahead was straight and free of traffic, making the most of the world’s first turbocharged Hayabusa on a surface that was still slightly damp after overnight rain was proving impossible.

Time after time I wound back the throttle at over 100mph and found the rear Bridgestone spinning hopelessly as it was overcome by the near-instant application of around 300bhp. If I was more careful with the throttle the Suzuki gripped and charged forward with blistering force. But the road was too slippery for it to accelerate much harder than a standard Hayabusa which was distinctly underwhelming given the potential of this steroid-pumped special.

The Hayabusa’s creator, Erik Marklund of turbo specialists MC Xpress, knows all about the problems of riding a bike in difficult weather. Erik is from Altersbruk, near Pite in northern Sweden, which is less than 100 miles from the Arctic circle. In midwinter there are only two hours of daylight, and the temperature sometimes reaches -40c. All that, and the locals drive Volvo’s too.

But if that makes you think Altersbruk is no place to base a motorcycle tuning firm, Erik disagrees. ’Because it’s so cold and dark almost all the day in winter, we have plenty of time to work on the bikes,’ he says. ’And in the summer it’s light almost all the time, and often hot. We have some nice straight roads with not many people or cars or police, so it’s great for riding fast.’

Which helps explain why Erik has built a string of ultra-powerful specials since founding MC Xpress ten years ago. His speciality is developing turbo kits for bikes including Honda’s FireBlade and Super Blackbird, Yamaha’s R1 and Suzuki’s GSX-R750 and 600. He sold around 100 turbo kits last year, exporting them all over the world. And now he has finished his latest and most outrageous project: the turbo Hayabusa.

Bolting a blower to the world’s fastest production bike was something that Erik had wanted to do since the Hayabusa was launched, partly because his own first blown bikes, back in the mid-Eighties, were Suzuki’s original 16-valve fours, the GSX1100 and Katana. But the job did not prove easy, particularly because the GSX1300R is very compact, notably being 60mm shorter than the Super Blackbird between its crankshaft and front wheel spindle.

The effort to cram the turbo in was worthwhile, though. With its wastegate set at a not-too-radical 11.6psi (0.8bar), the MC Xpress turbo Hayabusa produces a whopping 328bhp at 9000rpm almost double the standard claimed max of 173bhp. It also kicks out more than the stock Suzuki’s best everywhere above 6000rpm. Weighing in at little more than the standard bike’s 215kg, the big blown ’Busa has an almost identical power-to-weight ratio to Alex Criville’s NSR500.

The turbocharger is made by Mitsubishi, as used in some Volvo cars, and is particularly suitable because of its built-in ’pop-off’ valve. ’When a normal turbo is boosting and you close the throttle, the air has nowhere to go and produces a big pulse,’ Erik says. ’This can destroy the hoses and intercooler, and also means the turbo stops running, so if you open the throttle again you have no boost.’ Normally a separate valve is used to prevent this, but it’s unnecessary with the Mitsubishi design.

Space was so tight in front of the Suzuki’s engine that Erik had to chop off the turbo’s main air tube, leading to the airbox, and reweld it to exit in a different direction. The standard Suzuki oil cooler and water radiator are retained, but the rad is modified to make room in front for a large curved aluminium intercooler, made by Erik, which cools intake air en route to the motor.

The Suzuki’s standard fuel injectors are retained, but Erik adds a new bank of four Bosch injectors, in Yamaha YZF-R7 style, along with a new aluminium airbox, a second fuel pump (the original is also used) and a fuel pressure regulator. ’We use the original control unit for ignition and fuel-injection,’ he says. ’We had expected to have to modify it, but found we didn’t need to, and it’s much easier if we can leave it standard.’

Some Suzuki parts must be modified, though, most importantly the engine itself, which has to be stripped so that a 2mm aluminium spacer can be added to the bottom of the cylinder barrel, reducing compression ratio to 8.5:1 from the standard 11:1. Stripping the motor to do this is the hardest part of fitting the turbo kit, Erik says. The kit costs SKR 45,000 (about £3500) and also includes an adjustable intake camshaft sprocket (to compensate for the spacer), bigger front sprocket, stiffer clutch springs, and stainless steel exhaust with carbon can.

Erik will modify the wastegate slightly on future kits, which will limit power to about 300bhp. That should prevent the teething trouble that his first Hayabusa customer, stunt star Gary Rothwell, has had with throttle butterflies bending under turbo pressure. Rothwell also seized his engine due to a coolant leak, but Erik insists that such problems are not typical. ’Like most Japanese engines the Suzuki is very strong,’ he says. ’I am very confident that it will be reliable.’

Winter was fast approaching by the time Erik had finished his first pair of Hayabusas, one for his own use and the other for Rothwell (who is aiming to set new British two-wheeled speed and wheelie records soon). Altersbruk, already hit by sub-zero temperatures, didn’t seem like the best place to test any bike, especially this one. So Erik drove most of the way down Sweden to meet me at Vring, in the south, where his friend Gustav runs a big dealership.

Here there was no snow or ice, but the weather still wasn’t great. Through the gloom of an overcast morning the red Suzuki, its fairing modified very slightly to clear the turbo, looked deceptively ordinary apart from a few stickers, its new exhaust system and a white-faced boost gauge alongside the speedometer. ’When I took it for a ride yesterday it wheelied when I opened the throttle in top gear!’ said Gustav enthusiastically. ’I used to have a GSX-R1100 with a turbo and I thought that bike was fast, but it’s nothing compared to this one.’

The deep burble through its carbon silencer gave the Suzuki a suitably menacing sound. But as I rode out towards the main road, past a sign for the local Iron Wolves MC clubhouse, the Hayabusa felt deceptively normal. There was perhaps just a very slightly jerkier transition when I opened or closed the throttle, but in general the bike ran so smoothly and cleanly in town that it could have passed for standard.

Gustav had said that if I turned left at the first roundabout there was a long straight road that would be ideal to show what the bike could do but on reaching it I realised that things weren’t going to work out as I’d hoped. Although it wasn’t raining there was a dampness in the air and on the road. It only took one tweak of the throttle and corresponding Big Wheelspin to make me realise that I was unlikely to get a top-gear wheelie today.

It was still a lot of fun trying, though. The conditions were by no means streaming wet, and given a long enough run-up the bike would doubtless have got up to a massive top speed. The turbo was certainly doing its stuff with awesome efficiency. When I accelerated even from as low as 4000rpm the boost needle shot round its dial and the bike ripped forwards with a barely discernible pause.

But there was just no way I could get it to take full throttle. It spun the rear wheel instantly; viciously in the lower gears, and violently enough in fifth and top to make for a totally wild ride. My heart was in my mouth a few times as I shut-off after another crazy, rear-tyre-spinning blast on this awesomely powerful machine, and glanced down through spray-smeared visor to see the Suzuki’s speedo needle coming back through 150mph.

At least the Hayabusa, whose chassis was bog standard, was proving a great machine to handle so much power. For a big bike the Suzuki was superbly taut and well-balanced, its brakes were excellent, and it stayed stable even at stupid speeds. Gary Rothwell has fitted his bike with a JMC swing-arm that can be lengthened for his speed record attempt and shortened for 200mph wheelies, but for road riding there’s no need.

I handed the Suzuki back to Erik feeling a bit cheated by the weather, but it could have been a whole lot worse. When I next spoke to him by phone he was back in Altersbruk. There was a foot of snow outside, it had been dark since 2pm and the temperature had recently been -25c so cold you have to heat up a car engine before starting it.

Not that Erik seemed to mind. ’I won’t be riding the bike again until the beginning of May,’ he said ’But the weather is perfect for snowmobiles, and we have lots of orders for turbo kits to keep us busy. I think it’s going to be a great winter.’

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