The frame and the engine were from the same model so they fitted together well enough but from that point on things got…complicated. Forks were sourced for the same bike but the rear end had to be very different. A single sided arm was not going to work. I knew it needed to be extended so obtained one from a CBR900. There were plenty of these around due to Blade owners using VFR arms in streetfighter bikes. But obviously it didn’t fit. So I made it fit. With a lot of guesswork and a tape measure, I worked out how much of the mounting needed to be machined off to get the arm to fit inside the frame. Talon engineering did the work and also several other jobs that came up along the way.
Needing to play it safe to start with, I used standard VFR forks and yokes up front but I wanted serious stopping power and opted for CBR900 brake calipers. And of course, they were not just going to bolt on so brackets had to be designed and made. Just to make things a little more difficult, I used CBR600 wheels front and back. This gave me a better choice of tyres but more importantly, only three spokes per wheel to clean. Yes really. (Observers may have noticed that the bike is very clean and shiny but cleaning is one job I really detest.) Fitting the wheels was relatively easy needing only a couple of spacers but along with good calipers at the front, I opted for CBR1100 discs as they had a larger diameter than the 900 and 600. Luckily, I already had patterns from the road bike calipers using the same set up so just had the brackets machined and bolted them on.
A friend sold me a Fox rear shock (CBR900) pretty cheap and once all the spacers were made to set in the correct position, that was bolted in as well.