Some specials are made specifically to shimmer in the sun when paraded in front of summer crowds. Not here. This trick-framed GSX-R1000 is used to full effect in all weathers
Making your own aluminium tube frame ranks among the hardest undertakings a specials builder will attempt. Aside from manufacturing your own engine, that is. But it was not something that was going to hold Iain Scollon back.
Iain, known more familiarly as Yantosh, is a 52-year-old toolmaker in the plastic injection moulding industry. He is no stranger to building specials, having built Bandits, Blades, and a CB1000 special prior to this leap into the deep.
“I’d had ideas about building my own frame as far back as 1986,” says Yantosh. “I wasn’t looking for a GSX-R, I was looking for a Blade because I like Hondas, but a friend was selling this K4 for £2000. It was running, it was absolutely fine, so I took it straight to bits.”
Yantosh had owned a Polygon-framed Bandit 12 before this project and had some clear ideas about how his frame would differ: “I built in adjustability to ride height, offset, swingarm position and wheelbase just in case it was unrideable, but it’s turned out OK. It’ll kill you without its steering damper, but that’s OK too.”
The frame would be in 41mm OD 6082 aluminium alloy tube. “I already had a swingarm jig from making a few of those, but it wasn’t until my mate Bazz built me a shed that I could make a frame jig and a tube-bender. So I built them before I could build the bike. I based my tube-bender on the [popular and effective] JD2 design – and then set it into 200kg of concrete,” says Yantosh, as casually as someone less advanced in the building art might say they’ve successfully fitted some anodised valve caps.
Yantosh seems to be someone reluctant to either sit still, or sit back and admire his works. There’s always more to do, more to come. Hence the BFT-001. “BFT stands for blunt force trauma, and it’s run as one word all closed up; bluntforcetrauma.inc. That’s what the stencil on the rear wheel reads,” says Yan. “It started in about 2006 as a reaction to the German streetfighter scene where everyone was spending money on other people’s stuff and putting stickers everywhere. All those German bikes with 240 section back tyres… I gave up with all that 240 stuff after building a twin turbo 1216 about ten years ago. Andy [who shot this BFT-001] photographed it.”
