What does it look like?

Let's start at the front. The forks are gold nitrided GSXR1000 units, with full Ohlins internals.

The front wheel is a carbon-fibre Dymag with a one-off stainless steel spindle, machined by Kevin Bartlett of POD Manufacturing. POD was set up in 2005 by Kevin and his business partner Paul Debling, and specialises in motorcycle parts as well as precision engineering for the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries.

The front brake calipers are Tokico six-pots from a Suzuki GSXR1000 K1.

The forks are married to an LSL straight bar conversion. LSL are a German company specialising in aftermarket bars for sports and touring machines, as well as rearsets, steering dampers and other accessories.

Don't worry if you don't speak German, you can find a range of their products in English at Motorcycle Road & Race.

The frame was custom-built by Lee at Steelheart Engineering in Canterbury back in 1997 and originally housed an 1990 FZR 1000 motor with billet clutch, Stage 3 Dynojet kit, Dyno coils and the usual tuning bits you would expect to find on an Exup.

It was a great fun bike to ride as you can imagine and was the genesis (groan!) of the project as you see it today.

The YZF750SP swingarm will be replaced by a custom-built one eventually. The swinging arm spindle is another stainless one-off by Kevin at POD Manufacturing. You'll find his handiwork elsewhere on the bike as the build progresses.

You can see the compression damping adjuster mounted to a custom bracket on the frame.

The Ohlins shock features a remote reservoir (where would bikers be without cable-ties?) and hose-mounted hydraulic spring preload adjuster. It is fully adjustable for length, compression and rebound.

That black hose you can see leads from the shock body to the preload adjuster on the other side of the frame, which you can see better in the picture above.