Frankenzuki
American FLYERS
FRANKENZUKI
Dale Walker unleashes a monster
YOU'RE A LEADING Suzuki engine builder and retired record-setting Pro drag racer. You’ve got a bike sitting around the shop you sold to a friend long, long ago, and now it’s back. You're bored.
Naturally you end up with a 160-horsepower, monoshock GS 1000 roadracer called “Frankenzuki.” Well, you do if you’re Dale Walker of Holeshot Performance.
The 48-year-old is a noted Suzuki guru, with a long history of building big power from that classic aircooled inline-Four platform, the roller-bearing GS engine, essentially still the basis for most Suzuki dragracing motors.
This bike is not about 60-foot times, though. Walker, an occasional roadracer in his past, decided to have a go once again after working with a friend who campaigns a Honda RS250 in AFM club races at Sears Point.
“I saw these old bikes and geezers in the Dinosaur class while I was out there helping him and thought I'd like to build something to race,” he explains.
An old Suzuki was the natural platform for Walker, but he didn’t use just any bike.
“My buddy Roger from high school owned the bike,” he relates. “I sold it to him when we were like 22 or something and he rode it for a while, but then it sat for 13-14 years in a metal shed. It was a total rust-bucket.”
The rust-bucket in question was a 1980 GSI 100E, the first big four-valver.
“Eve been building those forever,” he says. “I went crazy on the head. I cut the ports off, shortened them, straightened them by making adaptors I pressed in, then matched it all to 36mm Mikuni smoothbores. 1 used those small carbs because I wanted torque.”
Many hours were spent getting everything just so, although he did keep the stock valve sizes.
“To go to big valves, it costs a lot because you have to spread the guides and put in new seats,” Walker says. “For this amateur crap, just to have fun, what’s the point?”
The engine is bored to 1168cc, as big as you can go with the stock liners. JE pistons were custom made to Walker’s spec, with compression set at 13.0:1. The crank, meanwhile, was fitted with stock GS rods, then welded and finished by Falicon.
To ensure all those fine internal parts are kept welloiled, Walker split the sump pickup in two, one at the front and one at the rear.
“I never did one at the front before,” says Walker. “Since all we do on drag motors is accelerate, we just do the pickup at the back. But I thought, lHey, I'm going to be getting on the brakes, too.’”
The five-speed gearbox was sent to Fast by Gasst for the full undercut-dog treatment.
“After all the work, 1 hoped it would make 135MO horsepower,” says Walker. “But the first dyno pull was 149!” Benefiting from some fine-tuning, power is now up to 159 rear-wheel bhp, with a big, linear surge of 90 footpounds of torque.
“It's really useable on the track,” Walker says.
Starting procedure? Note the structure attached to the left crankcase: “I use my external drag-race starter-the roadrace guys don’t know what to think!” he says with a laugh.
That gorgeous piece of engineering was fabricated by Walker’s brother-in-law, Paul McCain, who does all of Holeshot Performance’s (www.holeshot.com) headers and the like at his shop, Orb Engineering.
McCain was key in making a chassis that could harness the power of this engine for roadracing, too.
“We cut the whole back of the frame off and built the rear subframe and adjustable-ride-height suspension mounts,” describes Walker. “Only the cradle, steering neck and gas tank are from the GS.”
“Frankie,” as Walker calls his bike, rolls on 1997 Bandit wheels, while the Race Tech-reworked fork is from an ’01. Walker says the front suspension works pretty well, but adds, “Honestly, the front end isn’t on the ground that much. It’s the back end you’ve got to worry about.”
To try to keep things under control, the original twin shocks and flimsy swingarm just wouldn’t do. In their place is a Fox Twin Clicker in a monoshock Bandit swingarm that was shortened 1.25 inches. To allow the tires to fit the shortened arm, Cameron Woods at Cam Engineering milled out the center section for clearance. Woods also machined the custom footpegs and swingarm-pivot plates.
Despite the wheelbase still being a pretty rangy 58 inches, Walker says the bike will wheelie right through third gear!
RF900 triple-clamps and handlebars are used to make it possible to fit the firstgeneration Bandit fairing while giving a roadracer riding position.
How’s she handle? Pretty good, says Walker, though he allows there is probably room for more chassis tuning. Nonetheless, he has had good success.
“I got a first place in the AFM Dinosaur Class at Sears Point,” says Walker. “I was doing 1:46s...it’s a freakin’ handful going that fast on that bike. It’s twisting and sliding and wiggling, and it’s everything you can possibly do to hang on for your life. I was beat.”
What’s next for “Frankie” after the weaving, headshaking win at Sears?
“It was so scary at those speeds, I’m going to park it in a glass case before I crash it!” Walker says.
When you get down to it, most monsters should be kept in a cage.
Mark Hoyer
