Stealth Gixxer

STEALTH GIXXER

A turbocharged Suzuki for the street

MATTHEW MILES

ALI FATAHI SPEAKS IN A CALM, MEASURED TENOR. Listening to him talk, you have the impression that he never gets flustered, that his blood pressure never fluctuates. His black-and-silver GSX-R 1000 is likewise low-key, leaving absolutely no doubt who owns this sleeper Suzuki.

We learned about this understated machine through Fatahi himself, though he claims he’s not looking for attention. He’s been down that road before with other bikes-GSX-Rs mostly. With this latest project, he wanted something that would slip unnoticed through Los Angeles traffic. An in-demand aerospace engineer, Fatahi, 27, doesn’t have a lot of free time to ride, so the sooner he’s able to reach his favorite mountain roads, the better.

That explains the turbo.

Fatahi’s previous motorcycles were all naturally aspirated. “My last bike, a 2002 GSX-R 1000, was totaled in an accident; a lady pulled out in front of me,” he says. Once he recovered from his injuries-a pulled bicep muscle and a severely broken wrist-Fatahi popped for an ’05 model and began modifying it. The turbo was his first acquisition.

Fatahi expected a big increase in performance, but he also wanted to be different. “How often do you see a turbocharged bike on the street?” he asks. “Most bikes, even those that have been modified, pretty much look and sound the same. I wanted something that would shock people.”

Jamie Long, a buddy in Wisconsin, installed and tuned the Velocity Racing turbo kit. Fatahi, a dyed-in-the-wool do-it-yourselfer, then took the turbo apart and reassembled it himself, “just so I knew how it was put together.”

Lopping a couple inches off the bottom of the stock radiator for turbo clearance was part of the build performed by Long; Fatahi fitted the required thicker head gasket and lower-compression pistons. Homemade waterinjection and Crower con-rods came next. Boost set at 14 psi, output was 300 horsepower. Running 8 psi and minus the water-injection, the bike currently makes 220 hp. “Perfect for the street,” Fatahi grins.

“Beautiful thing is, the power is very linear,” he says. “Most people think turbos hit all of a sudden. If you roll on the throttle smoothly, it’s just like a big-inch naturally aspirated motor; power builds all the way to redline.”

Fatahi runs a standard Velocity Racing dump pipe, cut down and the tip beveled to improve angle of lean. With its high-temp black coating, it’s barely visible through a small opening in the lower, right-side cowling. “I was concerned about exhaust heat,” he admits, “but the right footpeg is a little bit higher than the pipe, so heat really isn’t a problem.”

Stock plastic is used throughout, though the standard red accents on the fairing, gas tank and tailsection are now gold to match the Öhlins fork, shock and steering damper. “I had titanium carbon-fiber-actually, aluminized fiberglass-on one of my earlier bikes, and it attracted too much attention, especially from the police,” he says. “I wanted this bike to be more subtle.”

Wheels are c-f, made by BST and attached to lightweight race hubs. According to Fatahi, there are only six sets of these “hybrids” in existence. Brakes were upgraded, too, with radial-mount Brembos, custom Galfer lines and BrakeTech ceramic rotors, the latter installed after our photo shoot. All hardware is Ti. Out back, a modified GSX-R mounting bracket locates the tiny four-piston Brembo that puts the squeeze on an SV1000 rotor, cut down to make it only as wide as the floating pads.

CNC’d Gilles axle adjusters keep the chain and sprockets in line. “I was never happy with the stock chainadjustment blocks; I had to measure and re-measure to make sure everything was right,” Fatahi says. “These are more precise and make adjustments easier.” Crowning touch is a self-locking Gilles Ti axle nut.

As for the rest, Fatahi tried a couple different windscreens before settling on a Zero Gravity race screen. The gel seat was sourced from Suzuki’s accessory catalog, and the black-anodized rearsets with their folding shifter and brake pedal are from MotoGP in Japan, sadly no longer available. The shift rod working with a Bazzaz quickshifter is propped up by a Gilles support bracket, as seen on Yoshimura Superbikes.

Fatahi’s only regret is switching from the standard cable clutch to a hydraulic Discacciati setup. “I wanted matching Brembo brake and clutch master-cylinder reservoirs,” he says sheepishly. “I went through a couple of very expensive master cylinders and had to make my own clutch line before I managed to make everything work properly.”

When he bought this GSX-R, Fatahi told his buddies that he was going to keep it stock. They just laughed, he says, because they knew all too well how much he likes to “fix things up.” Talk about understatement...