Grantham Honda GB350

Our mate Jim is manager at Grantham Honda and built this neat street tracker for a European Honda dealer competition. Vote for it here

Here are Jim's words on the bike.

Based on a GB350, this bike has been built by the team at Grantham Honda to be taken to Wheels and Waves in Biarritz this week as part of the Honda Custom build competition where bike builders from across Europe compete for your vote.

‘’We went for a flat track inspired build, the brief was fairly free and easy from Honda, as a show bike it didn’t even need to run… but we’re not really interested in making something that couldn’t be raced or ridden to the pub, I don’t see the point. Being a new-to-market bike in the UK there aren’t many off-the-peg parts available for this model, so we needed to call on some good people.

Most things start with an exhaust. Apart from a bolt-on Yoshi silencer, there wasn’t anything available, and we figured everyone would fit this one. I called an old friend for a very special favour – a full titanium system from the legendary Racefit, built in the UK by hand. Proper stuff. Proper one-off. Proper noise.

For the seat unit and fork guards we gave A16 Racing a call, just up the road. It’s nice to use local people when possible and their fibreglass is spot on. I’ve seen a lot over the years, but this is good stuff.

The paint was done by a good friend Paul at Barkston Refinishing Limited, two mins down the road, great bloke, stopped an Air-cooled 911 respray to get stuck into this, he ‘gets’ bikes…that’s important. We came up with a modern take on the CB schemes from the late 70’s. And stole my race number for the tail and number board…

We had a couple (underestimate) of problems to overcome… rearsets… I wanted billet machined rearsets… nice ones. Proper ones, CNC’d, one-off stuff. And some trick triple claps, shiny, billet aluminium, CNC’d, cool. Best ring DEFTCAD engineering… Tom was as excited as me to get cracking and come out to the dealership with a 3D scanner to start the design work.. Incredible stuff. Couple of weeks later, there you have it! Unreal! Tom said they fitted so nicely he’s thinking of putting them into full production! Watch this space…

Wheels were tricky, again we had to go custom, we managed to get a set of not-yet-available hubs from Rally Raid Products and sent them straight to SMPro Wheels to be laced to 19 inch rims. Shod with 19inch Dunlop DT3s it transformed the stance of the bike immediately.

Brakes.. I know Flat Track bikes don’t have a front brake… we all know that. But just like leaving the rear brake light in place, we wanted the bike actually to be able to be ridden and enjoyed. We phoned helperformance.com for a master cylinder and custom brake lines after removing the ABS system, and ended up with a thumb brake and Hel clutch perch as well… Do we need it… no.… is it cool…. yes. Best bit of all, proper UK made stuff. Nice.

Why the bloody great big K&N sticking out of the side…. Because it’s cool. When I was a nipper, big K&Ns were cool, and it took me back to my youth just looking at it. And the induction noise is something else.

At the last minute we decide the engine looked a little ‘plain’ so the guys at Motone Customs came up trumps with a pair of engine cases, they’re made for CB350s but fit the GB perfectly and really look the part, top tip. A quick bolt on for your GB that really changes the look. Unfortunately the pics we took were taken before the covers arrived but check out the link from Honda for the latest pics.

Nearly all the parts were made in the East midlands, and with the exception of the K&N, all the parts were made in the UK. By proper people, doing a proper job.

There’s a lot more that went into this but they’re the ‘highlights’… Enjoy the pics.’’

It would mean the world to me and the team at Grantham if you could take two seconds to VOTE for our bike build.