Six-Shooter
San Diego's Christopher Cross has been working hard for over five years now to personalize his Kawasaki ZX-6R, and the raft of trophies he's brought home recently from West Coast-area shows suggest all his hours of tweaking and tuning are paying off. Painted dark purple metallic with custom "chrome" graphics from Sticky J Graphics, the Six-Shooter absolutely gleams with chromed rims, frame and swingarm, all from Xtreme Polishing and Chroming. Carbon fiber fork skins and a carbon-look seat skin give the bike a racer look, backed up by performance features like the Yoshimura RS-3 stainless slip-on muffler, Braking Wave rotors and Russell braided stainless lines. Indeed, in the six years since the bike was built, Cross has reworked or replaced pretty much every single component on the bike; rather than redo stuff he's already done, he recently picked up a 2005 Yamaha YZF-R1 that he's going to give a similar custom treatment to-we're looking forward to seeing the results of that rebuild as well.
 All that chrome and polished...  All that chrome and polished aluminum sure does look good against the deep purple metallic paint on Christopher Cross' ZX-6R. The checkered-flag graphics are stick-on, made-to-order by Sticky J Graphics. |  Laser-cut heel guards and...  Laser-cut heel guards and chainguard are a nice touch; make sure you've got an extra-deep socket on-hand to work with that extra-pointy rear axle nut! | |
Long, Low And Looped?
The theory behind adding an extended swingarm to a sportbike is all about preventing wheelies. But throw enough nitrous at a built sportbike motor and you can still blow it over backwards even with an extra-long arm. This is what Toledo, Ohio's, Mark Urban found out in 2003 when he looped this '93 CBR900RR during an AMA/Prostar competition at Norwalk Raceway Park, breaking his back in the process. Now rebuilt, Urban still regularly rides his CBR on the street with his boys for ToledoSportbikeRiders.com. The bike is still set up to AMA/Prostar specs, lowered three inches front and rear with a ten-inch-over Trac Dynamics extended swingarm and Performance Machine spun aluminum "Chicane" wheels. Under the repainted bodywork lurks a heavily breathed-on 893cc inline four, set up with Erion racing cams and exhaust, an MRE lockup clutch and airshifter and, of course, the aforementioned NOS wet nitrous kit.
Going To Town
Disappointed with the performance of your GSX-R600? Take a cue from Anthony Towns, the president of Zero Dimensionz Bike Club (www.zdtampa.s5.com) in Tampa, Florida, and replace the anemic 600cc mill with a 1000cc screamer from the GSX-R1000, complete with a big shot of nitrous oxide. You'll never complain again! Capable of completing an 8.6-second quarter-mile, the engine-ectomy in Towns' Gixxer was done by the guys at Fish's Customs in Columbia, South Carolina, who also laid down the "bowling-ball blue" metallic paint and installed the extended swingarm that allows such a quick quarter-mile time. There's hardly another GSX-R1000 in Florida that can keep Towns' "600" in sight, to say nothing of his poor wife Amy who is usually playing catch-up on her own trick-looking (but stock displacement) black and pink GSX-R600.