Picture below is of my 1999 R1 shortly after I purchased it from John Pease Motorcycles in Chelmsford in April of that year.

I kept the bike for six years and then, very reluctantly, sold it. After many years of race-rep style bikes I decided to tryout others and this had to go to make room. Did many a sunday run and even track days on this and it could live with anything out there.

This bike was fantastic all round. It was extremely quick, handled impeccably, build quality was very high, working on the bike was easy, maintenance costs were minimal and nothing ever went wrong in all the time I had it.

First addition was to add a high level Devil exhaust as the standard one is way too quiet. Did a fair bit of research and selected the Devil, which turned out to be an excellent choice.

Steering damper. Most of my time is spent on fairly bumpy A/B roads rather than nicely surfaced duel carriageways and as such I set the bike up best for those conditions. I found that the standard set-up of the bike made the front end way to lively when the front wheel is skipping the surface under full throttle or under heavy breaking. The first thing I did was to add an Ohlin's Steering Damper with a cross-the-frame Harris fixing kit. Quality and performance of the Ohlins was top.

Rear suspension ride height adjuster. To reduce the force on the front, I got an adjustable linkage for the rear suspension. Usually these are used to increase the ride height to make bikes turn quicker, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted to back it off and put more weight toward the back of the bike. I ran with about 25mm reduced height at the back. This combination made the bike far more stable for the conditions I used it for and for my riding style. I have taken it on track days with this set-up and really couldn't notice any adverse effects there either.

Tyres. I always got on with Metzlers on the EXUP, so decided to try the same on the R1. Got a pair of MEZ1 Racing compounds. These work really well with the bike both on the road and on Track days.

The grip these tyres offer is pretty extreme as the above pictures show from one of the tacks days I did.

Next I got rid of the rear mudguard set-up. Simply didn't look right and was difficult to clean. Got an under tail unit from Rhencullen. I have purchased a few from them for different bikes and always been impressed. Unlike some, their kits actually fit as they say they will, come wit good fitting instructions and their colour coding is spot on.