Going Fast is a Slow Process: Sticky’s turbocharged Suzuki Bandit

“Boost is addictive,” says Matt Coulter of Sticky’s Speed Shop. “Insane power delivery and tunnel vision at the same time. I rode a turbo ‘Busa and knew I had to have a turbo bike.”

When Matt makes his mind up it doesn’t take things long to happen. The UK-based builder parted out an Aprilia RSV-R he was trying to sell for a turbocharged Suzuki Bandit 1200, and started a long, expensive journey.

Despite its laughably lame name, the Bandit 1200 became a cult bike in the UK in a way that was never really replicated elsewhere. Following the 600 cc Suzuki Bandits, and smaller 250s and 400s that were never officially imported, the 1200 launched in the UK in 1996 as a naked street bike. The half-faired version followed later.

At the time, the country was running low on affordable, unmolested oil-cooled GSX-R1100 engines, so drag racers and sprinters marched down to Suzuki dealers for these cheap, unflashy muscle bikes.

Some turbocharged them straight away—they knew these motors, and what they could take, inside-out. But turbocharged bikes are rarely hassle-free. Matt was over the moon with his blown Bandit… for exactly two weeks.

“Then it shat itself,” says Matt with some resignation. “The fuel pressure regulator failed, dumped fuel into the turbo and bottom end, and it spun the crank bearings.”

The engine went to the turbo specialists Fast By Me, who rebuilt it with new forged pistons, uprated rods, and one of their own billet drag blocks. “It gives improved oil flow, but it gets hot,” says Matt of the new block. “It’s not designed for London traffic.”

The turbo itself is a modified TD04—the kind used in loads of cars from Imprezas to Volvos—but this one has a fancy billet impeller. The engine breathes through the original bike’s rejetted CV carbs, which apparently work great on turbo bikes. Matt and Dave from Fast by Me made the slash-cut pipe, while Gary, a hot rod fabricator local to Matt, made the uppipe. The clutch is an Orient Express lock-up.

If you’ve seen any of Sticky’s Speed Shop performance customs, you’ll know he doesn’t follow the herd, or choose the more obvious crowd-pleasing style options that some builders rely on for likes and compliments. This is the bike’s fourth look in the 12 years Matt has owned it, and the second since it was nicknamed ‘Scud.’

“I painted it hearing aid beige and thought it looked like the desert camouflage of a US military Humvee,” he says. “Scud being the name NATO gave to a type of missile.”

Let’s pick through some of the more unusual choices—like fitting a 200-plus-horsepower bike with these one-off Talon/Excel wheels and adventure bike rubber. “These are Dunlop Mutants, but I fitted Continental TKC80s when they first came out. The rear wouldn’t last more than 100 miles.”

That didn’t stop Matt from taking the Bandit on a track day at Brands Hatch. “It was raining and it would wheelspin in the four gears I’d dare use. I was just getting the hang of it when one of the oil lines came off…”

Then there was the time a pipe came off the turbo actuator and turbo boost went from 8 psi to 40, “The bike was spinning and wheelieing at the same time, then it span the rear tyre on the rim and ripped the valve out of the tube.” Tubed tires on a turbo bike? Talk about living dangerously.

The tail unit is from a Triumph Street Triple—there’s nothing wrong with that, but Matt had the seat pad covered in ‘controversial’ brown leather. “The old-school performance bike lot hate brown seats because they hate hipsters,” he says, taking the opportunity to wind them up.

The most recent modifications include a full suite of Hel Performance brakes and a Steelheart Engineering billet swingarm. “The swingarm is the first one Steelheart has made from billet and they did it in two weeks for me as a big favor,” says Matt. A Nitron mono-shock offers rear damping, while GSX-R1000K4 forks suspend the front.

Matt has collaborated with English artist and illustrator Ryan Roadkill a number of times, so when Matt wanted some new graphics for the inaugural Worship Moto Show he gave Ryan a call. “The design was inspired by the Scud name, which is synonymous with the Gulf War to me,” says Ryan, “The band of yellow around the front mudguard is suggestive of the red or yellow band around the missile warhead the Scud launchers carried, while the teal green is a nod to Soviet-era vehicle cockpits.”

“I replicated a desert camo pattern for the main body of the design, but Matt had the cool idea of keeping the color but making it a digicam instead. The tear-through is taken from the same shapes I used on the Icon Motosports banner at the show.”

The graphics were made and laid on by Matt’s graphics firm, Image Worx. Scud is waiting for another round of tweaks before being unleashed on the dual carriageways of Essex again. If there’s one thing Matt has learned over 12 years of turbo bike ownership, it’s “Going fast is a slow process.”

Sticky’s Speed Shop Instagram | Images by Thomas Kettlety