Neil or ‘Chappy’ as he’s more widely known, got into motorcycle racing after his RG150 exploded ‘cruising’ home after work. It was rebuilt and then never returned to the road. He won regional championships specialising in smaller capacity classes. After competing in nearly every class, his strength was in developing and improving race machines. Chappy’s passion is to develop bikes, which led him to the Formula 3 class – the tuner’s stomping ground.
His race machine is a fully modified ZXR400 Ninja running a 650cc fuel injected twin motor. When Chappy isn’t messing around with his ZXR, he’s busy cleaning his 1973 Kawasaki S2a. It’s a 3 cylinder two stroke.
Chappy has found it hard to get out on the bikes as much as he used to as in 2014 he became a RNZAF helicopter loadmaster. He is based at Ohakea where the doorway of a NH90 helicopter is his office.

Neil Chappell - 2012 Meadspeed 650

Neil or ‘Chappy’ as he’s more widely known, got into motorcycle racing after his RG150 exploded ‘cruising’ home after work. It was rebuilt and then never returned to the road. He won regional championships specialising in smaller capacity classes. After competing in nearly every class, his strength was in developing and improving race machines. Chappy’s passion is to develop bikes, which led him to the Formula 3 class – the tuner’s stomping ground.
His race machine is a fully modified ZXR400 Ninja running a 650cc fuel injected twin motor. When Chappy isn’t messing around with his ZXR, he’s busy cleaning his 1973 Kawasaki S2a. It’s a 3 cylinder two stroke.
Chappy has found it hard to get out on the bikes as much as he used to as in 2014 he became a RNZAF helicopter loadmaster. He is based at Ohakea where the doorway of a NH90 helicopter is his office.

2012 Meadspeed 650:

The Kawasaki ZXR400 was a very popular F3 bike and Chappy competed on one and developed it. It ended up as a 450cc super-hot rod that revved to the moon but the maintenance burden was unbearable. So MeadsSpeed Fabrication jammed a newer 650cc fuel injected parallel twin into the beast. A full porting job was carried out by Brian Bernard and Colt Cams made some custom race camshafts. It runs 42mm throttle bodies, Je Forged pistons with Carrillo H beam Conrods, 14.5:1 compression, Balanced crank, flywheel removed, and Yoyodine racing ‘slipper’ clutch. The bike runs a custom Ohlins rear shock, Ohlins internals in the front, Brembo Cast Iron 300mm twin disc brakes, Dymag carbon fibre/magnesium wheels, custom fuel cell and carbon tank cover, hand built titanium exhaust weighing a grand total of 1.5kgs! The MeadsSpeed 650 has over 100hp and weighs less than 150kgs fully fuelled.