Yamaha FZ750 Restoration - Suspenders and Fast Rides.

Cracking blast today!

I'll digress at the start of the blog today. I'm having a great day! We all met up early for a fastish blast this morning and the 2002 R1 got to pit itself against a much-too-loud 2014 S1000RR (running 196BHP at the wheel). We also had a ZX14R, Diavel, CBR600RR, CBF13000, and an MT-07. She, the R1, limped home on three cylinders in the end but really did herself proud. 

Yamaha FZ750 Restoration - Clip-ons (handlebars)

 I got a bent one!

So the left clip-on has taken a bruising at some stage, not to mention the rust. I initially thought it might be able to be straightened but it had flattened the tube where it was bent and would never be right however much you looked at it. Secondhand ones are few and far between, and expensive, and I didn't want to risk getting another bent one.

On closer inspection of the offending item, you can see where they are originally welded to the cast clamp. With a bit of careful drilling and jiggery-pokery, we should be able to get the old steel tube off the clamp itself. It was pretty solid but gave way in the end. 

I cut off the bad section and placed what was left in the lathe to take the outer diameter down enough to remove the threaded section that holds the bar end weights. Eureka!

All that was left to do was to go to the steel shop and pick up a length of 22mm pipe with a 2mm wall thickness. Pretty common, one would hope. Not in Australia it would seem, it's no longer available.

I then ordered some "Pipe Furniture" sections which were supposed to be 22mm O.D., but even they turned out to be 21mm. Bridgey pointed out the old handlebars on the ZXR project bike (more on that later) and it gave me an idea. A set of straight drag bars should give me the dimensions I needed. Then I remembered a load of factory-seconds bars I bought and stored a while ago. I already had the correct material in stock!

So this is how it looked. The end is pitted with rust because Yamaha didn't paint them right to the end. For obvious reasons on the throttle side, I guess, and then they just wanted them to look the same.

1985 Yamaha FZ750 - The Start Of A Restoration.

Honest, it followed me home...

There are still quite a few bikes that I want to own one day, mainly nineties sports bikes, a few really old bikes, and quite a few other odd ones that might just happen one day. One I've been after for quite a while, especially since seeing a lot of restomods on them, is the FZ750 - the half-faired, original version. To me, that thing is sheer beauty. 

When one popped up at my favourite bike breakers - Motogenn, in Burleigh, Gold Coast - I sent Paulo a text "Put my name on it! I'll take it."

Paulo insisted, "Come and have a look first."

"I'll take it!"

For those who don't know Paulo, he is an absolute gentleman, extremely helpful and who deals in mostly modern motorbikes. I've had several parts from him for the R1, amongst other projects, and his prices are the fairest around. Anyway, I popped over for a look, said yes I'll grab it, and came back with the money a few days later. She's gonna be awesome!

Loading it in the van was easy, Paulo had a decent ramp to get it in. It took two of us to push it in (it has no working brakes) and it just needed a good, confident shove. 

When I got it home, I had no such luxuries. I found a shitty old pallet that was nowhere near long enough and got ready to launch it on my own. Figuring this would end in disaster, I asked a neighbour to help me. She quickly, and quite rightly, declined but said her housemate, Corey, would love to. So, out comes old mate, barefoot and looking somewhat bewildered. I told him to jump in the van and hang onto the handlebars, and I would hold the back as it rolled down the pallet.

This would have been ok, had the pallet not given way under the weight of the back wheel which then left the bike jammed on its exhaust and on the edge of the van. Bugger! It just needed a good pull backwards to free it and, sure enough, with a good tug, we were mobile once more. 

And this is when things got exciting for old Corey. I didn't have much control after getting it moving and the bike shot out at great speed with Corey hanging on for grim death, straddling the front wheel, barefoot and quickstepping on a very steep, rough pallet. All I could think was we are going to drop this bike, but no, Corey hung on well and it stayed upright. He was bloody marvellous to be fair and, legend has it, he even had most of the splinters out of his feet by the morning.