1986 Yamaha FZ600
Bought Oct 25 2012 on Ebay… from Bakersfield. 25,898 miles
This brief intro was originally published in the Readers Rides section of May/June 2016 editon of Motorcycle Classics magazine…(scroll to bottom to see copy)
Back in Scotland, around '87ish I spent 2000 hard-earned quid on an FZ600. 10 days into owning it I was doing 115mph up and down the M90. It had me thinking: this isn't going to end well. In a rare counterintuitive moment I decided that racing other bikes round and round in the same direction would be safer, sold it and spent the proceeds on a ratty LC350 w/Microns, Scott leathers, red & white Alpinestars boots and went to the track. Umpteen visits to Knockhill did not a Mackenzie make me but that's another story. Truth is, the FZ left a big space in my heart. Thankfully 25yrs later Ebay threw this up on my screen and I got it for the exactly the same price except in dollars and from Bakersfield, CA, not Dundee, Scotland.
It ran and looked a little rough but a carb rebuild, fluid replacement, new screen, stickers, rev counter and some selective powdercoating (the original pipe & subframe) later, its no pride of the ball but from 12ft away she's still got the looks to find me in the garage for no reason other than to sit and stare
…and then one day in August of 2020 I decided I’d check the oil level….
Not 100% sure what happened but somewhere between bending down to try and see the sightglass (there's no dipstick) and keeping it vertical. it tipped over....
.....as I was adding oil at the time.....the cap to the crankcase was off and glug, glug, glug came the 20/30w which was flowing exactly where I had to try and plant my feet in order to lift it back up again. It was very Laurel and Hardy.
Frst step of recovery accomplished.
Gotta admit......it looks pretty good from here...but....
Up on the lift and on closer examination the main damage evident. Bent fairing stay….took a while to get it bent back where it should be…I think we dodged a bullet though.
While I’ve got it here some long overdue service will be happening:
Oil & filter change. heh
New steering head bearings. (it’s clunking under braking)
New fork seals.
Front caliper rebuild inc new pads.
I’d neer seen this before, but, the fork seal seal leaked so much the oil partially filled one of the reflectors. Had to drill a hole on the other side to empty it….
Brakes
Calipers…
Long unattended, a few too many hours were spent dealing with the calipers. Resistant to the ever dangerous compressed air removal method, the caliper pistons really wanted to remain where they were. The good news was great quality master cylinder and caliper rebuild kits (which include stainless steel pistons ) were available from brakecrafters.com
Untouched for years...
Had to rig up this system in order to get the pistons out....
Of course you could do this with all of this still on the bike, but that would be too easy....
Basically it was a case of repeatedly pumping the calipers out to within a fraction of falling out....
Then pushing them back in again and repeat until they slide in and out easy enough to pull out with your fingers....
making sure to get the gunk out of the seal recess....
then give the insides a good clean and poilsh...
and if you-know-who isn't around, throw them into the dishwasher for a cycle...
rebuilt caliper.....a little bit of very carefully applied hi temp grease is required on the shiny surface to keep it corrosion free and a lubricated plane for the pads to slide along
new copper crush washers always required...
I did not repaint these because 1) a full refurb was never the intention and 2) they look pretty good.
especially when fitted...
Master Cylinder..
Functioned well, but a leaking reservoir seal had the paint deteriorating in plain sight.
Fork Seal Replacement…
Not much to report on this, all pretty much straightforward, other than I finally saw with my own eyes the Variable Damping aspect of these forks. Seems to me like a lot of work to get in there and adjust that little piece that sits at the bottom of the spring.
In order to get the fork tubes out the the sliders you have to undo an Allen bolt that holds the damper rod at bottom of the slider- in order to get that undone you have to somehow stop damper rod from turning. You can either do this with the elusive Yamaha Special Tool #YM-33298 or get a length of dowel from Home Depot and taper the end a bit. It works.
the Haynes manual covers a varity of bikes using the same air cooled in line four. The FJ, XJ and YX 600 Radian.
Almost the exact required amount (315cc) of 10w came out of the forks. Note using the ever reassuring Classic Leak Proof Fork Seals which are generally found on E-bay.
my current stock of BelRay Fork Oil. If it was good enough for King Kenny then it's good enough for me. The FZ took 10w.
Unlike H2 fork tubes, replacements for these are not readily available so I had to clean up these blemishes fill them with epoxy and sand them down. To check that they were smooth gf donated a pair of her stockings which I lightly dragged over the repairs see if they were caught by any irregularities in the epoxy, they didn't, the thinking is if stockings can slide over the repair it's likely the seals will too without being caught or damaged. true story
The Variable Damping offered by Yamaha consists of adjusting this gadget in the middle of the pic.
Although the dust seals look decidedly inside out or upside down they are OEM from Partzilla and correctly installed....
