The Yamaha FZ-09 The Yamaha FZ-09 is an inline three cylinder motorcycle designed to compete squarely against the popular Triumph Street Triple. Although multi-cylinder engines with an odd number of cylinders are less common, the three cylinder configuration makes a lot of sense for motorcycle use as it’s smoother running than a parallel twin, and…
James Parker and RADD Inc. Suspension The Yamaha GTS 1000 was released in 1993 with unusual forkless front suspension designed by James Parker, a Stanford University trained Industrial Designer with an innate engineering ability – which he used to develop oftentimes unusual motorcycles. In 1971 when he ran a Hodaka dealership Parker created a 120…
Meet Galaxy Custom Galaxy Custom is a Bulgarian custom motorcycle garage, interestingly it lives inside a workshop that builds bespoke high-end furniture – this means they have the skills, personnel, and equipment on hand to build just about any bike they can dream of. Their previous builds have included a couple of BMWs – including a…
The Yamaha TR1 was developed to appeal to the motorcyclists who had been left behind by the great UJM arms race – not all riders wanted a high revving inline-4 that’d snap your neck if you grabbed a little too much throttle. Many riders wanted a bike that favored torque over high-RPM horsepower, a more upright riding position, and a simpler engine that they could work on themselves.
The Yamaha TD3 The Yamaha TD3 is a two-stroke road racing motorcycle released by the Japanese marque in 1972. It’s powered by an air-cooled 250cc parallel twin, with a 6-speed gearbox (reducible to 5 if rules demanded it), it has a horizontally split crankcase, a slippery fairing, it produces 49 hp, and the whole thing…
A Short History of the Yamaha HL500 The Yamaha HL500 was an incredibly important motorcycle for the Japanese marque, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it wasn’t actually built or designed by Yamaha. The HL500 started as an an idea in the mind of Swedish motocross legends Torsten Hallman and Sten Lundin in…
Vintage Steele is a Vermont-based custom motorcycle workshop with a small team of dedicated wrenchers who have made a name for themselves over the past few years by building practical, daily-rideable custom motorcycles. The Yamaha XS650 The Yamaha XS650 was first introduced in 1968 and stayed in production in one form or another until 1985…
Snow bikes have been growing in popularity in recent years, and there’s been a surge in the number of companies making kits that can be bolted to many modern and vintage motocross bikes to convert them for snow use. Orion Anthony is a resident of British Columbia and the founder of Northern Lights Optics –…
The Yamaha SR400 (and its sibling the SR500) are amongst the most reliable, and generally bulletproof motorcycles in existence. This is largely because the engine started life in the Yamaha XT500, an enduro-adventure motorcycle built to compete in the world’s toughest adventure races. It succeeded in its mission, winning both the Paris-Abidjan-Nice and the Paris-Dakar…
The Yamaha XJR 1200 was released in 1995 as a large displacement muscle bike with a comfortable upright riding position, and an almost obscenely wide torque band. Yamaha spent significant time making sure that the XJR 1200, and the XJR 1300 that followed, had sport bike handling characteristics but were tame enough for people to…
The Yamaha OW72 looks remarkably similar to the Yamaha XS650 on which it’s based, but this similarity hides a staggering amount of engineering that was poured into the OW72 by the Americans, Australians, and Japanese in an attempt to catch the Harley-Davidson XR750. The project for the Yamaha OW72 began in 1975 at the behest…
The Deus Grievous Angel is a Deus Ex Machine-built Yamaha SR400 that’s had a significant influence on the custom scene both in its native Australia and further afield in the USA and Europe. It was built by Deus in Sydney in 2010, after which it was placed on display in the Powerhouse Museum for a time,…
