Burly was the first thing I thought when I saw a three year old Vee-Max. It was parked in the gutter with a for sale sign and telephone number on it. I waited around for ten minutes but the owner didn't turn up. The clock read 33000 miles but the Yamaha looked pristine. I wrote the number down with the intention of phoning up later that day. It wasn't until six days later that I found the scrap of paper......
Which was how I came to be prowling around Bristol on one of the most outrageous motorcycles ever made. This one was an American import, which according to the owner had its 1200cc vee-four engine modified to give rather more than the paltry 100 horses that the current UK model manages.
The way it accelerated was fantastical. Hit as little as 3000 revs and it'd surge forward at a ball-bouncing rate that physically shook my body up. Someone wearing false teeth would probably have them sucked down their throat! The low speed torque of the motor was so amazing that Yamaha could've got away with a three speed gearbox rather than the five-speeder.
The dry weight of the Vee-Max is 575lbs, once some coolant, oil and petrol have been added it must be nearer 625lbs! It's not the kind of bike that hides it mass, it seems to revel in its heftiness, which even with a relatively low seat and low slung engine makes the brawny beast hard going at almost all speeds.
It does feel well planted on to the road and the highish bars give reasonable leverage. The 18 inch front wheel aids stability but does nothing to help with the speed that the Yamaha can be flicked from side to side. I soon learnt that the bike goes best when subjected to a point and squirt riding technique. The first month was an exploration of the interplay between the prodigious power and monumental mass. The power won out!
Acceleration to 100mph happened so rapidly even in third or fourth gear it only took a moment's inattention to break the city’s speed limit by a factor of three. The mass did help keep the front wheel on the ground in the taller gears, but wheelies only needed the slightest of clutch abuse in first or second gear. It was not something I revelled in....having 625lbs waving all over the road inspired only a deal of fear and loathing in my mind.
It was also dead easy to leave a layer of rubber on the tarmac on energetic start-offs. Initially, I found the way the back wheel slewed from side to side wildly more than agitating but after I realised I wasn't going to be thrown off I soon grew to enjoy it. Rear tyres lasted about 2000 miles!
Cornering, on the open road, was interesting. The suspension was okay, didn't allow the wheels to wag around too much, and the frame lacked the usual hinged in the middle feel of some mega-bikes. Fast bends caused a bit of wallowing, bumpy bends shook the wheels and rapid changes of direction wrenched my muscles. However, the Yamaha usually held its line, the sheer momentum resultant from its bulk forcing it ever forwards.
The discs were the kind of vicious nonsense that have no place on a street bike.....the pads were nearly worn out and rattled righteously. I didn't like using them in bends, although the rear disc could be employed tentatively without threatening to throw me off the bike. The front brake worked when huge muscular input was applied to the lever, worked strongly enough to bounce the forks on their stops. New pads helped a little but it was still a disturbing experience in the wet.
After three months I was in two minds about the bike. Every time I felt a little down about life, I could leap on to the Vee-Max, twist the throttle and put my mind into warp drive. Big grin time! The only bugbear was the huge running costs - fuel at 35mpg, tyres every month, brake pads every 4000 miles and insurance almost as much as the bike cost!
I never had any problems from the engine, except for difficult starting in cold weather. I ran the battery dead a couple of times and had to leave it on the charger for a couple of hours. There was no way I was going to even think about bump-starting such a large lump of lard and none of my friends or neighbours were willing to give a helpful push. My neighbour reckoned it'd have torn his Metro apart if he'd tried to tow the Yamaha.
The other electrical bugaboo was the front light, which looked very neat in its chrome shell but had the kind of dip that cut off so abruptly that more than a yard ahead was plunged into complete blackness. The main beam annoyed car drivers to the extent that they flashed wildly, making the sudden use of dip all the more self-destructive as my eyes had adapted to the searing light of the oncoming car.
The main beam also blew once, but I don't think that this was down to vibration as there wasn't any unless the motor was really caned in the lower gears. Under that abuse there wasn't really time to take much notice of the vibes because the bike was accelerating so fast my mind was overloaded with an excess of stimuli. I suspect that there might've been a minor bit of electrical malaise at work, but it didn't go terminal whilst I owned the creature.
The seat is more comfortable than it looks, well matched to the Yamaha's range of around 100 miles. Moderately fast cruising, anything up to 90mph, was no problem for an hour at a stretch, although the pillion complained about their perch's comfort. I was more worried by the wallowing when I took the Yamaha over the ton and the way the whole bike would leap about over bumps at such speeds.
Top speed was not too spectacular by today's standards. About 130mph on the clock. It felt a lot faster than that as there was no plastic to hide behind and my arms, shoulders and neck all took a battering from the wind pressure. Flat out the Vee-Max feels like it's on the edge of going into a speed wobble but this was probably my own personal fear and paranoia taking over. Everything was roaring past at such a startling pace that I was almost pissing myself. The pillion was even worse off, apparently, as wind turbulence shook her about so much she was practically choking the breath out of me in a panicked bear hug.
300 miles in a day was about my limit. Any more than that then the next day I'd wake up with stiffened joints, not wanting to get back on the machine for a couple of days. As it was, I had to give my pillion a fairly intimate massage to revive her spirits. One good point about the Yam is that there's so little space for luggage that I was forced to forgo the horrors of camping in favour of cheap hotels. The pillion was lumbered with a small haversack whilst I had to make do with whatever I could pack into a tank-bag. The latter had a disconcerting habit of coming loose at 90mph.
There were a couple of crannies on the bike where waterproofs could be hidden away but no room for tools. I didn't belong to the AA but had great faith in the bike's basic reliability even as the mileometer closed in on 40,000 miles. Despite what I've written before, for most of the time the Yam wasn't used hard; there was such an excess of torque that there was no need to really cane it through the sometimes truculent gearbox. When I was tired out after a day's riding I'd just leave it in third or fourth, riding on the throttle.
The fun of such tours was spoilt a bit by the way the consumables wore out. Riding the Yam in a moderate manner didn't help, it still went through consumables as if ownership was reserved for multi-millionaires. It was not the kind of bike you could skimp on the consumable front, try to ride it on wore out tyres and it'd object by throwing pant staining wobbles.
After just six months my piggy-bank was empty and unlikely to ever fill up again if I kept on putting the miles on the Vee-Max, something the bike demanded as its right and which I could not resist. Talk about acceleration making you weak at the knees! The nicest surprise I had from the Yam was that it was dead easy to sell.....the night the advert went in the paper it was sold at 500 smackers profit. Sob!
Martin Lewis