Yamaha FZR600

Hot was how I felt. From a combination of the FZR's riding position laying me out in the sun to bake and from the excess heat barrelling up from the engine, seemingly trapped and then funnelled up by the plastic. The riding position made me feel like I was laid out on the rack. All these things added up to a need to annoy the Sunday afternoon cagers by zapping through the gaps at maximum revs in first gear. The decidedly non-standard 4-1 exhaust note threatened to both blow away their eardrums and shatter their windshields. The reason I didn't change up, there was such a mass of traffic that speed was severely limited.

One minor consequence of maximum revs and noise was that some cagers would try to throw their cars out of my path, causing a chaos of horns and coming close to the old pile-up blues. I just wished they would stay still for long enough for me to get past them! At that point I'd owned the Yamaha all of 48 hours but had rapidly concluded that as far as power and handling went it was bloody brilliant - not just a consequence of Japanese engineering finesse in the last of the line of their FZR designs, but also due to my having just graduated from a poxy Honda CB250N Superdream. Like switching from lemonade to meths!

For all the Honda's inherent nastiness it did have one thing going for it - a riding position that was as comfortable at 90mph as it was at 9mph. The race replica craze had endowed the FZR with a bum in the air, knees in the chest and imminent falling off of arms feel that had me homicidal within minutes of seating my far from svelte frame on the saddle. I'm down to 85kg from an all time high of 145kg! Imagine the effect of the latter's mass on the Superdream's, er, performance.

The FZR was all gung-ho, not even needing a massive amount of gearbox work to scream up the street at amazing rates of acceleration. On the first day some plonker in a Porsche was left for dead with hardly any effort...on the second day a couple of louts armed with high-end GTi's were similarly despatched - a fitting revenge as I'd been knocked into the gutter on the Supernightmare a few times by such types. Used to make me itch for Happy Henry's tyre iron.

I like riding motorcycles - one of the major advantages of biking is that whilst in the saddle it's difficult to consume food. No doubt Slimmer's World, and the like, wouldn't applaud my dietary techniques, but a day in the saddle added up to major weight loss, as well as adrenaline overdrive which got the glands working at a rare old rate. The antics of the cagers, and consequent raging heart rate, must've been a good form of workout and the way the bike accelerated must've set the whole body alight...anyway, I find it no coincidence that I've lost loads of weight since taking up motorcycling!

As soon as the traffic cleared up a little I was way gone. Hurtling down the centre of the road, working the throttle and gearbox for all they were worth. The odd blast on the horn kept the cagers out of my way, though they must've been deaf not to hear the exhaust wail. The acceleration in third and fourth was crafted to give the rider a high every time, catch the gearchange and revs dead on and it'd seemingly go into warp drive. I felt totally f..king invincible.

With my weight on board, the brakes felt a little less than divinely inspired. The bike would pull up but it wasn't in the fearsome stoppie country that some cycles manage - at least according to the glossy motorcycle press. Thus, with my ton-plus speeds and meandering cars, I had a few moments of near self-destruction. One thing about the lightweight Yamaha, it could be shrugged on to a new line even whilst the front forks were shuddering under the maximum braking pressure.

Top speed was 155mph on the clock, less than that in nasty old real life. The fairing sent the wind straight into my face - if you weigh about eight stone you might just be able to get down on the tank to avoid it - and would've torn my head off if I'd been foolish enough to look behind to see how many cop cars were on my tail, as the mirrors had blurred into uselessness. The vibes never had any effect on me, I barely noticed them, but the mirrors did like to twirl off at about 130mph - not the kind of velocity at which to take a hand off the bars to tighten them up!

Handling and stability were absolutely marvellous. I haven't ridden more recent hyperbikes and may well be talking out the back of my bum, but I couldn't fault the FZR. Easy turning in town it still managed to feel as if on rails when flat out - that old cliche is rather defunct given the way modern trains shuffle around at speed, but you get the meaning, right? A lot of its fantastical stability down to the massively strong Deltabox frame - something much copied by other manufacturers but not bettered, it seems to me.

On one of my less on the ball days - heavy night out with the lads, tongue lashing by the nearest and dearest, and howling wolves next door keeping me awake, etc - I managed to ride over a small dog that had wandered on to the local dual carriageway. I was doing about 80mph when I felt the bars shake in my hands and then the back wheel sort of squelched.

A couple of cagers went berserk on their horns. Thinking some serious defect had occurred I pulled over. One cager was completely out of his head, calling me a murderous swine for taking out the dog. I was just relieved the FZR wasn't damaged. If it hadn't been for the cagers I would've ridden on thinking it was a small stone or something. That just shows how hard it is to upset the Yamaha's poise!

About the only time I felt like I was really going to die was when the bike hit a series of pot-holes in a sweeping, 90mph curve. I'd been distracted by the sight of some farmer attacking a couple of sheep, was rudely brought back to the real world by the forks flopping about in my hands and then the back wheel trying to fall out of the frame. I twitched the bike upright and made the last bit of the bend a straight line, saved the plot from going ga-ga on me.

After a couple of months of riding the FZR I still haven't become the least bit bored with the bike - too much speed and startling acceleration, plus the fact that its handling finesse lets you get away with murder. The watercooled four cylinder engine has yet to break through the ten thousand mile mark, the previous owner one of those sensible mature types who'd carefully ran it in and was only selling so he could buy a new R1. The motor sounds brand spanking new, the slick gearbox a sure sign that the mileage is genuine - they go off with age, one 45000 mile FZR I tried had a worse gearbox than on the Superdream, which is saying something.

The bike ain't perfect. My main complaint centres on the lack of comfort - I've seen some FZR's with the plastic stripped off and flat bars fitted; I want one! The best of both worlds. As to the rest of it, chassis and engine work brilliantly together, make a relative novice feel like a real hero the first time out - the more the bike's used the better it gets. I know some people get bored with the sheer sophistication of the Japanese straight fours but the FZR feels more like a living, breathing being than a mere collection of mechanical components...sorry, it's time to hit the road again. And again. 

Robert Reiss