After a week of running around without mechanical incident, only falling off three times due to the completely ineffective brakes, I decided the smokescreen wasn't a sign of knackered bearings. The combination of a 70mph top speed and nearly 100mpg showed that the engine still had plenty of life left. Acceleration didn’t exactly frighten me to death but kept most cars in line up to 50mph.
The brakes went soggy whenever I did an emergency stop from such a speed, proving only that my heart was able to withstand massive stress. The front’s lever would come right back to the bars without seeming to pull the bike up. Riding off the road had strong retardation qualities (for both bike and I, as I often felt I belonged in a lunatic asylum) but as a trail bike the YB gave every impression of falling apart fast. Even on smooth roads I was bumped about in the saddle, the rough stuff akin to being on the big-dipper.
That was how I ended up howling home with a cracked silencer. The constipated engine had trouble catching pushbikes and I didn’t even bother to kick the riders off as the earache was punishment enough. Finding a used silencer was a cinch; loads of YBs end up crashing into cars due to the lack of brakes and the oiled coated exhaust doesn’t rust rapidly. Unless a lot of destructive force is involved the chassis is quite tough.
After a month I was convinced the engine was about to seize up. Cruising along at 70mph for more than ten minutes I could feel the motor tightening up. If I persisted, which I tended to do, then the back wheel momentarily locked up until I hit the clutch lever over which my hand hovered nervously. The engine freed up straight away and didn’t repeat the trick if I sauntered along at 60 to 65mph with just the occasional outing to the magic 70mph.
This wasn’t all that great a loss as an awful lot of gearbox action was needed to maintain that final 5mph and the resulting blurred vibes did rotten things to my eyesight. Against a head wind or up a steep hill, speed could fall right back to less than 50mph. Riding with a pillion had a similar effect. With a mass of less than 200Ibs and only 10 horses, external variables could play havoc with my attempts at breaking the law. There was absolutely nothing in reserve to scoot off down the road when the plod showed up.
Desperate pleading had the required effect when I was stopped for doing 45mph through town. Luckily, I clocked them in the mirrors, which became miraculously clear between 40 and 50mph, in time to abort the planned 60mph howl past the local school. I’m not sure why I delighted in such antics as it was impossible to drop a line of chatter on any young girls in those circumstances.
The only time I lost a cop car was after we’d screeched up a one-way street the wrong way at a wicked pace. I turned left, knowing full well that the short stretch of road was blocked off to cars by pavement and bollards. I managed a small wheelie up on to the pavement, grinning at the squeal of brakes behind me. Blow me if one of the cops didn’t come belting out of the car, wild on his plates of meat. A bit of throttle left him eating the bitter exhaust fumes and I had enough time to make it to my house before the helicopters arrived.
After two months the seizing up started at 65mph and the mill needed a good ten minutes of cooling before she freed up. Someone told me to push the bike backwards in gear to free up the engine but it made no difference that I could see. I changed the oil to a synthetic type and put in a harder grade of spark plug. The result was that it went back to 70mph cruising without seizing for a good half an hour.
By then 23000 miles were on the clock and the chassis was falling apart fast. The brakes were the most obvious failing. Even new shoes and cleaning out half a kilo of asbestos dust didn't help. The brakes might’ve been just adequate for the average Joe going to work and back every day, but for any juvenile out to impress they were crap.
It wasn't as if the Yam had an ace chassis that allowed it to be flicked out of harm’s way. The steering was vague, the damping pathetic and the frontend surprisingly heavy going given the low mass. One amusing trait was the way the bike would veer from side to side if I released the death-grip on the bars. In an adventurous mood I discovered that this was caused by steering head bearings with lots of little dents in them. Probably the result of my experimenting with the tightness of the steering head stem. New bearings helped a little, but the suspension was so worn that I still had to expend a lot of muscle correcting all the wanderings. Not impossible to make it through the corners but the constant fight left little room for finesse - at least my vocal chords had a good workout when the fear set in.
They needed all the training they could get to help out the horn that could never be heard over the rasping exhaust. The quality of the horn was reflected in the rest of the 6V electrics. The switches went haywire in the wet and the lights made night riding as adventurous as sleep-walking in Rio. It was the rear light that caused the one serious accident. At tickover it flickered on and off, so it wasn't that surprising that a speeding car didn’t see me until the last moment. The first I knew of it was screeching brakes, then a huge detonation just before I was hurled through the air. The bike was crunched and I landed heavily on my head. So heavily that I had to wear a neck-brace for a month. It was supposed to be for six months but I'd had enough of the sniggering and excessive physical abuse.
Meanwhile, the Yam was left out in the garden to rust away under the autumn rains. Rather than 26 thou it looked like it had been around the clock - twice. The wheels were also slightly out of line, corrected by the highly technical method of hitting the swinging arm with a large lump-hammer. I had to be careful, though, as the arm was very rusty. A couple of tins of rust-proof paint were thrown at the bike and bye-bye pedestrian blues. My neck was very pained for the first couple of weeks but I survived.
You may’ve gathered that I’m not the most sensitive soul in the whole world, or even Brum, but even I could tell there was something seriously amiss. The engine made some strong knocking noises, the exhaust covered whole streets in smog and the acceleration made old gits on C50s look fast. I tried to close my mind to these horrors and rode on blithely for a couple of months.
By the end, top speed was down to 40mph and fuel had increased to 45mpg. Oil consumption kept whole Arab economies turning over. I kept going until the front fork springs broke! It seemed impossible to break the engine. It seized up often but always freed when left to cool. The forks broke at about 15mph and I avoided being thrown off. Just had my groin whacked by the bars. I was so pissed off I left the rotted machine in the gutter. I doubted that there was anything I could salvage from either the engine or chassis. The clock read 33 thou. No doubt had I ridden it sedately, done some maintenance and kept the thing clean it would've lasted a lot longer.
T. Knowles