The R5 has SOLD

And so, it is with a heavy heart, that I finally sold the R5 today. The gentleman who purchased her had one of his own, same year and color, as his very first vehicle back when he was 16. I am glad she has gone to a good new home. The above is a parting shot as she was loaded up and headed to her new stomping grounds in upstate New York.

THE R5 IS FOR SALE!

That's right, kids. It's a sad day, but I'm moving and losing the garage space I've enjoyed these past couple of years... so it's time to let someone else enjoy the old stinker.

You can go back through the archives on this site to see the progress and effort put into getting this bike up to snuff... but here's a short recap of the highlights:

3,000 original miles when purchased. 4,480 miles currently. The bike was found in storage where it was parked for 25 years. It has a small dent on the gas tank which happened at some point in storage, otherwise it is in excellent condition. Serviced by licensed HD-approved motorcycle mechanic. The color is metallic orange and black. The bike comes with the original owner's manual and complete original toolkit, as well as period shop manual. Everything in great shape - no exterior rust, no dry rot, no cut wires, 99% original.

What's been modified:
- Clubman bars
- Raask drilled aluminum rearsets
- bent kickstart lever (to clear rearsets)
- NOS dental mirrors, both sides

All original parts retained. Many extras, such as Napoleon bar-end mirrors, period sissybar, oil tank, sidecover, etc. Matching frame/engine numbers. About $1000 put into restoration. Needs new battery (which is on order).

See more photos along the right-hand side of this site.

I'm located in the Fishtown area of Philadelphia, and as the bike isn't running currently (working on getting a battery) I'd prefer to show locally, but I'm open to offers and suggestions...

Feel free to email me with any questions, and please forward this on to anyone you know who might be interested.

Questions about Bars, Mirrors, and Leaky Pipes

Alex wrote is with some questions:

Awesome R5 you got! Where did you get your cafe racer handlebars and mirrors? Also, does your bike seep oil from it's pipes? If so, any tips on how to correct that?

Alex -

Thanks! I replaced the stock bars for lower, somewhat uncomfortable (until I added rearsets) but much better looking cafe bars. The bars are clubman-style, non-adjustable, similar to this. You can find them just about everywhere, in a few different styles and finishes. Just make sure you get the right diameter for the Yamaha.

Note: In order to get the clutch lever off the stock bar, I had to cut off the stock hand grip. I tried not to, but the sucker wouldn't budge. Once the one was cut, well, I went ahead and replaced them both with ProGrip 699 Superbike grips. They have a good vintage look to them, and are pretty cushy to soften vibrations. I simply took an Xacto to the grip ends and trimmed myself a hole on both sides to make way for the mirrors.

Now about those bar-end mirrors... while looking great, no matter how much tightening and adjusting, they just never stayed put. The one thing I could count on was a good view of the ground behind me or my armpit - not good when you actually need to check your background for a quick lane change. They may have just been the brand I ordered (Napoleon), so your mileage may vary.

Anyways, I decided to remove the bar-ends, replace the stock endcaps in their stead, and remount the original stock dental mirror. I managed, after quite some searching, to find a NOS right-side mirror. It didn't quite fit, but with a little Loctite and some swearing I made it work.

The stock left mirror that came with my bike is convex, so it gives me a greater viewing area on my passing side, while the right mirror is flat and just gives me a direct view of what's behind me. The way they're mounted (into the threads on each lever) they are high enough to be useful but not look like antennae, in keeping with the whole cafe racer aesthetic.

As for oil seeping from pipes, I do get a drip or two now and again, same from the case bottom. Nothing too serious. If you're having more than that, I would look into it... anyone here have any suggestions?

Off to the Shop!

It's been a long time coming. After two seasons off, the bike is going to be revived. Once again, it takes a birthday and awesome friends.

This past weekend the bike was trailered out to the 'burbs by our friend Jim in his cool enclosed trailer, and just today it was picked up for service. Not long now until she's back on the road, smoking it up.

I will post findings and repair info as I get it. Stay tuned!

Yahoo! Yamaha R5 Group Bike of the Month

Unless they're fooling with me (it is the first of April after all), my bike has been crowned Bike of the Month for April 2008 on the newly renovated Yahoo! Yamaha R5 Group.

For the unaware, this Yahoo! group is populated with folks who are most knowledgeable in all things vintage Yamaha. Without their help many of the problems with and parts missing from my R5 would never have been sorted. I thank them very much!

Be sure to check them out, and to sign up if you haven't already!

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha-r5-group

Rebuilding the Carbs

Finally got a nice Saturday with no real plans - except tackle the R5's nagging problems, of course!

Drained the oil and transmission fluid, cleaned the carbs, and right now the bike is slowly coming back up to charge. We'll see how I did soon enough...

Progress...

There is much progress across the pond (just look at all the innards there!) as Stephan Morris continues the renovation of his '72 R5C.

His work is getting me motivated to sort my bike out. Right now, the battery is holding a charge (so that problem is finally fixed) but the bike won't start. I just keep kicking until gas starts leaking out of the exhaust. Not good. Picking up a tune-up kit (points and condensors) very soon...

Challenged!

I was challenged on Motortopia by a 1976 AMF Harley. We tied. It doesn't even run. Sheesh.

Motortopia Featured Bike

My R5 has recently been featured on the Bikes section of Motortopia (see previous post about the site). Here's their short writeup:

This really nice 1972 Yamaha R5C is owned by Motortopia member lotoole3. Be sure to check out his photo album, and the link to his weblog detailing the entire restoration.

Here are links to the Feature and to my R5 profile.

Thanks guys!

Motortopia

Motortopia has launched - a cool, MySpace-like site for cars, bike, planes and boats. The site is really well-designed, and lets you upload photo albums, make friends and challenge other owners in style, performance and overall coolness. Check it out... there aren't a lot of bikes on there yet, so get posting!

My R5 can be found here:
http://www.motortopia.com/lotoole3/bikes

Stock Right Hand Mirror

After a few months of searching, I was finally able to locate a mount for the stock R5 right-hand mirror I picked up. It didn't quite fit, but with a little Loctite and some swearing I made it work. I can finally see behind me!

The stock left mirror that came with my bike is convex, so it gives me a greater viewing area on my passing side, while the right mirror is flat and just gives me a direct view of what's behind me. Nonetheless, it's already been a great help.

You can also view the mirrors in my R5 Flikr set.

Rear Set Installation

Finally, here it is! The rearsets go on! I documented everything while doing it, getting the camera nice and oily in the process. I apologize for the picture quality, as the lighting in the garage is not studio-grade, and I was one-handing most of the shots!

• Flickr photo series of rearset install
  

Bend that Kickstart Lever!

Last night I went over to my friend Brian's house (fellow rider and business partner in PRIMER), where he graciously lent his vise, torch and shutterbugginess to my ongoing quest of mounting rearsets to the R5.

To recap, I got Raask rearsets for the R5 from friends for my 30th birthday. However, when mounted, the relocation of the rear brake lever impedes the full travel of the kickstart lever, meaning if I put 'em on I wouldn't be able to get the bike started easily. This required heating and bending the kickstart lever to clear the brake before mounting. I got a spare kickstart off Ebay a few weeks ago, and finally got the chance to start bending things into shape last night.

Here, Russ (in background, fellow Yammie rider and also a member of PRIMER), Brian and I take turns heating, bending, and swearing at the lever in Brian's basement workshop. It was quite fun, I must say. The process was well-documented by Brian himself:

• Flickr photo series of bending
  
• Video of bending action (492k QuickTime)

Stay tuned... there's more to come on the saga of the R5 rearset install...

Parts are coming in...

Finally got the right set of rearsets from Omar's. These were a gift for my 30th from my friends, just about all of whom ride. At first I had gotten the wrong set, but the right set (shown above loosely mocked up) has arrived.

It's amazing how light these things are. All major components are made from cast aluminum, and have lightening holes wherever possible. They look great!

I haven't mounted them to the bike yet, as doing so requires that I bend the kickstart lever. So until I can do that, the stock foot controls will have to stay. I picked up a used kickstart lever from Ebay so I can keep one in reserve for when/if it needs to be switched back. Or if I screw up bending it!

I tracked down and purchased a NOS right-hand mirror from Roland via the Yahoo! R5 Group. Finally I'll be able to see behind me completely! It just arrived, but I need a bracket to mount it, so I'll have to do more digging to scrounge one of those up.

ALIVE!

So after so much speculation as to what could possibly be wrong with my bike (condenser? points? coils?), it turns out that the battery was shot and wouldn't hold a charge. Mike over at Hiway Cycle was nice enough to fill up my new battery with acid and charge it up... and first kick she roared back to life!

Apparently, the ignition on the R5 relies completely on the battery for spark. So, a bad battery = poor spark. A good, fully charged battery should be able to run the bike for a few hours or so, with no lights on.

Anyways, looking forward to a nice long riding season.

Rearsets! Rearsets!

For my Big-Three-Oh-Birthday-Bashtacular, my super-cool friends decided it would be best to mark my three centuries of non-stop-rocking this planet with some cool vintage rearsets for the R5! How freaking cool is that?

They haven't arrived yet, probably because there's not much demand for obscure early 70's Yamaha model rearsets at the moment... but I was awarded the instruction manual so I can drool over those puppies until they actually get here. Photos of said sets, installation and all their shiny, rear-set-y glory will be posted as it all goes down. Stay tuned...

Uber-special thanks to Brian, Michelle, Jim, Angela, Russ, Jessica, Lee and Jenna!

Grips and Mirrors

JD wrote in to ask a good question about the bar and grip setup on my R5:

I noticed that you have bar end mirrors, do you also have stock grips? If so how did you install the mirror on the throttle grip - just cut a hole?

Here's the deal. I replaced the stock bars for lower, somewhat uncomfortable, but much better looking cafe bars. In order to get the clutch lever off the stock bar, I had to cut the stock grip. I tried not to, but the sucker wouldn't budge. Once the one was cut, well, I went ahead and replaced them both with open-ended ProGrip 698XL Superbike grips.

Well, sorta.

The 698XLs I ordered wound up being closed-ended, despite the description on the site I bought them from, and they didn't carry the open-ended ones. That's OK, though, as I discovered that I really wanted the 699 Superbike grips... same company, same material, just a cooler grip pattern. And supposedly open-ended. So I exchanged for those.

And, of course, they arrive close-ended. So at this point I simply took an Xacto to them and trimmed myself a hole. Both grips, as I had mirrors on both sides.

The grips are excellent. They really dampen the vibration of the motor. However, the bar-end mirrors, while looking rather trick, no matter how much tightening and adjusting, they just never stayed put. The one thing I could count on was a good view of the ground behind me or my armpit - not good when you actually need to check your background for a quick lane change.

So, I decided to remove the bar-ends, replace the original black plastic caps that came with the cafe bars in their stead, and mount the original dental mirror. While it's only on one side, I really like the look of it. Plus, due to the lower speeds of the bike while cruising, I'm usually in the right hand lane anyways. I may keep an eye out for a NOS mirror for the other side too... might not look bad with both on there...

For more info, see posts titled Mirror Swap (5/31/04) and Hmmmm... (7/13/04), below.

Mirror Swap

I had bought bar-end mirrors for the R5 and installed them when I put on the clubman bars. While I love the clubmans, the mirrors really got on my nerves... No matter how much tightening and adjusting, they just never stayed put. The one thing I could count on was a good view of the ground behind me - not good when you actually need to check your background for a quick lane change.

So, this past weekend, while polishing the stinker to a high shine, I decided to remove the bar-ends, replace the caps in their stead, and mount the original dental mirror. While it's only on one side, I really like the look of it. Plus, due to the lower speeds of the bike while cruising, I'm usually in the right hand lane anyways. I may keep an eye out for a NOS mirror for the other side too... might not look bad...

Now I'll have to change the header image, as the bike has had some changes since...

Had a bit of trouble with the battery this weekend - it had gone totally dead... after two days on the charger it came back to life, but while riding, if I used the turnsignals, the bike would stall. Don't know what that's all about. Either the battery is bad, or the voltage regulator and/or rectifier units are bad...

Anyways, that's it for now... bike is due for inspection soon, so hopefully all this can get sorted out.

Relocating the front turnsignals

One thing I remembered doing to my bike that I neglected to mention before was relocating the front turnsignal pods when putting on the aftermarket cafe bars.

When I got my R5, the front signals were mounted on the forks on factory-looking washer-like mounts located just under the top fork nuts:



Sorry the picture isn't very clear - these were taken by the previous owner and posted as part of the eBay auction. But at least you can see that the signals are not attached to the sides of the headlamp, but further back by the forks. You can see the bolts that hold the headlamp on just in front of the signal lenses. See the pic below for comparison.

Anyways, the problem was this - when I mounted the new cafe bars, the hand controls would not clear the turnsignals - there was just no way to have them both in the same spot. I had seen the front signals on other R5s mounted on either side of the headlamps, and in fact, there is a depression in the metal that is the same size as the end of the signal arm (I think there were holes for the locator pins as well - you can kinda make them out in the photo above). So with a little fineggeling I moved them there and ditched the mount washers:



Is there any reason to why some bikes have the fork mounting location and some are mounted on the headlamp ears? Model year difference? Is this something owners did for better clearance, or what?

Anyways, just something to keep in mind if your bike is set up the same way...

Yammy Causes Hit-and-Run!

This weekend, I had parked the R5 at Brian and Michelle's house, while Brian and I went to oogle Russ' new Mini. While we were there, apparently some guy in a primer-grey pickup with a snow-plow was driving down the street, and the driver was oogling my bike. Oogling so much that he hit a car parked on the opposite side of the street. So the driver gets out, surveys the damage, and - get this - gets back in the truck and drives away! While witnesses look on! Nice one, tool!

Yet another person that should be locked in a Port-a-Potty, set on fire and pushed off a cliff.