A while since my school days and the last time I owned a Yamaha, but I could resist a three figure Yamaha YZF R6. It was a "ran when parked" deal and after sitting outside in 120°+ temperatures in Phoenix AZ it was in a pretty sorry state. All teh fairings had been stripped as the previous owner intended to customize it to a cafe racer style and just hadn't even started. The speedo was held on with a single zip tie tie wrap, all the paint was terrible and of course general maintenace issues had not been taken care of. The key and ignition were missing but it did have a brand new Michelin rear tire!
WATCH IT ALL UNFOLD / UNRAVEL ON YOU TUBE
Needless to say having stripped it down and hooked everything up to see if it would fire up, it didn't. Undeterred I abandoned the idea of getting it running again immediately in favour of starting the customization and potentially discovering issues along the way which may be relevant.
An possible element was unearthed, something I had not come across before, but something which is commonto most modern Yamaha motorcycles and that is a tilt sensor, which cuts off the bike when the angle is considered to be an accident situation. This is a common delete for most track bikes and indeed off roaders as this could be annoying to say the least, if not dangerous in itself if everything shuts down mid corner with your knee on the ground!
As usual, the rear set was chopped significantlyleaving the rear wheel beautifully exposed and out there! After much deliberation of what the rear end might end up looking like, I decided to use the pillion seat as themain seat and dual rear lights, one LED strip for running lights behind a frill and a second LED strip for the brake, mounted under the seat.
Again, as is customary, the factory air box was replaced with individual air filter pods, which just fitted under the fuel tank, leaving the front area free for rerouting the regulator, ECU and other electrical components which were previously housed in the seat frame.
All the brakes were dismantled, cleaned and new apds all round, with a new rear disc and painted caliper. At the same time, I decided to paint thge inside of the rear swing arm which turned out looking pretty cool.
The yellow accents were carried out with various shields and other parts on the bike, the from brake rotors, radiator and some of the cooling pipes were replaced with new yellow silicon hose.Other custom elements included repositioning the coolant overflowwith a custom anodized aluminium tank and repositioning the oil catch tank next to the rear shoch, again with a custom anodized aluminum part.
The yellow and black theme continued with hazard warning strips and decals just for fun.
Custom grill covers were made to sit in the scoops in the frameto hide away someof the electrical wiring which would normally be hidden by the fairing. The frame itself is actually a beautiful scupltured piece with these really nice scalloped vents to add lightness and air flow.
The headlight was replaced with dual colour LED lights mounted under the bottom yoke, giving a really mean low down look and still with enough clearance of the front wheel and the shock absorber travel on full tilt.
The exhaust was finally removed after some seriously stubborn exhaust studs were finally extracted. I tried everything, all minds of penetrating oils and solutions, stud extractor tools which broke, heating, cooling and eventually had to admit defeat and turn it over to a shop with some serious heat and welding equipment who managed to get them all out. Having re tapped the threads, new studs were fitted, the pipes painted matt black and an nice twin outlet exhaust mounted.
