Faults:

Nothing except a leak at the petcock valve.

General Comments:

This motorcycle I bought off a guy on the internet seven months ago, and from the day I bought it, this bike has been one of the best bikes I've had. Super reliable, lots of power, handles excellent; I'm not a huge guy, but you can really throw it into some road corners.

Fuel MPG is pretty good. My only thing would be one more top gear for highway, but it's a lot more fun on back country roads. I have an oil cooler up front, as the air cooled engine gets hot in city traffic, and revs high keeping highway speeds.

Love it. Thanks Yamaha!

Faults:

Pick up coils quit working.

General Comments:

This is an awesome bike with plenty of power. The only problem I had was the last ride of 2018 it was 40 degrees and wouldn't start. I had just rode it to work a couple days before at 38 degrees and it ran perfect. Well I put off fixing it until 2019, but I talked to a tech that worked on them back in the early 80s. He said that the only 2 things it could be is the ignition box or the pick up coils. So I ordered the coils off eBay that bolt on the left side of the bike and started changing them as soon as it showed up. Well I realized it had a ground screw directly underneath in between the engine and exhaust. So I put it all back together, worried that I would break exhaust bolts if I tried removing the exhaust. I then ordered the box off eBay in the meantime just to see if it was as simple as that. No dice, it showed up and didn't fix a thing. Time went by and in the spring of 2019 with warmer temps I started getting more serious about. In all this time I kept it on a battery tender walking by and hitting the starter from one week to the next. Lo and behold it started. I rode it around town like we were best friends again and thinking not what just happened but keep running baby. The next day I went out for a ride and same deal as before - crank, crank, crank and no start. I thought well this is it, the exhaust is coming off and I am putting in the pick up coils no matter what. Guess what it fixed it and I didn't break any bolts.

So the mid to tail end of 2019 I have been enjoying this bike all the time. With every fill up 44 MPG. The last trip I dumped in over half a can of Seafoam and the normal 87 no alcohol gas and got 47. This got me excited for more so I spent the last few day setting the valves. The eBay tool to do this was a week out so I made my own. The next problem was I had no shims, but I remembered a guy from work that retired was big into KZ1000s and he loaned me all he had. So I took advantage of it and got all the valves set on the high side because by design it's always trying to tighten up as the valve beats into the seat (in my humble opinion anyway). My friend just said in spec is good enough. I hoping by also being on the loose side the cam acts smaller for low end mid range torque (but this is the hot rodder in me just hoping). So I am ready for the next outing for maybe even better mileage. Great bike! The thing doesn't even crank one turn around and it's running. It's sweet!