S1000 on my 66 Yamaha YM1.

[philwarner]

I took a trip down memory lane today when a discussion of steering dampers came up on the Wild Guzzi web site and I related that I had used the friction damper on my 1966 Yamaha 305 YM1 Cross Country Sport until I was carrying the bike in the back of a pickup on a vacation in Savannah Ga when a dump truck crossed the center line and knocked my truck into a concrete bridge abutment at 35 MPH resulting in a very rapid stop and the bike hitting the front of the bed with enough force to bend the fork legs. After a stint in the hospital with a broken jaw and getting the bike back home to Ohio. I tried to straighten the forks but only managed to make them equally bent so I put the bend toward the front which increased the trail and all but eliminated the tendency toward tank slapping. That wreck was in 1968 and I posted a photo of the Yamaha taken in 1971 with my early Vetter S1000 fairing (that I must have purchased between those years) and a different seat that I had gotten at Spook's Motorcycle Graveyard in Trotwood Ohio. That prompted me to Google Spook's Motorcycle Graveyard and up popped this article and a note that Spook's is still in business run by Spook's descendents. https://motorcycleviews.com/tales/story137.htm I still have the bike with the fairing and seat in the barn awaiting a ressurection while I ride my 04 Triumph America and 96 Moto Guzzi California.

 

[Kynan C.]

Thank you for sharing the story Phil. Sounded like quiet the adventure, broken jaw and all. Do you have near future plans to restore the bike? Thats pic is so cool. Those vintage real member pics are classic.

 

[philwarner]

I guess I've had "near future" plans for restoring my Yamaha since I moved to Arkansas in 1980, but so far other projects have intervened and it has resided in my pole barn for the last 25 years waiting. It suffered the indignity of a wash-out in the mid 70s after becoming air born off the end of an old elevated steel bridge and landing in a crown of gravel in the middle of the country road I lived on in Ohio, so it does have some road rash on the left side of the fairing. It actually fared better than I did at the time with a broken shoulder that put me in a hospital for a week while the bones knit together 1/2 inch shorter than my right shoulder (there was too much road rash to risk surgery). I did learn my lesson from becoming the former of the two types of motorcycle riders (those who have fallen off and those who will fall off) and I never ride without a good jacket now. BTW, my S1000 is early enough that there is no serial number scratched on it; I wish I could remember where I found it in Ohio and the date of purchase, but those facts are lost in time now.

In the mean time I've continued Vetter investment with a Windjammer V fairing I bought for my 96 Moto Guzzi California (it had been on the sellers previous Moto Guzzi Convert), but given that the Convert mounting hardware does not fit the California (and it already has an H & H fairing) and would need to be modified, I think the Windjammer will end up on my 04 Triumph America or maybe a later 03 California I am considering. I will post photos once I figure out where the Windjammer will go and definitely photos of the Yamaha when it comes up on the project list. When that time comes I hope you will still be selling S1000 windscreens to make up for the one lost those many years ago to that back country Ohio steel bridge and my "youthful" indiscretion.