A lot of you seem to be looking for reviews on the FZ6. As you will see in previous posts (See Yamaha FZ6 Catagory on the right) I had one for about six months last year.

It is a great bike, easy to ride with excellent engine, handling and brakes. The gearbox was very slick on clutchless up changes, as is the FZ1, it can get a bit lost on the down changes from time to time but not often enough to be a pain.

One issue we had riding two-up was the centre stand. During the summer the stand spend most of its time scratching the tarmac.

Any roundabout or sharp righthander resulted in another mill coming off the stand.

The pegs weren’t far behind either, it was very strange having the pegs and stand so low on such a capable bike.

As I’ve mentioned before when I was on the back, being a bit taller than the rider, over 105mph ish I got an uncomfortable amount of lift from the wind, again not present on the FZ1 Fazer.

Having said all that, I think it is an excellent all-rounder one-up, just a shame about the side stand.

2007 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer

… So the 600 Fazer S2 is working as planned, sort of, it doesn’t shred rear tyres, although it is nowhere near as torquey as the thousand, it is still too capable of speed limit bashing. Also, on the back (being a fair bit taller than Bro) I get a fair bit of lift over 100mph, which makes for interesting times NOT! (I have no problems at all on the back of the FZ1 Fazer it’s little fairing seems to do a great job).

I think the daily two-up pounding the Fazer 600 got, was a little too much. After six months it developed a whine, plus we were bored. So it was off to our friendly Yamaha Dealer again. This time we decided the speed was still an issue, well more our lack of any self control.

We were looking down the rows of bikes, still under the deluded impression that a 600 was the way to go. The answer to all of our problems was there staring us straight in the face, how can we have been so stupid, a super-moto! Yeah! They are fun, can’t do much over the license loosing 100mph, especially two-up and they are fun.

2007 Yamaha XT660X

The new shiny KTM sorry I mean Yamaha XT660X. Now that looked like fun, we took it for a test drive. It was really bizarre, I hadn’t been on a dirt bike since I was a kid. It was like riding a 100mph mountain bike. Just riding around Shepherds Bush roundabout was awesome. The speed off the line is unreal, it fitted all the criteria, fun, curtails top speed on the motorway and has a back seat oh yeah and has to be fun.

So the paper whizzed around and it was ours, the poor whiny Fazer was gone, woohoo. The XT was surprising good at commuting and was amazing fun, the only problem in London was the bars, it took a few days of mirror bashing to get the hang of filtering with wide bars, even then it is a pain in the arse, it is made up for though by the fun you are having when not filtering. Even on the motorway it was fine, comfortable two-up and cruising around 90mph (if legal) would have been fine.

But the friendship soon turned sour, after six months the gearbox imploded it was repaired under warranty but a month later the gearbox blew again. We decided that it was not up for the job and we needed a thousand again. The Ace had survived for years. So a deal was done and we where back on a thousand. The story is continued in previous posts… see below.

We loved the Ace, Bro bought it new in ‘97 and loved it like a first born. Spoiling it, garnished with Vance & Hines, K&N and brazed pipes, used regularly and to its limits, for two wheeled, well, mostly one wheeled, lunacy.

Yamaha ThunderAce

Sometime later… I had moved back from the States and was dying commuting on the train, Bro had other commitments and wasn’t getting much Ace time, and it was mine

Some years later… Bro got a contract working with me in Hammersmith, two-up time.

The Thunderace was falling to bits, every service was costing a fortune. The speedo hadn’t worked for miles, the rear break pedal was snapped off, the front discs where so badly warped the bike would shake at anything other than the mildest slowing. It was hosed.

The path to the current bike was obscured by the wish to save money and reduce the temptation and capacity to excessive speeding. After running the now aging Ace for years, although the Thunderace is now regarded as a weighty tourer (By some mean R1 fans, its funny how many R1’s vanish in its rear view mirror on the ride home :-> ) Anyway, the thought process goes something like this… 1000’s are awesome, however they have little regard for those pesky speed limits and they do shred rear tires (4000 miles max) also, while sports bikes (Yes a Thunderace is a sports bike, feekers) are viable commuters, two-up is not so good, so in an attempt to be sensible, the choice, as gut wrenching as it was, was to go 600. It gets worse, lets face it if you want a sporty commuter 600, “you can’t go far wrong with a Faser”.

So, with our sensible hats firmly pulled down, it was off to the Yamaha dealer. A Short walk up Sheperds Bush Road and there it was, a Black Faser 600 S2, hum, as with any dealer the path to the commuter is packed with awesomeness designed to loosen the hold of the sensible hat, mine had fallen off, the sight of the 180bhp on the R1’s info tags had me thinking! but Bro was being strong, after a brief raised eyebrow when passing the 1000 Fazer, we arrived at the planned choice, the gleaming S2 Faser 600. Paper whizzed around and the Thunderace was reduced to the pages of eBay (R.I.P.).

Details of the ensuing carnage will follow soon…..