So what have I been up to lately?

Next year I plan to return to motorcycle roadracing and trackday riding. To help motivate me to get ready I decided to take my oldest trackbike apart and rebuild her to her former glory.

She's a 1997 Yamaha YZF600R. I really love riding this old bike. She's "old school" all the way with a heavy steel frame and carburetors (my enemies). Bikes from this era were easy to ride and easy to work on. They are very basic in their electronics, unlike today's techno-box sportbikes. This is a very good entry level track bike. It is powerful enough to pull out of corners but not so powerful as to spin up the rear and high side you off. It's fast enough to be fun but not so fast as to scare you too much.

Yamaha made this exact same bike from 1997 to about 2007 so parts are cheap and plentiful on the ebay. OEM parts are also easy to come by from any number of online distributors. I usually order from ronayers.com.

So step one was stripping the bike down to the frame. Taking things apart is always easier than putting them back together so I was careful to mark all the parts and store sub-assembly parts together in trays or bags.
After a thorough cleaning I realized that the frame was just too beat up to ever look good without painting so I sanded down the frame and swingarm and repainted them black. I know that powdercoating would have been much more durable a finish but this is an old trackbike and I didn't want to spend that kind of money.

Step two was to reinstall the swingarm, forks and shock so I'd have a rolling chassis. Here's where I ran into problem number one. I discovered that a bearing was bad on the shock knuckle (part of the lower linkage on the rear monoshock). Fortunately I had complete spare shock linkage assembly in a box of parts I had gotten years ago from ebay. That linkage was in fine shape so I greased it up and installed the shock. Now I've got me a rolling chassis. Time for the engine.

I don't have any experience at all with internal engine work and this power plant was running fine last time out so all I had to do was regular maintenance items. She will be getting a new chain and sprockets and a good cleaning on the carburetors.

These old 4 cylinder engines are heavy and I'm working alone so the only way to manouver it is with some kind of floor jack. I used a motorcycle jack with a piece of plywood to support the engine and she lifted right into place.

So here is how she sits now.