My learning

Project Marlboro

by

Or ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the TRX’

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really liked the TRX850 since I bought it a couple years back, and it made me regret not buying one back when they were being sold as the desperately unpopular critter they were back pre-Y2K. Sadly though the green was my least fave colour to start with, and the green on this one was looking old and tatty, along with the once repainted yellow wheels looking very battered. With shed space all filled up and my opportunities to ride far less frequent than when I was working at Yamaha World, a cosmetic overhaul was the most logical step. Take a bike I loved riding, and make it one I could also love looking at. I’ve always loved the retro Marlboro Racing colour schemes, I’ve seen a couple of other TRXs done up in similar tribute styles overseas, and riding around on a Rainey YZR500 tribute would feel pretty bloody cool…

The starting point – aside from the yellow wheels, blue spot calipers, Keihin flatslides and aftermarket cans, one stock 1997 TRX850.

Read more

Done. No, really this time.

by

Well, the saga of the 1989/90 FZR600 is over. Like, I’m seriously done with it. Countless hours, far more dollars than I’ll ever see again, many tears of frustration spilled on the shed floor, but it’s done. The rebuild the second time around was far less stressful. A big part of this was getting the … Read more

Not done

by

Well.

Eighteen months is a long time, particularly when that time includes COVID-19, a change in jobs and a whole lot of change in the bike space, including the realisation that Project FZR is indeed not done.

Or at least the main Project FZR.

Read more

Deconstruction

by

In my last post I came to the sobering realisation that to get to the mystery blockage I would need to strip down the entire engine. This wasn’t the absolute first time I had done this. I remember the last time, it was 1990, I was eighteen, the vehicle was a Datsun 180B, and I … Read more

Using Agile tools to eat the elephant

by

It was during this period of just scooting around on the FZR that I realised that I needed to do a couple of things differently. First up, I needed to accept that this restoration project was rapidly turning into a ‘down the rabbit hole’ experience, as I’d heard can happen with restoration projects. A flow-on … Read more