Loving the Yamaha GTS!
I enjoyed your write-up of the Yamaha GTS1000 in April’s issue. I test-rode a demo bike in 1992 from Flitwick Motorcycles (Steve Linsdell’s shop) and was hugely impressed by the bike, but not its price tag. Five years later I bought an accident-damaged Japanese import GTS1000A that looked like it would be a fairly easy, cosmetic repair. This turned out not to be the case, and it needed most of the front end replacing. I became very well acquainted with the bike’s engineering, but eventually had it back on the road, and used it as standard for many years, including two-up touring with outrageous amounts of luggage, which didn’t faze it a bit. In the end, I owned nine GTS1000S over the years and still have the first one, although it is somewhat modified now. The journalists and critics slagged it off as being too slow, heavy and expensive. Well, it was never slow (140mph cruising with rock-solid handling, as I found out), and a smooth spread of power almost as good as the FJ1200. But it was seriously overweight and over-engineered. Yamaha should have fitted a pepped-up FZR1000 EXUP engine, lost at least 50kg of weight, styled it as a futuristic sports bike (think R1 here) and developed a single-model racing series to promote it. That is what I wanted anyway, so I built one: 135bhp Thunderace engine, Honda VFR750 single-sided rear-end (a right bugger to fit), Suzuki SRAD rear end to complement the smoothed-out front fairing, adjustable JOTA bars, ZXR400 rear sets, the list (and the costs) went on. It has ended up as shown in the pictures attached. Now it is waiting for a matched pair of wheels to finish it off and a proper paint job. Unfortunately, time, money and health have got in the way for a couple of years. Love the magazine by the way! Brian Steers Bertie says: “Brian – that looks so cool. You’re a visionary. We’d love to try it when it’s complete. Have a set of Bridgestone’s finest for your GTS!”