‘The rear wheel would not leave the ground’
Yamaha expert Phil Hacker was stunned by Drag Star’s neglected suspension
‘The shock eye had broken off the shock body’
Phil ‘doc’ Hacker has been running the FJ Owners Club since 1993 and the FJR Centre since 2001 after an RAF career saw him working on Harrier and Hawk airframes. FJRs are notorious for seizing suspension components, but a random Yamaha Drag Star took it to another level.
“Our workshop doesn’t do MoTs but the car garage next door does,” Phil told us. “We had a strange call to pop around to see if we could help out a local chap who had come in with a Yamaha Drag Star.
“It seems all was fine until they jacked up the bike to test the head bearings, which was when they noticed they couldn’t get the rear wheel to leave the ground. “The Drag Star has a simple suspension set-up like an old LC, with the shock canted forward up under the seat and bolted to a frame attached to the swingarm that arches over the wheel. There’s a big rubber shroud around the shock too, but that doesn’t protect the area being bombarded by road muck which you can see if you remove the seat. Although it does make it harder to get to.
“We pushed the bike to the club workshop for a closer look and soon found the reason for its permanent ‘low-rider’ set-up. The shock eye that bolts to the swingarm is welded to the shock body and that weld had given way, so as the bike was lifted, the wheel simply stayed touching the floor. “The weld had worn away and there was old corrosion and layers of road dirt there, so the guy must have been riding like this for months. “When asked if he ever had it serviced, he quoted the classic
‘I do all my own servicing’. I guess that means an oil and filter change every now and then. The whole bike was pretty minging, caked with mud and rust, so it was obvious he only cleaned the bits he could see. I dread to think what might have happened if he had got a bit of air on a humpback bridge. “Cleaning your bike regularly means you can chart condition changes and feel for free movement in the suspension as you clean the wheels and brakes. He got away with a £300 aftermarket Hagon shock, but it could have been much worse.”