BRUCE YAMAHA R6 2007
THIS MONTH I HAVE MOSTLY BEEN… “Breaking down.”
If you read my piece last month you’ll know I had dreams of grandeur. The plan had been to get the little Yammy to BSD Performance for a few glitzy technological additions, but thoughts of launch control, pit lane limiters and any other such luxuries are well and truly on the back burner. This bike’s 11 years old and it’s clocked a good few miles on trackdays and in racing, being thrashed to within an inch of its limiter. Who can blame it for throwing a bit of a wobbly this month? I’ve raced Oulton Park since our last catch up, and a day at R&G’s Cadwell Park trackday saw more miles added to the mix.
After a morning of pure brilliance, clocking 1m 36s in traffic and making me wonder whether my lap timer was lying to me, I was feeling more smitten with the R6 than ever, loving the way it handled, the way it was driving out of bends and how it stopped like a good’un into corners. One thing that’s made the Yammy that bit sweeter to ride is the recent fitment of a Sigma slipper clutch. They’re a decent, middle of the range item and a good cure for the stock clutch’s tendency to get a little grabby into bends. You can moderate out the bike’s backing-in by manually adapting how much clutch you deploy as you feed into corners, but that’s not ideal when you’re already throwing all your brain cells into get in and through a corner. I’ve also found slowing down dramatically before down-changing can help in this area.
Or, you can just let a few moths free and splash out on a slipper. That’s the route we’ve gone down and I was really impressed with how much easier the Sigma made corner entry. Right up until the point it ramped-up and refused to let go. I was just firing into Park at the time when the gearbox felt as if it’d slipped into neutral, nabbing all resistance from the clutch lever at the same time. Let’s just say it’s a good job there’s run-off. I wasn’t impressed, and even less so when the BSD guys discovered the cause and said that they’d known this happen before.
I’ve decided to stick it out with the Sigma, but another option would’ve been to remove a few springs from the stock clutch basket, which allows more slip from the rudimentary standard slipper. While I was at it, it also transpired there was an oil leak coming from the starter motor. That’s no biggy, but it’s needed a new gasket to sort the job out. Just to really hammer the nail into the coffin, the bloody GPR steering damper decided to start pissing oil too. It's a simple oil type unit – running 5wt – so Andy at BSD was also able to fix that with a new seal and some fresh oil. With lots more racing planned and loads of other jollies lined up, I’m just hoping these niggles are well behind us. If that’s the case, I might even treat the old girl to some tidy fairings.