YAMAHA FZR400
The Yamaha was the bike I was least excited to ride. The others had all meant at least something to me at one point or another, but the FZR just hadn’t. It had never been a model that I’d been desperate to have a go on and I’d certainly never considered buying one. I can remember as a kid, one of my dad’s mates having one and thinking that the sun shone out of its exhaust pipe, but I’m fairly sure that was the tricker RR-SP version. To look at, I felt as if its square and boxy features really gave away its age – don’t get me wrong I didn’t think it was a terrible looker, it just looked a bit plain and dated, to me.
That said, when you throw your leg over, despite the flat, unergonomically shaped seat, the Yam didn’t feel as old fashioned as I had expected. The seat is low, giving you the feeling of being ‘in’ the bike and the tank’s wide and gentle curves can be comfortably cosseted by your inner thighs. The Yamaha’s electric fuel switch could also fool you into thinking you were on a later-than-1993 motorcycle too, and for attention to detail you can’t beat the little cut-out in the frame which facilitates the choke lever.
The FZR took a few spins to fire up but nothing to warrant any panic.
When warm, it ticked over smoothly and with dignity – maybe a little bit too much dignity, we might have liked a few more decibels. And we might have expected a few more decibels too, out of the aftermarket Fuel exhaust, but no, the ZZR wasn’t going to scare any grannies or induce any ASBOs.
In the cockpit the clocks were all very 90s, big and round and extremely fit for purpose. I wasn’t a fan of the pale, pastel coloured buttons on the switchgears but everything was easy to make sense of, with no power modes or traction control.
The motor has a claimed 66bhp and the FZR’s EXUP (Exhaust Ultimate Power) Valve might have been doing its level best to improve the mid-range but I still felt like I needed to get the revs as high as possible to get the most out of the bike. To be fair, the bottom end fuelling was precise, and it was a bike that could be ridden sedately should you want to – there was smooth (albeit very little) power from nigh-on tickover.
For proper riding, though, I found that it helped to keep the revs above 9k, where the power built nicely, but far from ferociously, until 14,000rpm. However, way more often than was handy the EXUP Valve decided it didn’t want to play ball causing the revs to hit an imaginary brick wall at 11,000rpm. One minute all would be well as the needle soared towards its redline – and the next minute, despite my best attempts to stretch the thing’s throttle cables, the needle would just, well, stop moving altogether. It was a real shame.
When I had first swung a leg over the bike it did seem rather small, but when I started hustling it around its stature actually gave me the feeling of really being in charge of things. I felt as though I could throw the bike around and it had no choice but to do as I said. I was the master of my own (and the FZR’s) destiny. It gave me the confidence to keep the throttle pinned even when things got a