Yamaha FZ750 Superstocker
...and four smoking barrels. Stavros had a dream… his dream was to take a humble road bike and build a homage to his last ever race bike – the Loctite Yamaha FZ750 Superstocker!
Steve Parrish had a dream. The dream was to turn a rotten £1000 FZ into the final race bike of his career. After six years and more money than Stavros rightfully owns, the result is a tasteful and respectful homage of the Loctite-backed 20-valver that he spent a happy 1985-1986 season on.
Like most good ideas, myyamaha FZ750 Superstocker started with the aid of a few alcoholic drinks. I was having a ‘gentlemen’s luncheon’ with a few chaps (well, cads and bounders like me, actually) that form the Friday the 13th Club. For the last 30 years this group, formed mainly of motorcycle road and race journalists and the odd ex-racer like myself, Niall Mackenzie and Keith Huewen have met and got relatively sozzled over a nice lunch.
It was while chatting to a fellow called Bertie Simmonds – editor of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics and caretaker editor of this issue of CR – that a plan began to form. I wanted to build a copy or facsimile, if you like, of one of my old race bikes, but which one? I already was lucky enough to have a Suzuki RG500 but the more I thought about it the more my final race bike came to mind: Yamaha’s FZ750, which I rode with Loctite backing during 1985 and 1986, mainly in the MCN Superstock series but sometimes abroad in places like Daytona, Florida for the 200 too. This was also my mount for my last ever ‘proper’ sojourn in racing at Macau in 1986.
What attracted me to this sort of project was that I really loved that bike. It was also attractive for a number of other reasons. A four-stroke road-based machine which looked the part would be brilliant for the many events/ parade laps I get asked to participate in. Sometimes I have to get the old RG fettled for these sorts of dates, sometimesyamaha UK would sort me a new bike or Wiganyamaha would help out, but these would be brandnew and not fitting with ‘my era.’ Instead, a simple, four-stroke, ‘push button’ machine which resembled the racer from way back when certainly seemed to be the way to go.
So it seemed appropriate that I find a base for the project and my mates at Wigan Yamaha had just the thing. They found C406 PRN, a Yamaha FZ750 that had seen better days, for £1000. To say it had seen better days was a bit of an understatement. I picked the thing up while heading to the Isle of Man early in 2013 (yes, it’s been a long project) and it probably looked better than it actually was…
When I finally got to see what I’d bought ‘sold unseen’ there were a few issues, but the bike beneath was fairly robust – thanks Wigan Yamaha! Okay, so the frame seemed to be covered with Hammerite in some places (I have no idea why) but the engine itself fired up on the button and ran like a dream – these fivevalve per-pot Yams are pretty robust, after all.
For the strip down I knew I’d be taking part in the efforts myself but I’d also side-step some of the trickier parts of the build (like the ‘ putting together’ side of things), so I went to the reputable and wholly brilliant Daryll Young at IDP Moto, based in Silverstone. They not only service and repair modern bikes, they restore classic bikes for customers and were the company behind the restoration of a fleet of RD250LC racing Yamahas for the rebirth of the Pro-am events seen in recent years.
The strip down was simple enough at IDP HQ – I did my part! In just three hours and nine minutes we had the thing down to the bare (well, Hammerited) frame… With the bike in bits it was time to actually work out just what (and what spec) I was going to finish this FZ in. After all, we had two colour schemes that made the FZ the race bike it was – the silver/red scheme which echoed the standard road bike and the mainly red one. It was early days…
One of the early aids in the project was my old mechanic from the Loctite Yamaha days – Dave ‘ The Mushroom’ Johnson, who told me what lugs and brackets I had to remove and angle-grind away – a job I did myself at IDP – under adult supervision of course.
The frame was going to be stripped of Hammerite and sorted by KAS Racepaint in Kettering while the swingarm was going to be polished by one of their sub-contractors, Malc Upex. This is where we realised there was some issues between model years with the FZ. I had – for some reason – a SEALINKbadged swingarm stashed away with some other 30-year-plus parts which I figured would be a straight swap. After all, they are all FZ750 parts, right? Turned out that the ‘arm I had was for the later bike with dog-bones rather than the original set-up. We’d sort this later on I figured.
KAS Racepaint weren’t only doing the frame they were in for the bodywork too and this dilemma as mentioned above was whether I should plump for the ‘original’ silver/ red of 1985 with the various sponsors logos or the full-on Loctite red/white from 1986.
Wheels were also to be sorted. The original road machine sported 16in front and 18in rear, but, for a better choice of half-decent rubber, I wanted a pair of 17in wheels which we got from the following bikes: The front was a 120/70-17 courtesy of an FZR1000 and the rear a 160/60-17 from a 1994 FZR600 4JH. With 23mm and 30mm spacers made up (by myself) at the National College of Motorsport, next door to IDP in Silverstone, all was well!
Brakes of course were another matter… this was to be a ‘similar’ not ‘ spot-on’ rebuild of a race bike so I could play fast and loose with the brakes – as I had with the wheels. Many different types of anchors were considered, including upgrading the originals (two-piston jobbies/270mm discs) or going ‘period performance’ with Ap-lockheed calipers, or even going 1990s-updates with the very popular YZF-R1/FAZER 600 ‘blue-spot’ Sumitomo calipers from 20-odd years ago – apparently a very popular and simple ‘bolton’ mod. Instead, Harrison BILLET helped out with their BILLET-6 calipers and Galfer supplied some ‘ wavy’ discs.
Redditch Shotblasting took the motor
– after I’d blocked up all the holes – and sorted the motor out so it was ready to be given a pukka black satin finish. Of course it had to have period FZ750 gold details on the engine and cam-covers. On those 17in
“THE FZ SOUNDED GLORIOUS WHEN THAT 20-VALVE MOTOR BARKED THROUGH THAT OPEN GIBSON PIPE FOR THE FIRST TIME! MAGICAL!”
wheels I would get gold paint, to match the engine detailing.
Yamaha UK, it has to be said, came up trumps. Now, I know many of you recall that I not only rode for them, but also managed their British national team for a while, so I put a call into them to see what parts they still did for the FZ. It turns out they have loads.
The big issue was the radiator which on C406 PRN was rusty and basically trash but Yamaha UK kindly donated the £890 radiator (2014, pre Brexit values) and numerous other bits on the proviso that – should they so wish – they can call in the favour and have the completed bike on a stand somewhere, someday. I was more than happy to agree.
Bodywork colours were now decided: we’d go for the original base-colour silver/red but with all the appropriate decals as it seemed to me to be much more ‘superstock’ than the later all-over Loctite red/white. By now it was late 2014 and I had a deadline of that year’s end-of-season Motorcycle LIVE! event to get the bike on the main Black Horse Finance stand… It was now the details that needed pulling together for the static display, even if the bike wouldn’t be turning a wheel for a while yet.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s when the FZ was king, Harris Performance did footpegs/ rear-sets and Lester and Steve allowed me down to their HQ in Hertford to get measured up for what I needed. Not only was it the
footrests they supplied but also some decent bar conversion/set-ups assemblies with the ergonomics I required. That very same day I flew to Bradenham where Mid Norfolk Mouldings were based so I had a spare set of bodywork for the all-red Loctite version that I (eventually) plan to do.
For that year’s NEC we didn’t have an exhaust pipe, but – Steve Adams of Lucky7 Moto helped out with his Racefit system which originally sat on his own very special FZ750. Eventually I would get something more ‘fitting’…
As time moved into 2015, Performance Parts supplied some K&N Filters for the 20-valve motor and it was time to get an ‘original’ performance pipe. Some photos
show ‘HARRIS’ emblazoned on the endcan but it was actually an original Gibson, from down in Essex, and Tony Greenslade who’d taken over the concern (and the great two-stroke Allspeed name) used the original drawings made by Pete Gibson back in the day to make me a pukka ‘original’ but new system for the FZ. God, it looked great.
Yet again work and play got in the way, so by October 2016 we’d finally got the brakes on the wheels rather than the bog-stock stuff that had been tarted up for the NEC. With some tweaking, the motor finally barked into 20-valve life through that raucous Gibson exhaust for the first time in more than three years. More time passed (yes, work again)
before the bike could finally get a shakedown test at Silverstone.
To finally get aboard the Superstock FZ was pretty emotional and Silverstone was a suitable venue, what with it being home of the British Grand Prix, many memories for me and where IDP Moto and Daryll were based. It’s handy that Daryll is a decent race mechanic as well as restorer/fettler. He’s currently with the TYCO team in BSB and has helped the likes of Tarran Mackenzie to his Supersport 600 title in 2016.
With Daryll warming up the bike, the machine sounds mint through that Gibson pipe – I have to keep reminding myself that this machine is pretty standard – even if it looks like one of my old bikes from 35 or so years ago.
I’m consciously avoiding the wetter sessions out on track as I don’t want to tempt fate, so I head out in the later sessions that day which were clear and only damp in patches.
Chassis-wise we’ve clearly changed the set-up somewhat (we’re on 17-inchers front and rear) and my memory isn’t so good from 1985-86, but overall we’ve got a pretty well-planted machine especially in the faster corners. One thing I do recall is that the
FZ was always really this way, especially compared to its rival the Suzuki GSX-R750F ‘Slabby’ which always seemed a tad twitchier, but then the GSX-R was sportier, I guess. Tyres (I was on Dunlop Sportsmax hoops) offered good grip, even compared to the race tyres of old I used back in the mid-1980s. Remember, we could change wheels back then and we ran slicks in the races – but I still concur that those slicks aren’t as good as sports-touring tyres we use on the road today…
The front-end of the bike felt fine – even with standard (but new) internals, revalved and standard weight fork oil and I was even surprised that the front could cope with the
Harrison BILLET brakes (made in the UK I would like to add…) The potential with those awesome anchors was that I worried that the forks would dive more than a premiership footballer in the penalty box… I was very wary that a haul on the lever could have me on my arse if I was not too careful!
While the front-end was fine, the Ohlins shock with associated rear swingarm and shock mounts left a little to be desired. The shock itself was a freebie and was never intended for the FZ. Well, I still don’t know what it was intended for, it looks amazing but lacks a little in the damping department. We shall see what to do with it or replace it at a later date.
Motor-wise we knew this was going to be a bit hit-and-miss, being a machine that has only been started once in many years and being mated to a performance exhaust and air-filters only. From low-down in the revs the delivery is distinctly ‘woolly’ and lean – this is around 3000-4500rpm – but then the thing comes on pipe and from the mid-range of about 5500rpm it fair takes off. Dyno work clearly is the order of the day here, along with some fine-tuning of the carbs but the sound it makes as it rises to the 11,000rpm redline is just joyful, we just need to match the go to that bark. I suppose there’s always the potential of shoehorning an FZR1000 lump into the frame rails, but I think I’d prefer to keep it as an FZ750…
One thing that the bike is a winner with is pure looks… it resembles my old stocker from the 1980s. It even looks a bit like Eddie Lawson’s 1986 Daytona bike… He won it that year. I was 32nd, although in my defence he had some pukka factory parts on his bike.
Overall though I’m very happy and I hope you like the look of the old girl! Maybe we can set a trend of turning unloved road bikes into replicas of cool race bikes? I hope so…