Praise for the forgotten XS750
Thanks for the latest OBM and I’m sorry that the paucity of events still makes your task none the easier! I always read the page by ‘Scoop’ (Steve Cooper), having much respect for his erudition, and was particularly curious as to that which he may have to say about that once, but briefly, vaunted Japanese attempt at rivalling the triples of BSA and Triumph.
I refer, of course, to the Yamaha XS750, for several years now seeming to inhabit a dark and obscure hinterland where a few crudely chopperised examples appear to be pretty well all that there is left.
Scoop, as ever, seemed to show his expert knowledge and well-researched opinions with these according with my own, when I bought an incomplete and well-abused example from DK Motorcycles, who, at the time, imported a lot of ‘parts or restoration’ bikes from the US. They were very good with whom to deal. This was about the year of 2014 and I ended up buying another one for an additional source of parts and set about a rebuild. I won’t dwell too much on that, except to endorse Steve’s statement that Yamaha had trouble with piston rings on the early bikes, like my exAlberquerque, New Mexico, import.
However, I’ll mention in passing buying a secondhand cylinder block from an established US breaker, whose packing consisted of him wrapping the block in a layer of domestic cling film and putting the lot in a single-layer brown paper bag before sending it across the Atlantic! Miraculously, it was all in there when it arrived, the block shorn of many of its fins and one corner of the base flange. Said fins were all in there, just needed tipping out and shovelling up!
I enjoyed the rebuild and agree with Steve that, once up and running, it was a damn good bike. It deserved its status as the flagship of the Yamaha range after its introduction and before the XS1100 came out. Torquey, yet a free and willing revver when that was what you wanted, a good gearchange, brakes, handling and a high level of equipment for the time. The triple engine was so characterful and endearing, more so than a four and I’ve had plenty of those. It was one of the few bikes that I regret selling, especially as I was pushed to get more than well under a quarter of that for which I could have sold, say, a contemporary Honda CB750. I did well over 15,000 miles on the bike, including two weeks in the Isle of Man for a Manx Grand Prix; I never – yes, never – saw another one in use. Correspondingly, no other bikers whom I met and who saw the bike, knew what it was or took any interest in the model. Sadly, the main reason for selling the bike became its weight, and when I still get tempted to buy another one I am forced to remind myself of that.
A shame, there is a nice one for sale in this very issue of OBM…
Nigel Stennett-Cox