Make or Break? Yamaha YZF1000 Thunderace.
“Wasn’t that a Thunderace once?”
Project bikes, I love them. There isn’t a day goes by where I don’t hear the ins and outs of a customer’s high hopes for either the shitbox bike they’ve just purchased from me, or the bundles of used parts that they plan to nail on to their bike.
High hopes indeed, also it is the hope that kills you in the end. So many bikes simply end up being unfinished projects. They get pushed further to the back of the shed until the custodian realises that they’ve gone off the boil and the project won’t ever be more than a jamboree of parts loosely assembled.
“What was the plan for this one?”
This low mileage Thunderace was hand picked by its last owner and long term buddy of mine, to be the basis of a tricked up Ace.
All that remains in tact from the donor bike is the frame, engine and sucks and bangs. The fuel tank got to stay and a random box of parts that may or may not have got involved further down the projects build.
I sold the owner some parts for this back in 2017. Namely the fancy Ohlins front forks. They gave themselves up from an Aprilia RSV1000R that I busted up for parts. Matey took the fancy forks and had the Aprilia stem reworked to fit the Yammy frame.
At the rear, the Thunderace swinging arm was given the heave-ho and a YZF750 one was recruited to hold the back wheel in place.
That was basically how far the project progressed. It then went through the usual path of being overlooked, shoved in another shed and forgotten about.
“Will you finish it off?”
Define ‘finish it off?’ If you mean get the bike finished, then no. If you mean finish it off in an act of brutal violence, then more than likely, yes.
The bike came in with two van fulls of Yamaha YZF750 bikes, parts and other useful stuff. This job lot will take a while to process, advertise and sell, so until the loose parts have been sold, the complete bikes and this Ace will spend a bit more time sitting around doing sod all.
Article provided by Scottie Redmond
