Oops I did it again…Britney Spears gave the world that mind worm lyric in the year 2000, two years prior to that Yamaha gave us the best carb fed production sports bike of the last century. The R1 was sharper than the Blade in every way possible. You know the rest, it’s history.
2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Yamaha R1. This means those early bikes are now legitimate modern classics, in my mind they are still a thoroughly modern motorcycle.
Thanks to chirping in on a friends Facebook thread where he’d just sold his bike I ended up crossing paths with an old friend, even better he wanted to sell his R1 that he’s owned since 2007. Nobody keeps bikes this long, do they? A few messages back and forth and I’ve put 
my name on it, and even sorted logistics to pick it up from his residence in West London.
Waking up at 6.30am on any Sunday is something I’m an expert at avoiding, chuck in a temperature of -7 ( in the windchill ) and you can understand why for a brief moment I toyed with the idea of another ten minutes kip. Thankfully my wingman and van driver was already on his way!
Shroom from our Bandit o’clock videos was keen to give his new van a good run, so he was up and ready on my doorstep before I’d even got up!
With snow flanking our entire route to Kingston on Thames I didn’t once have second thoughts about my latest impulse purchase. By 9am I had a mug of hot tea in one hand and a bulging file of paper history for my Yamaha R1. Do people still hang on to old MOTs and service history? Appears they do, it also adds a few quid to value of any upcoming classic bike. Who knows, one day I might even read it all?
My old mate had agreed to throw in some bits and bobs with the bike, after several trips up and down his garden Shroom’s van was pretty full up with a variety of 4XV treasure.
I was enjoying seeing what parts came with the deal so much the last thing I got around to doing was to actually look at the R1.
Even then I only saw it’s arse when it went up the plank and inside the van.
A few hours later and my garage was looking like a bomb site, with R1 gear strewn all over it, lovely!
I still haven’t had a good look at the bike, instead I’ve ploughed through the parts and been selling them off to reduce my initial outlay.
I hate talking about money, it’s vulgar, so I won’t go into the finances of this transaction just yet.
All I will say is three people have shown an interest in buying my 4 owners from new 1999 UK spec R1.
The only thing I have done to the bike is sell the Micron can and fit the original exhaust silencer, it looks so much better in my opinion!
