Black Gold!

CMM reader Ken Turnock tells a tale of the healing power of restoring a Yamaha XS1100 XK.

- Ken Turnock

We always welcome stories from CMMreaders about how they’ve gotten involved in other people’s restorations. Often we find that fact is stranger than fiction!

What we have here is a story separated (as is often the case) by many years of the bike in question being left to rot under a tarpaulin, only to be brought back from the brink: this time by reader Kenneth Turnock. Don’t forget, if you have a story then let us know. You’ll find our contact details at the front of the mag. Over to you, Ken!

The story of this bike starts (for me at least) a year after it was manufactured: 1984…

Bear with me on this! The bike was originally purchased new by Phil Wiggly who was a friend of Jess Bower’s cousin, Luke Carter, who purchased it from him when it was a year old in 1984… are you following all this? Luke then put all the miles on it, using it as his everyday transport including several holidays to Europe with his then wife Beverly.

Jess Bower purchased it from Luke in around 1991: he then passed his bike test just prior to moving to London to start his garage business Coachworks Motovalet (which is very successful to this day.) It’s fair to say that Jess and the bike didn’t quite gel at the beginning. He’d ride the bike and park it in the works garage as he had the flat above which was where he lived while the business found its feet. Shame Jess couldn’t, as one night after a couple of jars he went down to the garage and sat on the big Yam, then promptly forgot to put the side-stand back down. He lifted both feet off the garage floor and… well… you can imagine the rest. Poor Jess was trapped under the mighty XS until the next morning when his business partner arrived… both were in a bit of a state!