Yamaha FZS1000 Fazer

Our Bertie this month waves a flag for the slightly saner version of the R1…

- Bertie's Blather

Parts bin specials often make great bikes and Yamaha has made some pearlers.

My favourite is the Fazer 600 – the Thundercat motor and associated odds and sods make for such a good all-round usable machine. It made sense then that Yamaha finally built a ‘grown-up’ version for the 2001 model year.

Like its little brother, the FZS1000 used well-proven parts. In this case the motor was from the YZF-R1, but mildly-modded. It produced the same torque as the R1, but at 1000rpm lower in the rev-range. Different carbs and ignition and a heavier crank basically gave the motor more low to mid-range stomp, but power was still around 140 claimed bhp at 10,000rpm, even if you’d probably be best served hanging about at 7-8000rpm where the meat of that mid-range (78ft-lb) sat. And yes, there was still the EXUP valve fitted to beef-up the mid-range still further.