Set To Stun!

Open the champagne! Alan Dowds’ motorcycle odyssey continues in CMM

I know, I know. Regular readers might recall thatI’m already signed up for a project bike in these here pages. Where’s the turbo ZRX Al? What have you been doing Al?

It’s true. My turbocharged Eddie Lawson replica has turned into a sort of Brexity black hole. A farrage-o, if you will. I’ve taken my eye off the ball.

But THE ZRX IS STILL HAPPENING! I’ve decided to double down. Like Theresa May, I’m going to keep at it, and I reckon a resolution is closer than ever. Nothing has changed: promise.

In the meantime though, I’ve only gone and got another project bike. I was on the phone to Sean Mills at Big CC Racing, tickling the turbo ZRX along a bit, and he asked if I wanted to buy a Fazer 600 for a ‘fabulous’ price. Now, I have previous with Yamaha’s natty middleweight roadster. When I started working full time as a bike journalist, the FZS600 had just been launched, and at the end of 1998 I bought the one MCN had run as a long-termer: with my own money and everything. It was bright red, the reg number was R270 PGO (anyone recognise it? It is still MOT’d ,so she’s definitely out there) and I had a ball on it.

I later moved on to work at RiDE magazine, and ended up with another one as a long-term test bike there: a later 2000 ‘S’ model with a bigger tank and preload-adjust forks. Then, a couple of years later I was at SuperBike magazine, and picked up the ultimate ‘foxeye’ model, with stainless exhausts, proper headlights and fancier dash.