Upgrading my 11-year-old Yamaha R1 ahead of a long ride

I have also been hit by the ADV bug after recently test riding the Honda CB500X.

BHPian Rachit.K.Dogra recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Some new set of Updates:

The last 2 months have been fun, anxious, satisfying, stressed, frustrated with the R1. We did quite a few things on the R1 and took it for a longish overnight trip as well.

I will get on with the updates first:

The last where I left the story, the 2 immediate things we needed to work on the bike was cone set and front fork servicing. The cone set had 'tak-tak' sound on slow-speed bumps and the right front fork also did a 'chew-chew' kind of sound on slow speed breakers.

We planned to tackle the cone set first. I ordered a replacement cone set from the UK and since we found somebody who could carry stuff, I got carried away and ordered a Healtech quick shifter as well. The reason we went with a health quick shifter is I have no plans to move to a power commander for now. I want to keep the bike stock, otherwise getting the power commander Quick Shifter works out to be cheaper if you have a power commander on your bike.

Changing the cone set on the bike was a big pain, to be honest. The older one had moved slightly off position at the bottom corner and had seated in its new odd position. Which basically made the aluminium frame holder take that awkward shape too. And since it was at the bottom end, there was very little leverage for us to be able to apply force to push the new seals through. It took nearly 3 hours of bent overcareful hammering to get the new seal in place, and our bodies were broken by that time. But we had a big surprise coming our way.

Bike on the jack.

When Arjun was about to put the forks back in, he was trying to look closely at which leg was on which side and he was horror-struck to see a crack in the fork leg on the piece that holds the axle in place. There are pinch bolts to tighten that piece and it seems somebody had over-torqued these and the part had cracked. This was a big blow as we had planned an overnight trip the following weekend. I left the bike at Arjun's place for him to do his magic and came home a bit disheartened.

We had 3 main options:

1. To repair this in some way.
2. Get a new/used fork - Very expensive and the bike would have been out of action for long depending upon when I could spare this much money and sourcing of part.
3. Get the fork leg changed - could be an error-prone solution as taking the fork out of fork legs needs heat treatment and there is a chance that replacement will not sit perfectly. Still quite expensive.

We did some research and found that this is not a load-bearing part and its primary job is to hold the axle in place. Arjun worked his magic and came out with a repair solution.

We got a metal piece fabricated and fixed it with nuts to provide support to the cracked piece. So far it has been working well.

While all this was happening we tried to figure the noise coming from forks as well. We tried to compress the forks with our hands and opened the top the check the fork fluid. We felt that fork shims are either loose or something and that is where the noise is coming from. Also, the fork oil was dirty and we felt that the forks were not providing the damping that they should. So fork servicing was next on our agenda.

Arjun always wanted to take the baffles out of the exhaust to hear the full cross-plane thunder. I was a bit sceptical because I did not want a very loud bike. However, we did remove the baffles just to try and boy did it make a big difference on how the bike felt after that. It seems that the bike breathes better now. The low-end throttle has become smoother and the low RPM complaining of the bike has also improved. I am planning to keep it this way only. Thankfully the exhaust is only about 10-15% louder and not obnoxiously loud.

We then came down to fitting the Quick shifter on the bike. Since this is a standalone system, you need to plug this into the ignition coils so that the spark can be cut for the shift to happen. When were accessing the ignition coils, we discover the throttle bodies just kept on the crankcase. They are supposed to be clamped down by the clamps provided, however, whosoever worked on the bike before just did not clamp it and just kept the throttle body and airbox over the intake. This really spoiled Arjun's mood. The intake had a lot of dust around it because of this. And when Arjun checked the intake valves through the opening they had a lot of carbon build-up too. We plan to tackle this in the near future by using seafoam cleaner. But back to the quick shifter, oh my God what a difference it has made to the riding experience. I still need to fine-tune it a bit as it is right now cutting power sometimes when I try to blip while downshifting too. But upshifts are butter smooth and the bike feels even more like a rocket now. Plus it has eliminated the clunky gearshifts that I always felt with the bike.

The bike was running super good those 2 weeks. I was over the moon and all giggly. These 2 weeks showed me what the cross-plane R1 is about and I daresay nothing else will ever do it for me again. I am spoiled for life. The throttle response is so electric, the torque delivery is so immediate and the sensations it takes your through with that deep exhaust growl is just pure ecstasy.

I was so happy and giggly that I feared I might jinx it. Well, I did jinx it. As I had shared earlier, the bike had cold-cranking issues, one fine day the bike threw an Error Code 12 on the dash and refused to start. 3 weeks of reading, research and diagnosis later, Arjun came down to starter motor. The bike was opened again, the starter motor was taken out and he could feel that the motor had issues. Long story short, he repaired the starter motor, added new bushes to it, replaced the starter relay and thankfully the bike was back again. The cold-cranking issue is also gone. I can't even say, how much I owe it to him. It was a major relief because Error Code 12 in the manual means Crank Position sensor error and our research suggested it could mean quite a few things. He also feared an ECU issue too. But thankfully, God was kind enough to not take us that route.

As of today, the bike is with Arjun for the fork rebuild. Keeping my fingers crossed on what we might unearth now.

When we fixed that fork leg issue, we knew we will be coming back to forks again so we thought of experimenting a bit. Arjun never liked the stance of my bike and felt it looked raised. So we dropped the clip-on by 10 mm in front. To make the bike ride a bit better, we went full soft on the front and back Pre-loads. That made the bike drop even further. Now, this felt like quite an aggressive seating position. What do you do with such an aggressive seating position, you go touring.

We had planned an overnight ride to Dehradun and Mussourie. We finished the bike after the fork leg repair around 3 in the morning. We hardly had any sleep and went touring at 5 on the R1. Any intentions of wrapping some luggage on the R1's back seat were destroyed within 5 minutes of riding as the R1s exhaust burnt a brand new Rok Strap. Well, my luggage went on Arjun's 390 ADV. R1 had good company on this trip a 2013 GSXR1000, 2011 Fireblade, 390 ADV and a 390. It was a pretty crap trip as it seemed entire North India decided to show up in Mussourie for that weekend and there we were on these bikes fighting all that traffic. However, the riding was fun in patches. R1 cruising at good speeds on the highways was nice and although the twisties were mostly traffic infested, I did get my moments. Above all, we made it back alive and honestly the bikes performed admirably in those less than ideal conditions.

This meanwhile, I went to test ride the CB500X. I have bitten the ADV bug and I really like the CB500X. If only I could afford it.

While there, met this fancy lady. Boy, this thing looks good in the flesh. The build quality is to be seen on this bike. I cannot say it feels worth the price, but this is one finely built motorcycle.

Stuff for the next round of work:

I feel we have almost reached where I wanted to take this bike in my mind. All I pray now is some luck so that it stays like this at least for some time.

On the whole, my relation with the bike is improving. I don't think I can say I am getting comfortable with its performance, because I am not. It is one scary beast, but I have started to like this feeling a bit more now.

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