By VJMC Member Bruce Bly

Reliving my youth

   I bought my first motorcycle after much begging and whining to my parents. Of course, they didn’t want me to have one. I remember going to the Honda and Yamaha shop many times and looking at the S-90 Honda or the Yamaha YG-1 Rotary Jet. It must have been the “rotary Jet” name and $50 less because that’s the one I bought.
   My friend bought the S-90 and I was pretty mad because it could run away from me and if I remember right would go almost 65. I could maybe do 55 if the wind was right. He could also pull wheelies on that thing for a mile. I can still remember him riding down main street 10:00 at night doing a wheelie. But when we would go out hill climbing and dirt riding I could easily run away from him. There was one hill and I could make it up and he couldn’t. But I had to pay on the ride home.
   The first week I was riding at night through a local park and unbenost to me they had taken out a couple of trees out that day. Any of you who have ridden one of the early small motorcycles can appreciate how inadequate the 6 volt lighting was. I was cutting through the grass and suddenly I was ass over applecart. My left leg hurt like the blazes and I felt something warm running down my leg. Yamaha cunningly designed the choke lever so it would pierce your left thigh anytime you went over the handlebars. I still proudly show the scar today.
   Somehow I thought I needed to keep up with the S-90 so I sent it to Wiesco to have it bored and a +.20 piston put in. Then I got one of those neat starburst high compression heads.  I lost one of the piston circlips but I bent a wire that looked good enough and reassembled it. That was good for a mile till it came out and lodged in the crankcase. Now I had to take it to the dealer and have it torn apart. An early lesson in doing things right the first time. 40 years later and I’m still trying to learn that lesson.
   A little change in gearing and now I can go 60. Talk about polishing a turd! Why did I spend that much money? I did ride it back and forth 15 miles to work for two years rain or shine so I guess I did get my moneys worth.
   I put a lot of miles on that thing till I needed a car for college. I put an ad in the local paper and a guy asked to bring it over to look at. He wanted it but didn’t have the money but would by Friday. He gave me a cognizant note, which promised payment. My dad laughed the next day and told me I just lost my motorcycle. I was trusting and fresh from the turnip patch. I was so naive back then thought gay meant a happy person. Well, I went back on Friday to a now empty house to collect my money. I wonder how many other people he got.
   I progress to a Honda 160 with no second gear, always owing something with two wheels and a motor. Racing dirt bikes, souping up a Yamaha RD400 and making a café racer before it was cool to my present Yamaha Venture. I even rode a Yamaha 750 triple from Ohio to California before I got married because I knew it would be a last hurrah.
   Surfing ebay a couple of years ago, I thought it would be neat if I could find an YG1 to ride around. On July 13 2005 I became the proud owner of a 1965 Yamaha YG1 for $305. I woke my son up 6:00 Sunday morning and said we are going on a road trip. 11 hours later we were back with the YG1 in the back of my pick up. The guy said it was hard to start, but I never did see it run as the kick starter slipped and we couldn’t get it push started. And the title was a small piece of paper, which was the registration, which he said, was the title back then.
   I figured getting it running would be easy but the kick-starter was a different story. I hauled it up to get it inspected and the title and frame numbers didn’t match. The registration matched the engine but the inspector said the frame was the important part. Since he knew me he told me he would let it slide but I probably wouldn’t be able to sell it out of state as the frame and the title didn’t match. Then over to the title office, which said it wasn’t a title. I explained to them that the registration and title were the same until 1972. I didn’t know that for a fact but that’s what the seller told me. They looked a little suspicious but said if I had a receipt from the original owner they would issue me a title. By miracle of shaky handwriting I managed to produce a receipt and now had my title.
   When it ran, it ran fairly well but seemed to die at idle and sometimes when slowing down. Somehow, the size and speed of this mighty machine I purchased in my youth was not nearly as big and fast as I remember it. I’m sure the extra 100 pounds I have packed on since then and a fading memory had nothing to do with it. I put in a new battery, points, condenser and plug but no help. I rode it around that summer and decided to do a repaint and fix it up over the winter. Down in the basement it went, and I stripped off all the old paint. Several cans of rustolum later and it didn’t look too bad. I split the engine and found a bad stamped piece of metal in the kicker system. I replaced that and got it back together. The next spring I gave it a kick and it slipped. Damn! And I was still having the running problems.
   Of course every piece of chrome had that cheap 1960 chroming so there was pitting on every chrome piece. I slowly bought some parts and
Kept working on it. When I hooked the rectifier up, deep inside one of the pieces touched the other and burnt up the lighting coils. I finally replaced the ignition coil and found out that the end of the coil was green and barely touching the spark plug cap. Once I got that figured out, it ran pretty decent. But I was always embarrassed having to push start it so the next winter I was going to do another teardown and replace every part in the kick-start system. I collect parts as they came up on ebay and did another teardown, also replacing the lighting coil.
   I also discovered the shift system was pretty unique. There is a rod that moves thru the gear shaft with a bump on it. The gear shaft has holes in it and there are teeth on the inside of the gears. There are ball bearing in the gear rod held on by tiny springs. When you shift, the bump on the rod pushes the ball up and engages that gear via the teeth on the inside of it. The shifter moves the rod back and forth in the gear shaft engaging different gears. The kick mechanism is a cam type arrangement that when you kick, a cam catches some rollers and spins the engine. Everything looked fine but I was told the slightest wear would cause it to slip. I replaced every part and now works flawlessly. And it was no mean feat; I have two service manuals and let me tell you they are not very detailed. Thank goodness I took lots of photos and guess on some stuff but I guessed right.
   The tires were oversize, which caused them to rub and tear out the wiring under the fender so I had to change to the stock size. I looked for two years for a muffler, finding one on Ebay a little better than the one I had. I made a few abortive attempts to find a chrome shop that said they would do mufflers but when I showed them they said no. Finally one chrome shop that said they would do them, then called me and said they wouldn’t called me and said they were done.  I got both of them chromed. I kept the original and sold the other one on ebay. I was at least hoping to break even as I have never seen a rechromed one before, but not to be. I lost money but the buyer was happy. And of course a month later there was a NOS muffler that went for about what I had in my rechromed one. The one I had rechromed doesn’t look bad, but not nearly as nice as a NOS muffler.
   The one thing I have never seen in looking is a NOS tank. I have seen some tanks, but most have dents somewhere and of course pitted chrome. The tank is the centerpiece of a motorcycle, and someday I will bite the bullet and send it off to a guy I have communicated with who said he can restore it to like new. I saw his work in a like new restoration that sold on ebay for $4000. I thought that was a lot of money, but now that I am trying to do something like that, I am sure I will be approaching that and not have nearly the motorcycle that was, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of hours I have spent screwing around with this. To get a truly new looking restoration, you need to have everything rechromed, repainted and replace every nut, bolt and part on the motorcycle. Zinc plating is something I haven’t tried yet but I am giving it some thought to make the bolts correct. 

   I think like most of you, I have purchased most of my parts on ebay. It is a great source for NOS and used parts. There were a couple of small items I have never seen on ebay that I purchased through some parts houses. I was surprised that these were still in stock, but there are a couple of dealerships that specialize in older motorcycles and have some NOS around. There is one even reproducing some rubber parts. Most notably, I needed the rollers that go in the kick start system and found them in a parts house.
   Two years ago my 16-year-old son said he needed a motorcycle, to which my wife said no. Thank God she was the bad guy, as I didn’t want him to have one either. I know (from stories I have heard from others) how reckless and stupid teen-age drivers can be on motorcycles. I have been doing fire/rescue for 25 years and have seen my share. Twice I have sold the motorcycles I had at that time, vowing never to ride again. But then the weather gets nice and I can’t resist the siren’s song of the wind in my remaining hair. Then out of the blue my son said he had begged and whined enough and Mom said he could get a motorcycle. Now I was really in a spot. I do remember how important it was to me back then, so he bought a Honda CX500 for him to ride. 

   A year later, he needed something “cooler”. I told him he needed to be saving for college. His response was what if I get a second job? Well, I figured that if he was wiling to work that hard I could let him get something “cooler”. All of a sudden we were looking at 600 to 900 crotch rockets. I had to put my foot down and said I will decide what he gets if he gets anything else. He had a fine running bike in the CX500. Even though it’s been 40 years, I still remember the cool factor. We finally found a Kawasaki EX500 and bought that. I didn’t realize how fast those things were. I was deceived because the insurance company does not classify them as a sport bike. He told me how good he was getting at cornering and riding one day. Two weeks later I’m over with the squad at the hospital and dispatch called and asked if I’m there. I replied yes, and they told me not to leave. I knew right then my son was in a motorcycle accident and it happened on a curve. They phoned me and said he was OK but needed some stitches. He did get 6 stitched and lost a bunch of skin but was otherwise uninjured. How my folks laughed when I told them that, knowing what a payback I was getting.

Bruce on Yamaha


Bruce on Yamaha

Zac on Yamaha