Yoshimura X-1

The Hayabusa or should I say Yoshimura X-1. Imagine my surprise, scrolling through Emirates Auction site one day and I see a Hayabusa listed, but the photo jarred. It clearly wasn’t a ‘00 Hayabusa, certainly not like the ’99 I had owned previously. On closer inspection it sparked a vague memory of a special from back in the day – the kind of bike you only read about and bought models of. A bit of googling and it was indeed a very special Yoshimura X-1, albeit a rather sad looking one.

The story is that Yoshimura built a couple of special bikes to compete in the Suzuka 8-hr race, the Hayabusa was a strange choice, but did indeed wins it’s class against many smaller and more nimble bikes. To celebrate, with Suzuki’s blessing they made 100 for the road. This is number 55 of 100. It has many, many trick parts, not just from Yoshimura but Ohlins, Marchenisi etc. And of course lots of engine work, this beast should have 196hp at the rear wheel.

Rarely seen, there are a few articles out there online and lots of coverage of one being auctioned around a decade ago in Europe – those articles refer to that one as the only one in the West, as most stayed in collections in Japan. So, I’m not sure where this one fits in – it’s has clocked up some miles and of course ended up on an auction site in Dubai.

Anyway, the mis-listing throw many off the trail, so bidding wasn’t that tough – I actually found out afterwards that I was bidding against at least 2 friends, but they weren’t as committed, or foolish, so I won.

As I said the bike was in a pretty bad state – it has been ‘down the road’, The forks were a mess, the fairings hanging off and light covers and screen were broken – not bad, but tired.

First job was to order some parts – replacing the Ohlins forks was saga, originally I put on some standard Hayabusa ones. Then I spent a few months sourcing parts to rebuild the damaged forks, not easy, but I got there eventually, salvaging what I could and adding in correct elements once found, finally I swapped over the old end caps and on they went – just perfect. 

The good news always bike ran, which is great considering it had languished for about 4 years going through the Emirates Auction machine – it was consigned by Dubai Courts. It needed a little fettling and I swapped fuel pumps, refreshed the ignition system etc, but otherwise it was all good in no time. A PC4 also helped things along.

So on to the cosmetics. The Screen and one of the light covers were broken – simple order some more. Of course not – there were only 100 made for this special Yoshimura fairing. With that avenue closed the next port of call was to have someone make news ones using the cracked ones as a pattern. However in between me finding an acrylics place to do so, the cleaners in my office threw out the old ones thinking they were scrap… you can’t write this, they were literally sat on my desk waiting to be sent out. With no templates we had to go down the reverse engineer from the fairing route – painful, but I think they’ve done a great job.

So that’s pretty much where we are – the wheels were white, I’ve have then painted black and re-shod. Newly fabricated carbon fibre ram-air tubes were made, these were missing and of course bespoke, The Yoshimura Digital Dual Meter was stored away and replace with a more modern equivalent, from Yoshimura of course, and joined by a Gear Position Sensor and TRE.

Last job was a full repaint with reproduced decals and then it was off to registration. An easy pass and an amazing ride – if not a little beyond my riding skills level!