Yamaha XJR1300 with r1 front end
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Towards the end of Sept '03 as many riders do, I decided I needed to slow down a little so swapped my Aprilia Mille for a friends XJR1300. We met at the Oxford services on a cold and damp day and swapped bikes. The ride home was considerably different to the ride up on the Mille. |
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Although the small fly screen did provide a surprising amount of protection on the motorway, I wasn't a fan so it had to go. The link pipes were cut down to get the Art cans sitting better. And so the tinkering began... |
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| Next up was a set of Over Racing handlebar risers and a set of Renthal Ultra Low bars. If you fit these bars without taller risers the bars will foul the suspension adjusters. Also swapped the wind breaker indicators for something without the aerodynamic drag of a Volvo. |
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| The one thing I felt let down the muscular looks of the XJR was the weedy front forks so I decided to graft the front end from a Yamaha R1 into place. A set of R1 forks was purchased on Ebay and sent of to TES Performance for the forks to be extended and a stepped billet top yoke fabricated. Unfortunately by the time they got round to stripping the forks they found one was bent and I was unable to get a response form the seller. So begrudgingly another set was located. |
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| However the drama didn't end there. When assembling the front end I found that the top and bottom yoke would not line up, turned out I had the wrong year R1 yokes which had way too much rake. So with the bike in bits a mad search for the correct bottom yoke began. |
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| Once located everything lined up and as much of the original bracketry was used to keep the bike looking as factory as possible. |
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| Using forks from the same family allowed me to use the original front wheel and brakes. This helped keep the costs down a bit after buying 2 sets of R1 forks and the 300 quid for the top yoke. |
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| To make up for the debacle with the front forks Ebay actually turned up a bargain in the shape of a titanium and carbon full Akrapovic exhaust system. The weight this saves over the original system is unbelievable, with the complete system probably weighing the same as just the original downpipes on their own. Plus a claimed 20bhp power increase. |
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| Due to a slight mis-measurement issue with the length of the front forks the front end ended up being 10mm higher than stock and rather than dropping the forks through the yokes I decided to increase the rear ride height with a set of modified GSX1400 suspension risers (as XJR versions were not available at the time). These were 25mm and helped to speed up the steering but... |
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| Whilst out testing the claimed BHP increase I had a butt clenching tank slapper which prompted the fitment of a Sprint steering damper to calm things down a bit. |
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| Other parts worth a mention were HEL braided brake lines which were a big improvement, anodised rear peg mounts and Oberon foot pegs and Yamaha crash bungs. |
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| The final mod was an undertray from Pyramid to tidy up the back end. |
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| So after completing my perfect XJR1300 I had a bike that looked better, handled better and sounded better than the original. So I did what anyone would do when they've built their perfect bike... |
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| Put it all back to standard and sell it. |
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