The New R6

18 Apr 2011

Possibly the most important component of this trip is the bike itself. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a Yamaha fan, I own many Yamaha musical instruments, in fact my favourite electric guitar is a Yamaha Pacifica 1221, and I was lucky enough to purchase the last Yamaha TRB-1004 in the country two years ago.

For me, Yamaha gear is always well built from quality components, intelligently designed, feature rich (every feature you'll need, not every feature in the world), and unbreakable. This certainly holds true for their musical equipment, so when I started riding naturally I was drawn to this familiar brand. I first rode a 1998 Yamaha FZX 250 Zeal (Smallbike), which was an awesome bike, then a 2001 Yamaha YZF-R6 (The Phantom) which I just loved. These positive experiences just demonstrated to me that the quality of the Yamaha brand definitely extends out of their musical department to their motorcycles. Personally, I love having tuning forks on my bike, it simply ties my two great loves together in one place. Aw yeah!

I knew that I wanted to stay with the Yamaha brand, I knew that a 1 litre bike was too powerful for me, so the choice was obvious: another R6. Bikes are stupidly expensive in Australia, so for the purchase cost my 2001 R6 combined with the cost of shipping it to London, I could pick up a 2007 R6 with a much smaller mileage. So it was off to the nearest Internet to find myself a bike.

The Internet truly can be a fabulous place at times (if you strip away everyone's desire to document every thought they have every second of the day) and to search up a motorcycle is no exception. I used AutoTrader pretty much exclusively to search for bikes, and uncovered an absolute bargain from Arnold's Motorcycles in Burton. Once a couple of mates on the ground had checked the bike out, I put a deposit on the machine using pounds I'd bought some time ago. The chaps at Arnold's agreed to store the bike for me, and are to perform maintenance on the machine just before I arrive in early May. This will include fitting parts shipped over from California, a Zero Gravity double-bubble windshield, some no-cut frame sliders, and a Yoshimura R-55 slip-on. I simply cannot go back to not having a Yoshi pipe, they just sound amazing.

Road side assistance has been provided by The AA (as I do have an address within the UK that the bike will be registered to) however at time of writing they are yet to get back to me on comprehensive/third party matters, hopefully they will address this soon.

So here's the fabulous beast in all her glory, complete with freshly fitted Southern Cross decals...

The new R6!

Nom nom nom!