When Yamaha’s big FJ1100 was finally launched in 1984, two years after its predecessor XS1100 series had disappeared out of showrooms, it was regarded as a very serious performance bike.
Cycle World mag in the USA had this to offer: “On a flat deserted stretch of highway in the Mojave Desert, we saw the speed needle on our FJ11 nudge right to the 160mph mark (260km/h).
And on another, shorter stretch of deserted pavement – Carlsbad Raceway’s quarter-mile dragstrip – the big Yamaha recorded a run of 10.87 seconds at 125mph (200km/h), the quickest time ever posted by a Cycle World test motorcycle.”
The result of a development that had started in 1980, the biggest surprise for this model was that Yamaha had stuck with air cooling for the powerplant, even when the likes of Honda and Kawasaki had made the jump to liquid-cooled designs.
Running four valves per cylinder and a bank of four 36mm Mikuni CV carburettors, the powerplant claimed a very healthy 125 horses (91kW) at 9000rpm and 86Nm or torque at 8000rpm.
There was a little more innovation in the frame.
Yamaha opted for what it called the ‘lateral frame concept’, which means it ditched an upper-frame spine section in favour of a design that relied on steel box-section main spars running either side of the powerplant as part of a twin loop.
This in some respects was a distant forerunner in appearance to the twin-spar aluminium frames that were to be widely adopted on performance bikes over the coming decades.
Suspension was high-spec for the time: 41mm front fork with preload and rebound adjustment, plus anti-dive; A rear monoshock had preload and rebound adjustment.
It morphed into 1200 in 1986 and lasted in the market until 1991-92. They got used and abused and finding a good one these days is a real challenge.