OW01 History

News update.
Well, I went ahead a purchased the Yamaha ow01 that was on Ebay. I reckoned I'd never have the same chance if I hadn't without going through the hassle of trying to get a restoration project from Tokyo or somewhere obscure?
So the next thing was to try and find some authorities on the bikes and start looking around the forums and classifieds for any parts or info. It's gonna be a month before I get the bike back from London so theres lots of time before I see what needs to be done.
It's an 89 model which was road registered in 2002 but with an 89 reg plate.
I managed to get in contact with a guy who still races the model and who is sponsored by the main authority on the bikes.He mentioned he remembered racing against the very bike and that it was quick but that it apparently blew it's engine on a dyno..he also game me a name of the person who raced the bike.

So a few googles later and I was on the phone to PDQ, a company who worked on high performance bike building.The technician who raced the bike still worked there and the previous owner of the bike had also worked at PDQ before starting up on his own.So the question was, obviously, was it fast and did it blow on the dyno?

-"no, the engine never blew on the dyno! the owner was curious as to where the engine came from and what it's insides looked like as when he got it and dynoed it the results were so impressive it was deemed as something a bit better than a std tune.back wheel gave 138bhp and the parts on the bike were very trick.Rumours abound that it was an ex works loctite engine.In fact, there were a lot of rumours surrounding the bike but nothing ever really became worked out.The owner stripped the engine and when putting it back together managed to over torque a bolt going into the cases which stopped the rebuild.And that was that.It's got some very serious parts on it, including a race gearbox, race ported head, flatslides and then the frame has a yec gusset kit fitted...also there are loctite stickers painted over on the carbon fibre fairing..so we reckoned it was a full race engine built by a pro..had a race tacho and ecu as well..."

All good news and the rebuilt should be fun.Lets hope so anyway! I'll be updating the site once I start unpacking the bits n bobs.
One thing that I hadn't seen around were pictures of a bike with the YEC frame gussets.I searched and searched, only finding pics of standard bikes or race bikes that didn't have the frame race kit option.
Then , finally on a forum, this bike turned up, Eddie lawsons daytona winning Ow01:

and one more from Italy with frame gusset and swing arm strengthing

You can see the extra frame gusset welded down to the swinging arm pivot over the cast part of the standard setup.
So, basically you have a deltabox frame which is based to take any amount and more horsepower kept together with Grandprix front forks (not like the öhlins above) and an öhlins fully adjustable on the rear.Mine doesn't have the race-kit swinging arm, but does have dymags, qd rear wheel, alloy endurance tank which is slightly larger, and a flatslide/harris airbox:

so, all pretty exciting anyway.Can't wait to pick up the bike and start the strip down..although..famous last words...