1970 October Motorcycle World - Vintage Magazine

Description: Yes we combine shipping for multiple purchases.Add multiple items to your cart and the combined shipping total will automatically be calculated. 1970 October Motorcycle World - Vintage Magazine - Yamaha XS-1 650 Volume 4, No. 16 October, 1970 TEST44 653cc YAMAHA XS-1“Grass of tea? Clumpet?”SCOOP PREVIEW3 750cc MV AGUSTA “FOUR”Call your bank director, here come de Count!FEATURES13 TORQUE IS A DIRTY WORD!Believe it or not, MCW will probably make an enemy with this one.16 ICE RACING WORLD FINALSRuss Darnell’s frostbitten weekend.20 ISLE OF MANRace reports phooey!—here’s what's happening.28 GROOVY SQUARE FOURThat’s nothing, looka my Marusho scrambler!32 GOING, GOING, . . . LACONIAThere may be snow on the roof, but there's . . . nothing in the furnace.56 HUMMER & GULBRANSENAmerica’s hottest sidecar team62 ROAD RIDERS AT LAKE ELSINORE“Wull, we had an arnge drank, then we rode over to McDonald's . .DEPARTMENTS8 PHOTO CONTEST10 COMMENTS CROSS COUNTRY49BUY-SELL-OR SWAP50SPECIAL EDITION THE ROAD IS YOURS68 MCW COLOR-PHOTO GALLERY It seems easy and valid to compareYamaha’s XS-1 to the new girl whogets transferred to your school. It isan entirely new bike with a personalityand features of its own, suddenlyplopped down in a sex-appeal market.The British twins which have domi-nated this worldwide segment of mo-torcycling don’t sell because they arethe fastest around, or the most reli-able, or give the best gas mileage orsmoothest ride. They simply turnmore heads (female) than any of thecurrently produced mass products andthat’s why we buy them and ridethem up and down the boulevard.The new Yamaha appears to be anattempt to improve on several facetsof this theme, as a careful look willshow.The American consumer is offeredan overhead camshaft engine andfive-speed transmission with nary aplain bearing in the bunch. He’s notoffered turn signals or an electricstarter, contrary to a lot of enthu-siasts’ expectations. This gives a hint46of the ambiguous theme that seemsto run throughout this machine. It’sfast, comfortable, stops and handleswell, sounds nice, starts easily and isgenerally pleasant enough to whistlealong on those dark shoreline roadsbut it’s still a curious blend of qualityand shoddiness, craftsmanship andsloppiness, ease of maintenance anddifficulty of repair.The horizontally split cases meanyou could park your big green Yam-my on the living room rug and nextmorning the rug would still be clean.That gives an impression of qualitywhich is immediately spoiled by alook at rusty Allen screws holding leftand rightside cases to the crankcase.The Allen screws are a step in theright direction as everyone who hasbought accessory screws to replacethe Phillips head screws usually foundin side covers knows, but it turns outto be practically useless if they arcgoing to rust and leave brownish linesdown your carefully polished sidecovers. Craftmanship and careful en-gineering are exemplified by the gear-driven primary drive and trochoidaloil pump. The gears for primary driveare important, eliminating a potential-ly troublesome chain. The Britishthree-cylinders tried this and gave up,reportedly because the gears weretoo noisy. The Yamaha emits no de-tectable noise from the primary driveside from those straight-cut gears,selected for least power loss. The oilpump works a lot like the Wankelrotary engine and ends up with lessreciprocating mass, four oil pulses perengine revolution and puts out a moreconstant oil pressure for the high lubedemands of the needle, ball and rollerbearings. The craftsmanship of a fair-ly unique primary drive system and atrochoidal oil pump are offset bysome really atrocious-looking weldson the Yammy’s frame. The double-cradle tubular-steel frame on our testbike looked like a school product, acombined class in welding and geo-graphy: “All right students, we willnow fabricate a map of the Andes... And much more! 12688

Price: 13.54 USD

Location: Kingsport, Tennessee

End Time: 2024-09-18T12:43:16.000Z

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