2005 YAMAHA FJR 1300A

By Thommo

The FJR in touring mode

The mighty Yamaha FJR1300 was unleashed onto the world in 2001. Off the show room floor this is a bike which, when ridden by someone who knows what they are about, will give most weekend warriors on sports bikes a really good run for their money. Yes it's big, long and heavy at around 250Kg dry weight, but it's got some serious grunt, which goes from whoa to go, and it handles well.

I brought my FJR in December 2005 brand new, and it is a 2005 two tone ABS model. What impressed me with this bike before I brought it was how easy on the eyes it was and how comfortable it was to sit on. Compared to my 600, the centre of gravity was a lot lower and the balance felt really good, even tho the bike was a lot heavier and bigger.

One of the first things I noticed was how heavy the throttle return springs are. This is an easy fix: simply take a spring off (which I never did, just grew stronger arms). The seating position is good, not too sporty and not too upright, I have however, added a set of Heli offset risers, 1" higher and 1 ¾" closer to the rider. This is the highest and furthest back you can go without having to get longer control lines and wiring.

The Feejer gets some dirt riding exercise

Once out on the road life is easy. If the weather is a bit cool or wet, simply press a rocker switch and the screen rises up or down. The speedo and tacho are analog and easy to read. An LCD display holds info such as a clock, fuel, temp and dual trip meters. When you reach reserve, the last bar on the fuel gauge starts flashing and a third trip meter starts counting up. The reserve on my bike is a little off 5 litres.

The hardest thing about the FJR on the open road is being a law abiding citizen and keeping to the speed limit. With around 130bhp at the wheel and 100 ft/lb of torque to boot, you can be cruising along and thinking, gee, the scenery is passing by a bit quick, only to look down and find you're doing 140km/h plus, such is the power and the way it is delivered. Overtaking on the highway is a breeze, no need to drop back gears, simply twist the throttle and go no matter what it is you're overtaking, whether it be a car or a 4 trailer road train.

When the road tightens up, this is a bike that, to me, requires you to make the commitment to get the best out of it. Set up early for the corner and then make the commitment to see it thru, standing it up mid-corner because you got scared isn't as easy as it is on a sportsbike and makes life hard. It's a long, tallish and heavy bike. By the time you get on it with a bit of gear and a full tank of fuel, you're already well over the 300 kg mark, so it's not going to be nimble like the latest and greatest litre bike.

Tip the bike in, back yourself and make the commitment. The front brakes combined with ABS are more than adequate to haul the brute to a stop quickly if needs be. If you're mid-corner and feel that you're in too high of a gear, don't sweat it; just twist that black thing on the right: plenty of power on tap! If you're in the right gear, and twist that black thing, be warned, things back there can get a little wriggly which brings a smile to my dial every time.

In slow turns, roundabouts and car parks roll a bit of throttle on and the bike will stand up easily; and through traffic it is surprising how nimble it can be.

Ducking through to the front at lights can be interesting: even without panniers, it's still a wide bike, and splitting can be limited. Once at the front, however, getting away from the lights is a breeze. It pulls like a freight train from 2,000rpm onwards with very few locals in 4 wheelers even coming close to keeping up.

Making things smooth at the front are a pair of 48mm forks with adjustable preload, compression and rebound, which so far have done well by me. I have however; put heavier fork oil in with no great noticeable difference. At the back, there is a single 46mm shock with adjustable preload and rebound. There is also a Hard/Soft preload adjustment lever for a quick adjustment from solo to 2 up touring. With all the gear that I have on the bike, the stock shock is at its limit, and quite often I think I have went beyond its limit. Money prevents me from getting a good aftermarket Ohlins or the like.

Tyres, like oils are very much an individual thing, I've had 2 sports type rear tyres, and found both were destroyed in a very short time, the first one was easy to spin coming out of corners and lasted mere weeks, the other was another Dunlop and it barely did my Supers 08 trip. For mileage, the Metz Z6's and Pilot Road 2's have been the go, giving me more than 1 trip and still providing good grip for the times when letting one's hair down and cutting loose is on the agenda.

Servicing is a breeze, 10,000Km service intervals with valve clearances every 40,000Km and coolant every 2 yrs according to the factory specs. I've been changing the coolant every 12mths, and as the bike does mostly highway miles, I'm happy to let the oil changes to be at 10,000km using fully synthetic oils. Mechanically, the motor, box and driveline appear to be fairly bullet proof, with only some slight occasional clutch slippage, which is easily found to be rider input issues.

Some of the older models like mine and earlier had issues with heat and premature valve wear and were known as 'tickers', not all bikes were affected and the heat issue also came down to individual people's view of what they reckoned made a hot bike or not. After 80,000km, I haven't had a ticking problem, nor have I any heat issues, but than again, when the summer temps are 36C plus, it starts to get hard picking what is engine heat and what is road heat. When the tar starts to melt, it doesn't matter does it? It's just bloody hot!

The gearbox is a bit notchy on the downshifts, and the first gear clunk is a shocker! There isn't a great deal of free play in the driveline, so you need to be fairly precise with shifting for those smooth quick changes. Once mastered, you will reap the rewards.

There is one thing that Yamaha should do, and that is to get someone else to do the fuel injection system. Even after careful throttle body sync, surging and carrying on is experienced around town and lower speeds. This is something that most owners have complaints about. Most owners remedy for this is to fit a Power Commander with a smoothness map and/or a dyno tune; it really does transform the bike, chalk and cheese you could say!

In the 80,000 odd km that I have done on my bike, I haven't had any mechanical problems whatsoever and only one electrical problem that saw me spend the night just off the road. Lucky for me, I'm always prepared and have camping gear and tucker!! To be honest I couldn't be buggered fixing the problem in the dark! A very simple problem of a cracked wire in the loom that goes down the front of the headstem and along the frame of the bike, the loom being pulled to tight and eventually a wire gave way to the stress. Easily fixed with a few basic tools.

Apart from the mechanicals, my bike you could say is far from stock, many minor and not so minor additions have been made, and some of these are:

Auxiliary fuel tank, giving another 25Lt of fuel. The biggest thing done to make this work is having to remove the main fuel tank, pull it apart and drill a dirty great bit hole in the bottom of it. Not for the faint hearted, stuffing that up and having to get another fuel tank would be one very expensive exercise!
HID driving lights. Big expensive ones hanging out the front on their own specially made light bar to support the weight of them.
Towbar for towing a trailer when you have too much crap.
Giant PVC canisters bolted to the passenger foot pegs for more storage
An extra tool box bolted to the rear mudguard
An air compressor permanently hardwired to the bike for pumping up tyres, airbeds and blow up dolls on those cold nights
Stebel nautilus air horn (LOUD)
An LED map reading light for when lost in the middle of the night or for when you are too pissed to find the ignition

and the list just keeps going on and on. An article could be made alone on the changes I've made to the bike and fully loaded with everything it still handles good and goes fast. I have the speeding tickets to prove it.

If you're looking for a bike that eats miles, goes fast, handles well and needs to satisfy the minister for war and finance, than the FJR should be in the list for consideration. It does everything well and nothing wrong; you can even punt up the odd dirt road or three! With regular servicing, mine has simply been turn the key on, hit the starter and the road and let grind of day-to-day life fall behind you.

Payload is not an issue