Fazer 1000: Long term report

Over the last month, I’ve been covering 300 passenger-laden miles a week. That’s a good test for any bike, but the simple fact is that if I had bought any other bike it wouldn’t be happening.

I’m still a big fan of arse-in-the-air sports bikes, but when you’re on the A1 for two hours at 90mph, I’m pleased to say the perfect weight distribution of the Fazer 1000 is a compromise I like. It has made it possible to complete the weekly epic with neither the missus nor myself suffering from deep vein thrombosis.

Every weekend sees me riding the best part of 300 miles to see girlfriend, family and friends. If it was any other bike in my garage, the missus would be on the train. But the Fazer copes with pillions so well it’s never been anything less than a pleasure for my grinning passenger and me.

In fact, we’ve enjoyed it so much, we’ve still found ourselves clutching lids while eating fish and chips in Skegness and visiting friends at Mallory Park.

The manual under the seat reckons the only thing you have to do before you hit the road with an extra body aboard is ” increase the tyre pressures ” .

Call me pedantic, but that’s just vague. I’m already pretty hefty at 17 stones, and adding another 10-11 stones of girlfriend is enough to have most bikes screaming for mercy. So before she got near it, I was under the seat rummaging for the Yamaha toolkit.

Suspension fiddling is a bit of a black art, but it’s actually fairly easy if you remember two things. Don’t make big changes, and never change more than one thing at a time.

As standard, the pre-load collar on the rear shock was five clicks away from its hardest setting, and I dropped this to three. This ” stiffer ” setting actually lifts the resting point of the bike’s bum-end and helps prevent it sagging on to the undercarriage under our combined weight.

I also raised the pressure in both tyres by 3psi to 35 at each end, just to give them more strength and stop the carcass from distorting. After the first blast with these settings, I couldn’t find fault and left the damping alone. I didn’t touch the fully-adjustable forks either, as the pillion is sat so far past the centre of gravity that they were hardly affected.

You’d think carrying an extra 10 stone for hundreds of miles would destroy the fuel economy, too. But I’ve been getting an extra 20 miles per tank, boosting mpg from 38 to over 40, due to gentler riding. When you’re carrying your other half, it’s advisable not to crash up and down the gearbox and grab big handfuls of throttle or you’ll be arriving on your tod. So I’ve been snicking it into top as quickly as possible and planning much farther ahead.

The bike still corners beautifully, but hard braking and quick direction changes are greeted by a squeeze of the ribs or a swift slap around the head.

Last time I reported the bike had started to go a bit furry, but that was before I’d noticed the state of the shock and Yoshi can. The Yoshi Tri-oval cost me £320 last year and, while the finish of the metal is still lovely, the prized badge looks like it’s spent a week in an acid tub. And I should have fitted a hugger. It was only when I went to adjust the shock last month that I realised what a state it’s in. As standard, there’s sod-all protection for it and I wish I’d realised this before winter – not after it.

But furry bits aside, the bike is still a winner. It’s always a pleasure to ride and I’ve already started the rejuvenation schedule for Spring with a set of sportier Bridgestone BT010 tyres. I’ve also seen some gorgeous accessories at www.yamahafz1.com that could tempt me to spend cash on sprucing up the 1000’s looks.