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Truenotch's 1974 Yamaha FS50 (FS1)


Truenotch

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I swapped a bucket seat for this bike a few years back and it's been sitting in my Dad's shed ever since. I had no information about what it was or when it was built, all I knew was that it was a badass 50cc motorbike that I needed. I assumed it was an FS1E. 


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It's time to do something with it, so I picked it up on the last trip to Palmy and send the engine/frame number to www.yambits.co.uk to figure out what it was - they came back saying it's a 1974 Yamaha FS50 (newer than I expected). 
 
The frame has a small amount of rust, but it's easily fixable, and there are a few other things that need sorting - stripped spark plug thread, possible points issues and it sounds like the rotary valve is out of time. 
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I'm in two minds about what to do with it. Most of me says modify it into a small cafe/brat style bike and another small part says restore it back to normal... What do y'all reckon? 
 
 
Inspiration: FS1E.jpg

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Actually yours is the much rarer Sixteen Special released in 73, they then changed the name to the Fs1e or Fizzie as everyone remembers them, as Honda had the rights to SS50 if I remember right, most of the early Fizzies had pedals to make them moped compliant, but they would do a ball buzzing 60mph or 100kph on the speedo, doing that was certainly the way into an early grave tho, as the lights were 6v candle powered things.

 

I had soooooooo much fun on these things, it was all you could ride at 16 (you could drive at 17) 25 quid and someone in the pub would hand you the screwdriver to your own set of extremely cheap wheels, usually some extremely run down early Fizzie that you had to rebuild twice a month :)

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Yeah Fizzies are super rare, because we all had them at 16 and got rid of them at 17, so in 10 years a bike had 10 owners! 10 sixteen year old owners, who had never ridden anything before, and If I was anything to go by, thought they were Evil Kinevel.

Trust me when I say this, even a cape won't save you from gravity :)

 

Most were fully destroyed by ten years old, and the few survivors are worth good gold, because all of us around back then have fond 16 year old memories of them.

I'd love to have one and a B100p, or a BLOOP to most sitting in the Garage (I've got two Suzuki GP100's already), and lets not get started on RD400 Coffin tanks and KH 250,350,500 and death on a stick 750 two stroke triples, the only difference between  a good one and a bad one, was one ran, the other didn't, if it rattled it was either in perfect condition, or F$@ked if it was quiet it was either in Perfect condition or F@#ked, the only way to tell was to buy it, and if it made it home it was probably a good one :)

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Thanks for the comments guys!

I think I'll get started by pulling it to bits and giving the frame/tank/motor/trans a recon and will decide on mods afterwards.

The plan is to make everything reversible to keep its collectible status but I'm dead keen on low bars and a sweet seat... possibly forks and wheels too. Will see how it pans out.

Gonna make the ladies swoon.

**edit** and a spanny of course!

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 Different bars, seat, tyres, lowered headlight and gauges, small tail light and a bit of polish and paint, all easy things that will make it awesome and able to be changed back  to factory (which will never happen) I can give you measurements for a chamber the same as mine (yamaha 50) which will make it scream.

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If you havent yet remove the entire exhaust system and burn off all the carbon build up as this will choke your engine alot. Alot of different ways to do it but I usually stand upright on a bare concrete floor and pour petrol down exhaust and carefully light it up and use compressed air to get super hot and to blow melting buildup out other end

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