Well went for what was only supposed to be a viewing and a test ride today, and ended up coming away with a new bike
It's a 2003 Yamaha FZS 1000 Fazer in silver, had noticed it on eBay as being slightly cheaper than the rest, with a bunch of mods fitted that I'd have done anyway, and advertised as being in excellent condition.
Turned up, and the bike was totally mint, all the consummables were great, it had a full service history and all the paperwork checked out.
Took it for a test ride, and was very impressed with it. It's bloody cold out so I can't really hammer it around yet (and the upright riding position seems REALLY weird at the moment), but the engine feels very strong at low revs indeed, to the point where if I opened the throttle quite quickly at about 3k revs, it would spin up continuously. You know it's probably not too bad when you're in 6th at 30mph and it's pulling strongly! Brakes are also very good, which actually gave me a bit of a fright to start with as I was worrying I was going to lock them up! Only bit I reckon I made need to sort is the suspension, on the very tentative ride today I had it seemed "right", which probably means when I want to start pushing it, it'll seem a bit bouncy.
Not the colour I wanted, but at the price, condition and with the extras, I just couldn't turn it down!
Even had a bit of a result with adding it onto my insurance, initial quotes I had were about £160 to add on an 03 model. Rang up Carole Nash and asked about adding it on, and then asked about modifications. It's not got a LOT of mods on it at the moment, but as the insurance company didn't pay out for the last lot as I hadn't declared them, I decided I was going to declare everything I could possibly do to it, just so when it DOES get done, it'll be properly covered. Weirdly, adding all the modifications to it dropped it to £125, and I managed to get my £500 excess protection insurance thrown in for free
Just ordered myself an alarmed disc lock, need to get some heated grips sorted too as my hands are fecking cold (never realised quite how effective the 9's fairing was at helping with that!) and then need to sort out a topbox, and then I'm done for now
So now I've got it, are there any jobs I should do to it that'd help improve it? And what would modifications would people recommend?